"the reason..."

"He put that hunger in your heart,
He put that fire in your soul;

His love is the reason...”

Just when I think I will have to write these posts - without new songs as keynotes - Love pours out a fathomless blessing. Today's song is from the group Unspoken. I love their video for  "Reason."  And if I see a big handful of balloons in the sky -- I hope you will be holding them!

I was never a particularly athletic or adventurous girl, teen, woman.  I did not dream of climbing mountains, winning competitions, or swimming the English channel. 

I wanted to be a good girl, read through the fiction section of every school and community library, write a book, learn a musical instrument, marry a nice man, and have children.  

I was a good girl.  In hindsight, I am most grateful to have known myself through the lens of that desire.  

But why didn't I want more. I don't know.  It was just what I desired.  For many years I thought I was somehow stunted in an area of life that my friends and siblings shared -- a desire for adventure, travel, sports.  

I worried that I was a bookworm, a slacker, someone most at home and happy in small, dark, quiet spaces.  I gravitated towards libraries, out-of-the-way coffeehouses, and closets -- yes, literally closets.

I tried.  I tried to want to play outside, join a team, go on an adventure -- but I was always eager for the game, competition, expedition, adventure, vacation to be over. 

For a while I let myself be called an "introvert" -- but somehow that felt off - untrue.  I wasn't a kind of a person.  I was just me.  

That was when I started to listen for spiritual inspiration, and it came in two sentences from the very first page of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy:

"Desire is prayer
and no loss can occur
from trusting God with our desires
that they may be molded and exalted
before they take for in words and in deeds.

Prayer is God's gracious means
for accomplishing whatever has been
successfully done for the Christianization
and health of mankind. "

It suddenly occurred to me that if desire was prayer, and prayer was God's gracious means, that my desires were not mine at all -- they were God's means for moving my heart in the direction of His purpose for me. He way of blessing the world - and He would fulfill it.

As the song says:

"What He started in you,
He's gonna finish..."

He doesn't put that desire there and expect us to make it happen. Or as my friend Mike shared from Francis Thurber Seal's biography, Christian Science in Germany:

"God sent me on a mission,
He's certainly not going to
drown me on the way."

Eddy assures us in the last portion of her "Daily Prayer," from The Manual of the Mother Church:

"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."

It was God's Word that was enriching my affections - my desires - for quietude, stillness, goodness, beauty, family, harmony. It was not my personal desire. I have no personal desire. When I fully yielded to this truth of truths, I started to love my life. I was not an introvert, I was just me. Uniquely suited to God's placement of my gifts in the completeness of creation. I was not a kind of person. I was all that God was -- He was drawing forth from His Allness what he needed me to desire every moment.

I was not some lesser version of man/woman -- one that didn't want to go hiking or swimming or climb the Himalayas, or pay soccer, or run a marathon, I was completely capable of doing all those things as the full expression of divine Being -- but God was not enriching my affections for those things. He was causing me to desire a life of contemplation, stillness and service to others. Elsewhere in Science and Health, Eddy writes:

"Unfathomable Mind is expressed.
The depth, breadth, height, might,
majesty, and glory of infinite Love
fill all space.

That is enough!"

I am enough. You are enough. We each include the depth, breadth, height, might, majesty and glory of infinite Love -- and from this enough-ness, God calls us into His desire for us -- in order to fulfill His purpose in the larger scheme of things.

I may not be interested in sky diving, but I love reaching the heights of Mind to soar o'er time and space. I may not want to raft a river running at 4,000 cubic feet per second, but I wake up each morning excited to explore every channel of thought I find. I may not have any desire to see the seven wonders of the world or eat in a cafe in Portugal, but the seven synonyms of God still stun me with their beauty and I am deeply satisfied with the bread of Life.

