"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

"a vision softly creeping…"

"Hello darkness,
my old friend.
I've come to talk with you, again..."

Something about Nouela's cover of Simon & Garfunkels' "Sound of Silence perfectly captures the tone of my most recent night-ponderings.

Last week, an encounter with persistent, acute pain afforded a wonderful opportunity to explore my beliefs - and what I thought I understood - about the nature of pain. I didn't back away from the lesson, nor did I try to just "get it over with." I walked right into the invitation to probe perplexing questions more thoughtfully.

Doubt tried to hijack many moments of genuine peace. "What if the pain really did have meaning, and I was foolishly ignoring it? What if it never ended, and I could never, ever think a truly peaceful thought again?" And most aggressively, "What if the pain was really part of me, and had taken up residence in my body -- like a noisy tenant?"

But as I was pondering these questions, another thought quietly invited me to consider its veracity. If pain actually has meaning -- if it means that there is something amiss at the site of the discomfort -- how do you reconcile that, with the concept of phantom pain?

Phantom pain, is pain that one feels at the site of a limb that has been amputated. Discomfort that seems to come from a body part that no longer exists. Many amputees report feeling sensations of movement, tingling, or pain in an arm or leg that was surgically removed.

I had never given this much thought until this recent injury left me in acute pain. Everything tried to say, "This pain means something about your body. Pain is a message, and you need to heed its meaning. You should take it easy, or have it examined to find the root cause -- so that it can be addressed and treated."

But then I thought about phantom pain. When an amputee feels discomfort in a limb that no longer exists, he/she quickly dismisses it as "phantom pain," with no meaning. They know that there is no injured leg to be diagnosed or treated -- and so there is no need for alarm. They don't need to go get the arm checked out.  There is no arm to examine.  They aren't fearful or impressed.

Why then, do we think that pain has a direct correlation to the site where the sensation is seemingly occurring? Why do we think that pain is a reliable or infallible indicator of our state of health? Why -- when we feel pain in our hand -- do we go and have the hand checked for injury or disease? Why do we react to discomfort in any location by having an examination, to see if there is something wrong? All of these questions flooded my consciousness, sweeping away any concern that I'd been harboring.  Concern that pain had information for me.  Washed away in a coursing river of timeless Truth.

Or, more subtly, we think pain is telling us something about its location -- something that can help us heal it "spiritually." For example, we are feeling discomfort in our elbow. Well, an elbow is a joint. A joint is the coming together of two parts of our arm. Hmmm -- this must have something to do with a relationship. Well yes, I have been having a challenge with that colleague. So, I think I will look up every spiritual article I can find about healing a joint. Gotcha!

We have to be alert to what we think is informing us. We aren't led to healing truths -- or testimonies about healing -- by a shared localization of pain or the details of a problem. We are attracted to spiritual statements of Truth, because of what they are reminding us about God - His love for us, and our trust in Him. Not because of a shared experience with localized pain, fear, disease, or injury.

I am starting to see that all pain, is phantom pain. Just as the pain in an amputated limb is not in the limb, any discomfort we feel is not localized. It has no localized cause, and therefore, a cause - or solution - can't be found by examining the site to find the point of origin, in order to fix it or treat it.

And it's the same with phantom anger, or phantom frustration. Phantom resentment, or phantom fear. We think we feel fear, frustration, anger, or doubt, and then we try to trace it back to a locus of origin. If I feel angry after a visit to the grocery store - where I had a long wait in line -- it must be that I am an impatient person. Then I go after my impatience as if it were the real cause, of my real anger. But it's not. That anger, is just a sensation. One that is trying to get me to look for a cause -- other than divine Love -- as the source, and condition, of my angry identity.

I don't have to fix the anger to become a patient person. I am a patient person because that is the way that God made me. I am not self-created, self-determinted, self-diagnosed, or self-fixed.

Here's what often seems to happen with physical discomfort. Perhaps I feel pain when touching a spot on my arm.  I wonder what caused it.  It's a subtle invitation to think back, and trace it to a recent time when I may have stumbled in the middle of the night, and put my arm in direct contact with the doorjamb. Well then, I conclude, I must be clumsy, vulnerable, and easily bruised -- arm, feelings, human history. Or perhaps I'm stumbling in the middle of the night because I'm getting older and losing a nimble sense of balance and recovery. Or, what if I am getting up in the middle of the night too often? What if…. Soon I am spiraling down a vast vortex of self cross-questioning.

But, all pain, is phantom pain.

Just as darkness cannot fully eradicate the presence of light, but only suggest its absence. So pain tries to convince us that there is an absence of peace -- of God, good. And that, perhaps, this absence is localized, and connected to a particular bodily location. And because we now believe that there could ever be a spot where good is absent, we are left feeling vulnerable, exposed to the possibility that we could even further capitulate into disease, doubt and despair.

