"...I know that it's time for a cool change.."

"If there's one thing in my life that's missing
It's the time I spend alone
Sailing on the cool and bright clear waters
There's lots of those friendly people
Showin' me ways to go
And I never want to lose their inspiration

But, it's time for
a cool change...
I know that it's time
for a cool change
Now that my life
is so pre-arranged
I know that it's time
for a cool change..."
"Cool Change"
- The Bellamy Brothers
(click on the title above to hear the song)

Changes are in the air...and they are cool...and wonderful.  Graduations, weddings, new jobs, promotions, babies, travel.  Cool changes. 

Someone recently asked me, "If you could give only one gift, the same one to each person making a life transition this month, what would it be?"

It was easy.  The space to be alone, to be still, and to listen in that silence for the voice of the Divine, God, Allah, Jah, Supreme Being...or whatever you call Her.

This is the most valuable part of any day for me.  It is the "one thing" I cannot live without.  I can do without food, water (for a time), conversation, friends, books (this one is hard...but not impossible), the company of my loved ones (even harder)...but I cannot live without the space to commune with God.

It is a change of direction that I seek throughout my days when everything points towards tasks, deadlines, timetables, and schedules...outcomes and accomplishments, to stop and turn away from that momentum and be still.

It is a cool change.  It is refreshing, invigorating, soothing, and inspiring.  It feeds me and cleanses my palate all at the same time.  It is wonderfully simple and deeply complex.  It is richly sumptuous and pure light coincidentally.  It is what gives me the kind of joy that none can take away.

Whether it is your wedding day or your first day of work at the most wonderful new job you could imagine...the birth of your first child or the launching of your catamaran out to sea after retiring from a long illustrous career...it will never be more glorious than hearing the voice of God in the silence of your own heart...inspiring you, giving you encouragement, direction, guidance, solace.

It has taken me many years to more fully develop a practice of silence and deep listening that sustains me.  And the more I practice it, the more I hunger for it.  And that silence doesn't require a closet, a church, or a sanctuary...boat alone on the sea, or a chapel in the woods.  It can be practiced in the midst of a concentration camp (as proven in the lives of thought luminaries like Corrie TanBoom and "Jeremy"), a prison cell (think of Paul, Ghandi, Mandela), a war-torn desert, a large family, a high school cafeteria, a wedding reception, or even a rock concert.  As the word practice implies, it takes practice...but that's the fun of it. 

Start out with silent places (church, your bedroom, a garden) and work up to carving out silence spaces...within yourself...in the midst of more stimulating places -- it .  

I wish I could give each of you one hour a day alone within the sanctuary of your own consciousness...the province governed by the divine.  But this is not a gift anyone can give you...it is a gift you must give yourself.  But it is not a selfish gift.  It is a gift that, when practiced, can't help but bless others in ever-widening circles of love and inner peace.

When you walk away from a confrontation, an event...even a joyous one, the demands of a busy schedule, and re-calibrate yourself in alignment with the Source of your divine nature and purpose, everyone is blessed and benefited.

Imagine you are in the middle of your wedding reception and you step away for a moment or two...into the garden, in the stairwell, behind the curtain...to center your heart on God's hand in your life, your new marriage, your purpose, to give thanks, to ask, "How can I most serve You in this moment?" and then listen for the answer.  Imagine the look of peace that you will radiate from your entire being when you return to the festivities.  Imagine the tone you will set...much like a tuning fork sets the perfect pitch in tuning a piano.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege and joy of attending a James Taylor concert in a small concert hall with a generous friend.  Time and again during the concert (an event I had waited since 1970 to experience...JT up close and personal...oh my goodness!!!) I was called away by my phone for a conversation and then to pray...or to pray during the conversation.  It was my favorite part of the night...to realize that as much as I loved JT's voice, his songs, his lyrics...I loved the voice of God even more!!  I never once felt "interrupted" by a call, but it felt as if the calls were making the concert more wonderful, more rich, more sacred.  Each call was a reminder that God's voice was my favorite voice. 