I am not an introvert, I am not a less social, less adventurous, less competitive version of man.  I am not less of anything. I am the full expression of all He has enriched my affections for. I am His. He is at the root of all my desires. And it is enough.

offered with Love,

Cate

"You will miss these days…"

"suddenly,
there's a shadow
hanging over me…"
- Lennon/McCartney

"There will come a time, when you will miss these days," he said with a sigh. I was sure he was either as mad-as-a-hatter, or worse yet, just-plain-mean, for saying this to me.

When I think of that conversation, and my mentor's sigh, it's not so much the lyrics from Lennon and McCartney's, "Yesterday," that come to mind, but its tone that rings true.

I'd called my friend because my life was falling apart. Everything -- my marriage, my career, my body, my dreams -- were all coming loose at the seams and I couldn't hold it together. I was afraid and empty.  And the only thing that took away that feeling of total panic and hopelessness, was a book: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

I'm not saying that everything between the book's covers made sense to me, just that reading it seemed to lift the fog that engulfed every other moment.  I was tired, I'd been very ill, and I was feeling more alone than I'd ever felt in my life. I didn't have a job, and I didn't know how to navigate this landscape -- at all.

I needed to be useful, so I begged a friend to let me volunteer in her department.  Those hours spent in service to others, kept me from going mad. I sat at a desk outside her office, answered her phone, did odd office jobs, and read from the copy of Science and Health that I kept in the top right drawer  - laying open on top of pens, pencils, paper clips, and rubber bands.

It helped, but I wanted more than relief. I was hungry for healing. I was aching to find peace from the pain. I was starving for the Truth that would make it all go away -- the sorrow, the confusion, the emptiness.

All the truths I'd thought I understood -- about being a good human -- had just dissolved before my eyes. I couldn't believe that I had studied scripture, prayed daily, served my church faithfully, and was still facing such a "dark night of the soul."

But I was. And my friend was right. There would come a time when I would miss those days. There would come a day -- in the not too distant further -- when I would miss the raw ache of wanting a deeper spiritual understanding, in the midst of human delusion. And there have been days, since then, when I have yearned for the kind of "on my knees, begging for spiritual nourishment"  moments which I so sorely felt in those weeks and months of spiritual hunger. But there have also been days when I wondered why I missed them so. 

They still come, but today, I know enough to not be so afraid when I am facing the darkness. I have discovered that these are "the best of times," in what my human sense of things calls, "the worst of times." 

And I understand my mentor's sigh now. I think back to how every word of Scripture felt like a drop of water on my cracked and thirsty heart. I tear-up with gratitude for having walked that path, and for having found the waymarks left along the way by Biblical (and contemporary) spiritual travelers who must have known that others -- like me -- would follow, and need their encouragement to keep going.

And I did find a new view of things. It's funny, recently someone told me that I never remember to say, "and the healing came…" I am often remiss in acknowledging that there was a shift in my experience because I get so caught up in the stark beauty of the spiritual journey.  But there was a shift -- many shifts.

And I am so very grateful. There were so many fingerposts along the way. Small messages of encouragement that kept my head above water, and saved me from drowning in despair.

For example, I remember the first time I read this Beatitude, from Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," in the book of Matthew with new eyes:

"Blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst
after righteousness:
for they
shall be filled." 

To realize that the primary blessing was in the hungering and thirsting. And that the "being filled," was almost an after thought -- "oh yes, and they shall be filled." This gave me such a sense of peace.

And then there was that moment when I read this note of encouragement from Eddy's Science and Health:

"Our disappointments
and ceaseless woes
turn us like tired children
to the arms of divine Love,
then we begin
to learn life in divine Science.” 

and realized that facing disappointments and ceaseless woes wasn't the end of my spiritual journey -- the equivalent of a rejection button on my failed prayers. But that these moments were actually the beginning of learning something new about life in divine Science -- now that was a big sigh moment.

Today, having faced many moments of disappointment and woe -- my own, or another's -- I've come to accept and embrace them with less fear, and more grace. They can still shake me, but they can't touch what I know to be true: that these are not days of failure, but days filled with spiritual hunger.  And these are the days that I will miss. Because these are often the days when the light of Truth is most clearly seen in the context of human disappointment and woe.

I've also discovered that I have it in me to really love this hunger. I know that I want these experiences that lead me deeper and deeper into the fields of the Lord -- gleaning every fallen seed.  So now, it is me that is sighing - with a sweet, sober sense of expectation and love.  I sigh, because I know, that when my world seems to be falling apart, I am just beginning a new journey.

offered with Love,

Kate

"...is satisfied..."

"...When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no
Satisfaction
No satisfaction..."
Jagger/Richards

I never really liked the Rolling Stones' version of this song. However, when Jeff came home from a FolkAlliance conference two years ago with John Batdorf and James Lee Stanley's new CD, All Wood and Stones, a compilation of their acoustic/folk versions of Rolling Stones standards, including a studio performance of "Satisfaction," I had a whole new perspective on this song.  

It is a mournful dirge.  A sorrowful anthem for a consumer society, and the insidious marketing voice that eggs us on in our search for that "just right, special something" that will satisfy our hunger for what it is actually impossible to fill from the coffers of consumerism, materialism, romanticism, or narcissisism.  Our hunger for completeness.  Our hunger to really, really know the answer to questions like: "Who am I?  What is my purpose? What defines me?  How should I live?  Where is my peace? Will I ever know love...to love and be loved?"

What does this hunger really boil down to?  I think, for me, it's all about the desire to know that our lives have meaning, that we can understand what that meaning is, and know that we are living on purpose.  These are such great questions.  But, it is the way we try to answer those questions that gives me pause.

Somewhere along the way, I think we decided that there could be human ways of determining whether we, or others, are really meeting spiritual goals, and/or achieving spiritual success.  We concluded that there is a material baseline for judging spiritual progress.

Recently our family made a new car purchase.  We were not looking for a luxury "brand," nor were we hoping to encourage others to think of us in a certain way, based on the make and model we were driving.  We were just looking for qualities of reliability, size, and functionality. However, the car that, quite literally, found us just happened to come in a more luxurious package than I had ever expected.  Although we gratefully accepted the divine gift this car (at its very reasonable, well below blue-book purchase price) represented, I knew from the get-go that it would provide important lessons in humility and grace. I was a tried and true Jeep driver.

I prided myself on my love for it's simple blue-collar lines, and truck-like "ride." It was my little slice of Colorado in Town & Country. This new car was not going to be as easy to pass off as a "Rancher goes to St. Louis" pickup truck-in-disguise, as my Grand Cherokee had been. I almost felt like I shouldn't be wearing my cowboy boots while driving it...I said almost, didn't I? As you can see I was already as intimidated by driving it, as I was appreciative of its qualities of solidity, soundness, and reliability. The lessons in grace would come sooner than I thought. Not long after picking it up from the lot, I drove to a shopping area we frequent, and someone called out "Hey, new car? [Your business] must be doing great!  Good for you!" 

I was kind of shocked.  And to be honest, I didn't know what to say or how to respond. I'd never thought my car would suddenly give someone the impression that the growth or success of my spiritual healing practice could, in any way, be measured by the car I drove. I didn't want to be seen in those terms. I liked being the fish-out-of-water cowgirl, in the land of Lily Pulitzer and tennis togs. Before that moment, I didn't think I cared one bit what my car said about me, its simple, modest, I-don't care-what-year it-is-as long-as-I-can-drive-thorugh-a-boulder-filled-pasture statement suited me just fine. This new car was sending a message I wasn't so sure fit my sense of...well, me. I wasn't a nice car kind of girl, I was an old, but clean, classic no frills Jeep driver. I was a bit shaken by the fact that I was even thinking about this stuff.