So, as we all enter this season of cool changes, I pray that we each love ourselves enough to give the bride...the new mom, the recent graduate, the concert-goer, the healer...within ourselves, the gift of silent spaces with God. 

"...If there's one thing in my life that's missing
It's the time that I spend alone
Sailing on the cool and bright clear waters
It's kind of a special feeling
When you're out on the sea alone
Staring at the full moon like a lover

Time for
a cool change...
I know that it's time
for a cool change
Now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it's time
for a cool change..."

dearest love...hopes, and dreams fulfilled...to each of you,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Let peace begin with me..."

"Let there be peace on earth,
and let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on Earth,
the peace that was meant to be.

With God as our Father,
brothers all are we,
Let me walk with my brother,
in perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me,
let this be the moment now.
With every step I take,
let this be my solemn vow,

To take each moment
and live each moment
in peace, eternally.
Let there be Peace on Earth,
and let it begin with me."
-     Jackson/Miller

In 1972 our graduating class of high school seniors sang this song as we took our place on the bleachers beneath the same lights our boys had "beat Central" for the State championship earlier that fall. 

We were graduating from a small regional high school surrounded by dairy farms, large summer estates, and the small pastoral villages that fed our student population with its "best and brightest."  

We were Woodstock wannabes.  We wore the requisite pumps and hose, but went bra-less under our white sundresses, and had a pair of tattered jeans and a halter top in the backseat of our get-away car for wearing to graduation parties after dinner with our parents and "honored guests."

We wore hope for the future on our faces and tried to keep our fear of the unknown hid well beneath a deep layer of optimism and folk music.   We were a generation of activism and protest.  We had watched our brothers, cousins, and friends be drafted into fighting a war we didn't believe in and die for a cause we were confused about.  And soon, as we knew all too well, some of us would no longer be protected from this system (of drafting young men once they graduated from high school) by our childhood and youth. Soon, someone's boyfriend or best friend would volunteer, or be asked, to take an oath, don a uniform and travel to a place with jungles and monsoons to fight an enemy we weren't sure we hated.  It was our last moment of childhood…and we knew it.

I remember walking up the steps of the platform where we would sit…waiting for the principal to make his remarks, the valedictorian to give her speech, and our names to be called in alphabetical order…and wondering how we could stop the madness of a war that took fresh-scrubbed boys from farms and small towns and turned them into fighting machines…or worse yet, the unthinkable…fallen heroes sent home to weeping mothers and girlfriends, fathers and teammates.

It was one of those moments burned into my memory like the initials my sister and I carved into an old beech tree…not faded by time, but remarkable for it's clarity "after all those years."

For the first time that I can remember, I actually listened to myself think what I was thinking…and then I listened to the words that were coming out of my mouth while I was thinking those thoughts…and the "coincidence" was staggering.  I was terrorized by the thought that my friends and I were being launched into a world at war, a world where we felt hopeful, but somehow--in the deep recesses of our fears--powerless to make a difference, and yet the answer was falling from my lips with such clarity.

"Let it begin with me…"  

I was very angry with a family member that night.  I was hurt by what I felt was negligent disinterest.  I had vowed earlier in the day that if this person actually showed up at graduation, I wouldn't even acknowledge their presence beyond the polite, "hello, thank you for coming."  I had actually practiced being elegantly aloof.  I would be above it…on the surface…but I would continue to seethe deep inside.  I had the right…right? 

Walking up to my place on stage that evening I suddenly realized that I didn't have the right to harbor a war within my heart….even one that seemed so reasonable and justified.  I did have the right to let peace begin with me. 

Sitting down in my place and looking out at my family taking up two whole rows near the front, I felt all that anger and hurt wash away.  They were there.  They had come to celebrate a milestone in my life.  My parents were proud and my seven siblings were fresh-faced and dressed for a party. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins and one great-aunt were smiling up, each with their own memory of me as a child skipping through their hearts as they waited for my name to be called.

I decided to actually think about what I was seeing.  They were in the one of the closest rows to the stage.  This meant that my family, who were customarily late for most appointments, events, etc., had arrived en masse early enough to get premier seating.  My parents had driven 60 miles, from where they had moved earlier in my senior year, with a car full of seven children from age one to sixteen, and had kept them neat and clean, on a very warm June afternoon with no air-conditioning.   My grandmother had driven with my great aunt almost as far, but very slowly, to be there.  And my aunts, uncles, and cousins had carved out this evening from very busy schedules to gather on a football field, sit on hard metal chairs, listen to a guy they didn't know talk about a bunch of kids they would never see again, only to watch me walk a dozen yards, shake the principal's hand, accept my diploma and return to my seat.

Where was the war I was so hell-bent on continuing to fight only hours before?  Where was the disinterest I was willing to sacrifice my own grace for?  Where was the hurt I felt so justified in wearing like a badge of honor?  It was not "out there" in the smiling faces of my family and friends.  It only had a life if I gave it one…in my own heart.  I suddenly realized that by perpetuating that war within, I would be the one missing out on my own "party."  I was the one who, although I might get to parade around in my practiced aloofness, would miss out on all the warmth, affection, and joy that had brought my family to my graduation in the first place. 

When the ceremony was over, and my friends and I had turned our tassels to the other side of our mortarboards before throwing them high into the air, my family crowded near the steps of the stage to congratulate me with tears (Mom's),  hugs, kisses and my uncle's bearlike grip around my shoulders.  

Instead of the cool "hello, thank you for coming" that I had practiced, they got the real me.  I cried in my mom's arms, I jumped up and down waving my diploma with my sister and cousins. I was the oldest, so the first to graduate from high school in our generation. I picked up my little sister and carried her around as I introduced my family to the teachers, administrators and friends who had made my years of high school so wonderful.

As we headed off for a surprise graduation party at my aunt and uncle's house--something I would have been mortified to discover had been planned all along if I had been aloof and distant as planned--all the warring in my heart had ceased and there was a great peace in me as I squeezed into my place in the way-backseat of our 9-passenger station wagon with my sisters.  It was a great night. I would join my friends at a graduation party later, but this was family time and I was ready to celebrate my first post-childhood lesson in being a real peace-activist in their warm embrace.

This would be one of the most important lessons I ever learned…one that I am still working for mastery in…but grateful for each "refresher course" along the way.  

As I watch a new generation of young men and women march off to a questionable war, I can vote, I can protest, and I can write my congresswoman and senator. But I am still convinced that the most effective way to make a difference is to go to battle with any wars that may be raging within my own heart…with peace…."peace that floweth as a river, from the eternal source alone…" (hymn 276 - C. Wesley)

With peace,
Kate

"Teach your parents well..."

"You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye…"
- Graham Nash

Last Saturday we graduated our son and 61 of his friends from high school.  It was a commencement full joy and tears.  There was the traditional hymn of welcome as the seniors entered the gym.  It begins:

"In heavenly love abiding
No change my heart shall fear
For safe is such confiding
For nothing changes here…"
- Waring

This is the part where I usually cry.  But this year I didn't.  I know these young men and women.  I know their hearts, their dreams, their concerns and their hopes.  They were ready.  I wasn't ready for them to switch their tassels and launch out far beyond the coffeehouse I often run into them at, but they are more than ready to change the world they live in through service to others and ethical choices.

There were inspirational readings and speeches, more songs and the distribution of diplomas…but it was this statement, from one of the members of the Class of 2007, that I scribbled (I learned a long time ago, that when kids talk…have a pen ready) onto my blue and gold embossed program:

"The only failure is not taking the risk to serve."