But then I remembered an experience I'd had a year earlier.  Because of the Missouri Dept. of Transportation's two-year closing of the major (and only) highway between our home in the city, and the school our girls attend in "the county", we needed to move so as to reduce the drive time by 30 minutes each way, our fuel consumption, and our carbon footprint.  The only house I was even willing to look at, and which, to my surprise...and chagrin, seemed like the perfect, centralized location for us, was in a pretty upscale zip code nearer their school.  Although our home is one of a small number of sweet little cottages situated right in the middle of baronial manses, you wouldn't know it by looking at our address.  Soon after our move, an acquaintance called because she'd noticed my new address in a community directory.  She called to say how happy she was to know that we were able to move to what she felt would be a better neighborhood for the girls to grow up in...closer to activities they were already involved in, friends, and a village where they could safely walk to the shops and stores.  She continued, "What a wonderful demonstration of home you have made."  What???

Our former home in the city was one of the most wonderful places I had ever lived.  Finding it had been such a sweet, sacred instance of divine guidance and care for the girls and I.   Moving away was heartbreaking.  I'd not wanted to leave our lovely flat in the trees (we had the top two floors of an old three story home near an urban park and a major university) I didn't want to go back to taking care of a lawn, raking the millions of leaves I now face each fall outside our windows, or revisit the demands of gutters that needed cleaning or an icy driveway.  I thought I'd "demonstrated" freedom.  But my friend thought I'd finally been liberated from living "without"...without a single-family dwelling "all my own" and no downstairs neighbors to share a basement with.  I'd felt free of a mortgage, while she thought I'd been doomed to landlords.  I'd felt blessed by an incredible urban park and museums.  She thought we'd been deprived of a yard for the children to play in. 

I realized that our ways of looking at "success" in demonstrating good, were very different.   As I continued over the next few months to "think on these things," I recognized that my criteria for what meeting spiritual goals like humility, modesty, generosity, and charity, should look like, were also rather mortal, measurable, and out-comes based. Did I really think that one kind of social program or political agenda better defined charitableness and peace, than another? Was the economic plan on one side of the aisle more spiritually evolved than the one on the opposite side? If you know me, you know that these are REALLY hard questions for me. It was clear that I needed to realign myself more directly with a deeper spiritually-based sense of living on purpose.  But first I needed to understand where my friend was coming from. 

Later that summer, I asked her out for tea and we talked about some of those perceptions, because by then what had become really important was for me to understand her perspective...and, hopely, I could help her understand mine.  Together over the course of a series of lovely (and love-filled) conversations, we arrived at what was, I think, a revelation to both of us.  Somehow, to her, my "demonstration" of more simplicity and less personal ownership by living in our flat in the city, had seemed to her like something that could be prayed about in hopes of a higher "more spiritually evolved sense of home."   Whereas, for me, it was my prayer carved out in brick and stone. It represented a freedom to live more communally, to expose my children to different cultures,  museums, be a part of a university neighborhood filled with thinkers from many disciplines and perspectives. 

Neither of us was "wrong" in following our own hearts' desires  -  hers towards a warm, expansive home in the suburbs nearer her husband's work and her children's activities so that they could spend more time together in the evenings and less time in the car on weekends, and mine in the direction of an urban flat in a socio-economically diverse University neighborhood filled with culturally -rich opportunities, but requiring lots of driving every day. The real hiccup, for both of us, came when we realized that we had started to use matter-based outcomes for measuring anyone's inner journey. 

As a western culture, when had we begun to equate a luxury vehicle with the demonstration of professional growth as a spiritual thinker, to measure the spiritual laws of abundance, wellness, or the demonstration of an understanding of divine goodness with zip codes, bank account balances, domicile square footage, acreage, the kind of kitchen countertops you have, or the labels in the clothes you wear.  To determine the expression of beauty by the size of someone's clothes, the color of your hair, and the smoothness of your skin, or health by the speed at which you can run the mile, the range of motion in a joint, or how deeply one draws a breath of new mown air seems to put spirit in the grasp of matter.  Intelligence cannot be defined, nor is it "demonstrated" by a higher SAT score, a terminal degree, or a teacher's praise.  Charity is not measured by more or less, and humility can never be scrutinized or charted on a behavioral bar graph. The integrity of an honest man is not in a measured accounting of the deeds we witness, nor can the understanding of eternal life be ratified by more years.

True satisfaction, intelligence, peace, wealth, beauty, abundance, wellness, immortality can only be found in the heart...the province of Spirit, where divine Love reigns and governs man.  It comes from a deep and abiding conviction that God...Love, Truth, Principle, Soul, Mind, Spirit, Life...actually is what He promises to be, ever-present, all-powerful, immutable, unconditional (even beyond the conditions of our thought, our prayers, our good deeds, or our mistakes), eternal good.  

So if this is the case, what is ours to do?  What do we "demonstrate?"

Mary Baker Eddy so lovingly tells us in no uncertain terms,

"You have simply to preserve a scientific,
positive sense of unity with your divine source,
and daily demonstrate this."

Anything else is, as Stephen Gottschalk counsels in his article, written for the American Encyclopedia of Religions, "Christian Science vs Harmonialism" the desire to use Spirit to get, or "demonstrate" better matter, and is the opposite of Christian Science.  And of this Science,  its Discoverer and  Founder, Eddy states:

"The emphatic purpose of Christian Science is the healing of sin..."

In thinking about this purpose of Christian Science, the definition of "sin" that most resonates with what I understand to be Eddy's sense of the word, is found in its shared etymologic root with the word "sunder" or "to separate".  To me, "sin" means, simply, the belief that anyone or anything is, or ever could be, separated from God, the only Cause and Creator.

Any way of thinking that starts from the false assertion that there is a Cause or Creator other than God, a lapse of His government, or a falling away from His presence...is the only sin there is...the belief of sin, or separation.  This belief, or fear that we are separated from God is at the root of all the ways we might behave "sinfully"...behaviors that are only a fear-based reactions to that one and only false starting point  -  separation, behaviors which we ignorantly call sin.  Greed, theft, infidelity, envy, etc. are reactions to sin, not sin itself.  As long as we are trying to heal sin by going after behaviors, rather than the addressing the root belief, we are missing the mark.   Stealing is just a reaction to the base belief that God is not impartially and universally present as abundant good.  Anger, hatred, violence are just reactions to the false premise that God is in fact, not an unconditionally loving Father-Mother, but a partial God who meets out love, justice, and mercy to some, and not to others.

True satisfaction comes from, an abiding conviction that we are spiritual...that we are one with God....one with goodness, intelligence, love.  This spiritual unity is invulnerable and without abrogation.  There is nothing we can do to weaken or breach this inviolate, indissoluable spiritual link.  Because it is whole and holy...never humanly circumscribed or portioned...it can't be measured by human out-comes, nor can it be achieved or accumulated...it can only be accepted.

Mary Baker Eddy reclaims the keynote to real satisfaction, when wrote what I believe is redeeming anthem for the deeply contented, "satisfied" spiritual thinker. One for whom there is always pure peace..."whate'er be tide".  She begins this poem, "It matters not what be thy lot, so love doth guide..."  I wonder if it even matters one little bit to the spiritual thinker whether he has a lot to build his house on, or alot to put in it.  Perhaps he (or she) is just satisfied if he can love alot.  And just think about it,  what could possibly ever stop any of us from the joy of abundant loving.  As Paul says in Romans:

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Or, as Eddy writes in this remarkable poem, "Satisfied":

"It matters not what be thy lot,
So Love doth guide;
For storm or shine, pure peace is thine,
Whate'er betide.

And of these stones, or tyrants' thrones,
God able is
To raise up seed - in thought and deed -
To faithful His.