This axiom from Zachary Lee Barron (make note of this name, I am certain that you will see it again) symbolized, for me, the heart of this generation.  It is a message that they bring to the table for each of us…young, and those with more calendar days under our belts…to chew on, digest, and hopefully assimilate into our very being.  It is this message that they breathe into the atmosphere of their future and I intend to inhale deeply.

Zach went on to quote Nelson Mandela (a man who didn't join a peace movement..but IS one) in his riveting remarks and, for me, time stood still.  This young man is the offspring of my generation, the "make love, not war" children of the 70s…but with an added grace and a fire in his belly for reform that is tempered by wisdom.  I know Zach and his friends…they will make a difference.  They give me great hope that it is possible to turn the tide of self-indulgent consumerism and bad boy/girl-based celebrity around.  They'll make service to others, the ethical use of resources, and personal integrity a tsunami-like catalyst for change.

"…And you of tender years
Can't know the fears
That your elders grew by
And so please help Them
with your youth
They seek the truth…"

So, as I walked out of McCalmont Gymnasium on June 5, 2007, the future looked brighter.  I clutched my program with Zach's statement scribbled on it, to my heart…it was 1972 and 2007 all at once. No, they can never fully know what fears we have faced down in getting from there to here…but perhaps we have provided them with waymarks, a rallying cry, and some very strange costumes along the road towards their own peace movement.  And maybe, just maybe…if we leave our bell bottoms and love beads in the attic…they will let us join them…shoulder to shoulder as they lead the way.  If their code is "The only failure is not taking the risk to serve", I want a to march with them all along the way.

"...Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you..."

Thanks Zach…and to the Class of 2007 – wherever you are around the world - please ,

"Feed us on your dreams…"

with love, hope, and expectation,
Kate

"Sunrise, sunset..."

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze…"
     - Bock/Harnick

June is the month of weddings and graduations…in our family alone we will have graduated a daughter from college and a son from high school within the week.  We will have written songs for two weddings and sent out dozens of congratulations cards filled with encouragement and hope.

If there is a traveling song through the month of June, I think…for me…it might be Tevya and Golda's wedding song for Tzeital and Motel from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof."  It begins to gather force in my heart as hand-lettered envelopes appear like magic in our mailbox each spring.  I find myself humming it unconsciously while the names of high school auditoriums, college greens, chapels, temples, and reception halls beckon from creamy engraved cardstock.  I get teary as the names of children I have held as babies…or cheered on from the sidelines…reach out from sheets of embossed and watermarked Crane's stationary to tug at my heartstrings.  By Memorial Day I am in full voice… 

"…Is this the little girl I carried?
Is this the little boy at play?…"

This morning I started thinking about a Friday in late April, 2001.  The sixth grade had been dismissed early for a teacher in-service.  Since it was so close to our daughter's birthday, we chose to host her party that afternoon.  All of the sixth grade girls piled into our minivans and we headed off to a great pottery painting studio where we all sat around…mothers and daughters…delicately applying glaze to mugs, plates, jewelry boxes-the-size-of-a-pincushion and smiling kitties with no other purpose than to sit on a bedroom shelf, reminding you that you had a great afternoon with your friends.

I can see each of those girls today…as they were that day in April…many in braces, some just beginning to notice boys…others already well aware of who they wanted to stand next to at sixth grade graduation.  I remember that we moms were sitting on the edge of our proverbial seats that afternoon. I think that most of us knew that a chapter in our lives was coming to a close and a new one--one of middle school, boys, driving, and their eventual graduation from high school--was looming.  Before we knew it, we would be aching for the opportunity to drive our daughters to a dance class or volleyball game rather than have them ask for the keys.

"I don't remember growing older
When did they?"