Aye, darkling sense, arise, go hence!
Our God is good.
False fears are foes - truth tatters those,
When understood.

Love looseth thee, and lifteth me,
Ayont hate's thrall:
There Life is light, and wisdom might,
And God is All.

The centuries break, the earth-bound wake,
God's glorified!
Who doth His will - His likeness still -
Is satisfied."

Living in the space of this deeply satisfying spiritual certainty, our peace is unshakably fixed, immovable and beyond anything that can be bought, borrowed, wished for, marketed or measured.  In this space we really "can't get no satisfaction" because it is already, and always, ours.

with "pure peace"...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Caitlin Moss 2009]

"Come with what's in your heart..."

"Come with What's in your heart
We all have our cross to bear
The sweet will grow sweeter
And you will be freer still
Come with what's in your heart...now"
Mary Huckins

It was one of those days when I felt as if I couldn't get traction on my best laid plans. I'd spent the morning thinking about the i the subject of "charity." I needed to compile inspirational citations for a church meeting and I longed for them to have the ring of Truth. What I really wanted, was to be moved by a perspective beyond the view from my office window.  I wanted to feel the deep drawn breath of humanity. To be filled with its hunger, and itsdefinition of true charity. 

All morning I'd imagined carving out an hour or two to return to our old neighborhood in the city. There, the hungry and homeless share the sidewalk with college professors and graduate students.  I knew that in this environment of social diversity, any citations I'd chosen would either ring true with meaning, or fall flat on the face of pretense...rather than practice.

But as hard as I tried all day to make it happen, my visit to the old neighborhood just wasn't in the cards, God had other plans for me. 

A last minute appointment, scheduled just before I had to pick the girls up from school, took me in exactly the opposite direction of what I'd intended.  I found myself in a suburban Starbucks where luxury cars -- rather than shopping carts filled with redeemable soda cans taken from trash bins and dumpsters -- defined the socio-economic baseline.

At first I was disappointed and cynical.  I'd longed to feel the want and woe of a neighborhood in which "need" trumped "want".  I couldn't imagine that I would run into anyone in that Starbucks who needed anything, much less charity.

But, I'd long-learned to trust that God was the Captain of my comings and goings. And that if He had led me there, and it was He who had put this desire in my heart to practically demonstrate, and apply these Bible-based principles...relating to the subject of charity... wherever I was, then this was exactly where I needed to be.

As I sat there praying, I couldn't help but notice, through the front windows, a large SUV pull into the parking lot.  A teenage girl and her mom got out and approached.  The mom was broken. There was no other word for the look in her eyes.  It was clear that there had been harsh words, and the mom's face was stoic, but pained with heartache.  The daughter's face was critical and cold.  The look she shot in her mom's direction was one of disrespect and disdain.  But her mom moved through the space between the car and the front door of the coffeehouse with dignity..reaching deep within herself for love, patience, and poise. 

I admired her grace.  It was palpable in the spite of the daughter's angry sniping at her heels.  All conversation stopped once they entered the store until mom turned to her daughter and quietly asked her what she would like from the barista.  A curt response followed and without reaction, the mom ordered graciously, thanking the boy behind the counter when he repeated the order perfectly and completed the transaction.

As I sat there, I realized that this woman was hungry.  She was as needy as anyone I might have met on the streets of my old neighborhood.  She needed kindness and understanding, and as a mom I I understood.  I was filled with admiration for her poise.  I was overflowing with an awareness of how truly beautiful her patience was in the face of disdain.   Although I was a bit embarrassed...not sure if she would think I was a bit odd...I rose from my chair and followed mother and daughter out of the Starbucks.  I called to her and she stopped and turned towards me.  I said to her, "You are beautiful.  I couldn't help but notice the dignity and grace with which you hold yourself.  I hope your daughter sees how beautiful you are."  She just looked at me and asked, "you really think I am beautiful?" I said, "Yes" And then I looked at her daughter who had a look of true surprise on her face as she said, "Do you really think my mother is beautiful?"  Again I said, "Yes, I think she is very beautiful...so graceful and beautiful."  With that, her daughter's face softened into a child's and she walked over to her mother and put her arm around her shoulder and said, "I think you are beautiful too mommy."  The mom looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "You just made my day.  I needed this.  Thank you." 

I learned so much in that encounter.  More than money, food, or a place to live, we all need to be seen for who and what we are.  We need to be seen for what we love and how we love and live. 

I learned that my view of that woman and her daughter was the most valuable thing I could give them.  More desirable and hungered for than gold, or cars, or a mansion on a hill.  And I had lots and lots of that kind of "seeing" to spare.  I had so much I could give it away all day and never run out.

I also learned that I should never prejudge anyone's experience.  Our gifts are needed everywhere we go.  We can never go to, or find, a place that is free of the need for spiritual gifts...compassion, understanding, generosity, kindness, long-suffering, genuine interest in another's life. And sometimes those gifts lead us to the sharing of a sandwich, a bus ticket, and most importantly, a cup of cold water in Christ's name. . 

Mary Baker Eddy says:

"The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good. Love giveth to the least spiritual idea might, immortality, and goodness, which shine through all as the blossom shines through the bud."

This passage took on new meaning for me the other day.  I realized that Love gives me...even when I think I have the least to give...might (the possibility to make a difference in another's life), immortality (the tirelessness of invigorating compassion), and goodness (helping someone see the good that is already present in their lives when it seems obscure) to bless the life of someone else.  In that moment of giving I realize how rich I am...I have something to give. 

Or as Peter said to the infirm man:

"Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee..."

This spiritual giving was foundational to my mother.  When faced with opportunties for charitable giving, or philanthropy...even as a widow with eight young children and nothing in her bank account...she would affirm, for her own edification, as well as for anyone who thought they might try to convince her to hold back her widow's mite, "my children have the right to be generous."  I now realize what she has always understood, that giving is as fundamental as breathing to the human heart.

All you need to do is "come with what's in your heart".  Enjoy this beautiful song performed by one of my favorite Colorado-based folk/bluegrass/country bands, Dakota Blonde, and written by their lead singer and our friend, Mary Huckins. 

What is in your heart...right now...

with love,
Kate

[photo of Carol & Lizzie by Scott MacKenzie 2008]

"What if God was one of us..."

"If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to his face?
If you were faced with him in all his glory
what would you ask if you had just one question?

Yeah, Yeah, God is great
Yeah, Yeah, God is good
Yeah Yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us?_
Just a slave like one of us?_
Just a stranger on the bus_
Tryin' to make His way home..."
Joan Osbourne
"What if God was One of Us"
(click on the above song title as a link to the video)

I've been living in this "space of the question" for a long time now...the question. 

Some think that this questioning is prayer...I am one of them.  For me, it is the clearest, and most concrete, sign of God's presence in my life.  I do believe that it...this questioning... is the blessedness Jesus refers to in the beatitude "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness..."  I am in no hurry to rush into the space of "...and they shall be filled."

Today I am sitting here loving the questions within my heart...questions that prove I am seeking God's face in all things.  I am at peace with this me.   My questions all lead to one primary question...a question so primal there are no words adequate in describing it.

This video of Susan Boyle's performance contributed to the most lovely "aha" moment of further questioning. Note the change of perception in the judges and audience...heart-breakingly moving. I wonder what questions they are asking themselves, and their God, about their own hopes and dreams in those moments.

Mary Baker Eddy says that, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love."  This understanding of Him is a constant question...rather than an answer...for me.   

Einstein said, "I want to know God's thoughts...the rest are details."   And this wanting to know was an endless journey for him....and it is for me.

Last night as I sat in the stillness of a darkened room, it was the questions that brought me into serenity and provided a resting place for my hopes. 