I saw a photo of one of those sweet girls on Facebook last night.  For the past six years I have thought of her as the sparkly little girl who passed me the periwinkle glaze as we painted our mugs at The Painted Zebra that afternoon.  She is now a talented young woman, heading off to university and ready to take on New York, Hollywood, Wall Street…and she can do it.   Another girl, even in the throes of middle school angst, never failed to greet me with genuine joy and a warm embrace ...I will miss her smile, but can't wait to hear how her kindness "reaches across continents and oceans to the globes remotest bounds" blessing others with that amazing heart of hers...so full of benovolence.

"...When did she get to be a beauty?
When did he get to be so tall?"

Our son goes out to breakfast with friends these days.  He will soon move to the West Coast where he will begin his life of college, work, apartments, new friends, and new landscapes.  He is tall and capable…we are proud of his willingness to engage with the world around him in an environmentally ethical way.  He is strong and will learn his lessons with grace…he has already proven he has the maturity and compassion necessary to become a global citizen.

"Wasn't it yesterday
When they were small?"

In the display windows outside of his high school's bookstore there are posters with photographs of each senior as a baby or toddler.  Parents, teachers, and friends puzzle over which baby photo goes with which of the senior portraits also displayed.  For some it is easy…this is a very small school community.  Many of the families have been in classrooms for Back-to-School nights together since an infant co-op program.  These parents aren't guessing which baby photo goes with which senior portrait…they are remembering what these young men and women looked like as babies and toddlers…they were there!  For this group it really did take a village…and a very closeknit one at that…to raise each child.

"...Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze..."

These seniors have blossomed into young men and women of substance and impact.  Their dreams and hopes will seed the world with promise.  I feel honored to have been a witness to their self-discovery.

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears..."

The seasons have flown all too swiftly.  Year after year, fall and spring became one…the love these children had for one another has over and again dissolved the bitter chill of coldness, apathy, gossip, darkness or discouragement.  Friendships forged since preschool have expanded to include new students and have morphed into new "families" of interest. The girl whose passion for horses in lower school may have left her feeling isolated from the "soccer crowd" found new friends while running track in high school.  The object of one boy's affection in middle school became his lab partner in physics five years later…a much better fit.  As their parents we watched, listened and cried with them.  And if hindsight was ever 20/20, it's in looking back at your child's high school journey.

"...What words of wisdom can I give them?
How can I help to ease their way?"

This one is easy for me, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God…within your own heart…and all things shall be added unto you."  Always put God, Love before fear in making good decisions.  Put God, Mind--the expression of intelligence, intuition, discernment--before giving in to discouragement or apathy…or giving up on yourself.  Put God, Soul--your love for beauty, harmony, form--before consenting to the ordinary, the discordant, or the chaotic.  Claim peace as the presence of God in your life rather than the temporary absence of war.  Demand that purity is a self-assertive divine power in your life rather than seeing it as a fragile human condition subject to good or bad personal choices.  Trust that desire really is prayer and that prayer is God's gracious means (not our own) for communicating His will in our lives…to our hearts.  As I said, "See ye first the kingdom of God…within you." 

  "Now they must learn from one another
Day by day..."

And they will…they will learn the way we have learned…from one another.  For me, the most important lessons in life are all learned in relationships.  Mary Baker Eddy says, "What we most need is the fervent desire for growth in grace – expressed in patience, meekness, love and good deeds."  I can't imagine learning any one of those things in isolation.  I need "you" to discover the best in myself…the me that is patient, loving, meek, and lives to do "good deeds."  I truly believe this is why the Lord's Prayer is all in the language of relationships…"Our Father, Give us this day, Lead us not into temptation. "

"Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze..."

Saturday will be laden with happiness and tears.  We will be happy for their successes, accomplishments and because they have arrived at this milestone so full of joy, grace, and hope.  We will shed tears…we will miss them.  They have blossomed even as we gazed.  There is a wide world waiting for the seeds of hope, compassion, courage and grace they are ready to broadcast far and wide.

And we will be watching…on tiptoes…for those seeds to bear fruit and feed a waiting world. 

Congratulations Class of 2007…watching you grow has been a privilege and a joy...you are loved...
Kate