Questions like, "How can I best serve you?" and "Is it possible for anyone to reach the summit of his/her potential?" made me realize that I care...about service and the hopes and dreams of others.  The first question is a constant for me...it is answered in a hundred different ways each day...the second was answered, in part, by the above video. 

Enjoy the questions in your own heart today, stay open to the endless ways that they are answered moment-by-moment, and celebrate the new questions they bless you with.

always with Love....and a questioning heart,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS


photo credit:  Sarah "Sunny" Winterroth [2009]

"I went to the mountain..."

"...I went to the doctor,
I went to the mountains
I looked to the children,
I drank from the fountains
We go to the Bible,
We go through the workout
We read up on revival
We stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek a source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine..."
- Emily Saliers

One summer morning, just after dawn, I heard a knock on my cabin door.  Grabbing my sweatshirt and pulling it on over my nightgown I opened the door to find a tear-streaked teen standing on my porch in sleep-mussed braids, wrinkled jeans and obvious distress.  Her pain was palpable.

She had been up all night searching for some reason to believe... deeply within her own heart...that God was real and that she could know Him for herself.  She was tired of being told about a God who is Love.  She was ready to know God for herself.  She was at the point where she needed to experience His presence…to really feel Her power and influence in her life. She was confused by her own questioning. She had been coming to camp since she was eight. I had watched her grow from a tiny little girl on a great big horse to a fearless rodeo competitor. She was usually the first camper offering to help others on a hike, and to see her so distraught was heartbreaking. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her quaking shoulders and make it all better.

Listening as her questions tumbled out, it didn't take long for me to realize that I would never have the kind of answers she was really looking for.  God would have to "be with my mouth"…even if that meant I should just keep it closed and continue to listen.   She was full of questions for which I knew I would only have less than soul-satisfying answers for…questions about the nature of love, the reliability of truth, the seeming absence of peace and kindness in the world.  I could share with her the milestones of my own search for God and the meaning of the universe, but I couldn't be the end of her search…the seat of her answers.

Then it dawned on me.  I didn't need to answer her questions, I only needed to celebrate the deep hungering for something spiritually substantive which her tears represented. 

Her quest for something reliable, her search for a firm foundation on which to lay the beams of her faith, was a clear and powerful indication of the presence of God in her life…right in the midst of her questioning.   It was pointing to a deep longing for something more, a profound stirring within that rejected complacency, and an inner struggle for Truth. 

In what are referred to as "The Beatitudes", Jesus says, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness…"  The blessing is in the hungering and thirsting…the "for they shall be filled" is such a given that it almost appears as an afterthought.  My dictionary defines "blessed" as "the presence of divine favor or endowment".  I could rest my own prayers for her heart's peace in knowing that her hunger was the very indication of actually experiencing the "divine" she was searching for. 

Her search was her own.  Yes, it was spurred on by a childhood of being spiritually nurtured through years of singing much-loved hymns, her parents prayers, and dynamic Sunday school classes within a cherished faith. But whether this same faith would continue to define the path she would follow in seeking satisfying answers wasn't clear to her that early summer morning.  What was clear...at least to me...was that God would always be with her.  That her hunger and thirst to know Him was a very real and tangible indication that He was already there, that He already had His hand in hers and would always lead her to look in the direction that would show her His face in the clouds and His love in her own unselfish and generous heart.

Today, years later, this experience continues to bring me great comfort, especially when my own hunger for more satisfying spiritual answers feels like a yawning emptiness. I am grateful to realize, again and again, that I too am just "still searching".  Yes, this endless questioning continues to keep me awake at night and on my knees longing for answers.  But now I know, that if there is a hunger in my heart, He is already there with me.  For many years I thought that God was in the answers, that to know Him was to know something…I am discovering that to know God is to always be hungry, to always be asking, to always be searching for His face in the clouds and His hand on my heart.
Kate