But these suggestions of pain are phantoms. They have no location. They are causeless. Peace, however, (the opposite of pain) is a self-assertive power that cannot be limited, contained, or localized. It is All-in-all and therefore indicates the presence of all that is impartial and universal -- Spirit, God, good, harmony, peace, joy.

In her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states:

We are sometimes led to believe
that darkness is as real as light;
but Science affirms darkness
to be only a mortal sense
of the absence of light,
at the coming of which
darkness loses the appearance
of reality.

So sin and sorrow, disease and death,
are the suppositional absence of Life, God,
and flee as phantoms of error
before truth and love."
 

Something about this insight - into the phantom nature of pain, anger, frustration, and doubt - has left me feeling alive to our inalienable right to feel free from the lie that pain holds information or meaning about our lives, our bodies, and our hopes.

It's time to disconnect pain from having cause, location, meaning.  Refusing it any power to alarm us. Pain is phantom, disembodied -- without a body or a home. It throws its voice like a ventriloquist. But it doesn't have the power to take up residence or even gain entrance into the kingdom of God -- within us.

offered with Love,
Kate

"Whither thou goest..."

"Whither thou goest
I will go
And where thou lodgest
There will I lodge
Thy people will be my people now
And thy God will be my God…"
- Ruth

I love this song.  I have heard it sung at weddings…and a memorial service.  I have always associated it with the willingness to leave all that is familiar and follow a loved one wherever their inner sense of mission and purpose leads them.  My office comes with me wherever I go.  My laptop, cell phone, a dog-eared Bible and a well-loved (and scribbled in) copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures…all tucked neatly into a sea-worthy canvas tote…and I am ready to set up shop in the nearest coffeehouse, park bench or boulder.

There has always been something deliciously promising about knowing that I could go anywhere and still be "in the office".  But there has also been something insidiously taunting about it too.  The suggestion "You could do this anywhere…so where do you want to be?" pokes at me in the middle of the night, in the middle of traffic, and from the middle of the Midwest.  This has been a gift and a burden…all at once.  It has often left me feeling trapped in places that aren't my first choice geographically.  It has allowed me to indulge in thinking that distracts me from "blooming where I am planted," and has permitted an indulgence in "what if" thinking, rather than "what is" living. "You know how to move, how about one more for the gipper," it whispers, "perhaps this time will be the last."

When the girls were little it was easy to imagine picking them up and carrying them away to a coastal village in Maine, or a cabin in the heart of the Rockies.  I would work, they would play, we would home-school, and my husband would do whatever it was that he had always dreamed of doing…something that would, of course, have a lovely place as its setting since when you dream you get to choose…and who would choose something that isn't lovely. 

The choosers, the deciders in my best-case scenario would either be my husband…or me.  Right? And of course, we would have talked and would have the same geographical sensibilities and therefore whatever we chose would be lovely and consistent with any of my dream locations.

Enter children…and this is where a heart can surrender to divine will on a dime.  Like in the story of Ruth and Naomi in the Bible, the dynamics of family...of mothers and fathers and children...find us yielding our dreams and wishes to what is best for others.  When we love one another, we listen, we don't impose our sensibilities on others, but care enough to learn what is lovely to them.   Our children have a whole different criteria for lovely.  One that, I think, is more in line spiritually, with living as a verb.  Our daughters love their activities…they love the give and take of friendships nurtured through years of laughter and playground problem-solving, they love riding their bikes on familiar roads and greeting an opposing team each new soccer season with renewed hopes of "this year...". 

Our ten-year old twins don't care if there is a 14,000 foot mountain in their backyard or a New England harbor at the end of their block, they only care about loving their friends, hugging their parents, laughing at the ridiculous, embracing the eternal facts about God and his universe, and knowing that home is a place within their hearts...that no one can take away.  They long for certainty...the assurance that they have a purpose in life that is worthy and appreciated.  They want their company to be enjoyed and their hearts to be heard.  They want to BE who they are and DO what they love and know is right.  They live as verbs, not waiting for the right person or place to BE and DO with or in, but living, learning, doing, loving, playing, praying…ing-ing wherever they have been planted.

So, we will follow them, we will lodge where they lodge, we will serve where they serve, their people will be our people, and their God (the one who is a verb) will be our God.   And even though we have five children...all of whom we love dearly and at different times, and in different seasons may follow and lodge near...these are the ones still little enough to be needing us day to day.  I am so grateful for the daily reminder, through Eddy's Daily Prayer (see below) that God omnipotently safeguards and governs us all through His reign of Love in our hearts.  He alone holds the reins on our affections and guides us through life's labyrinth with Love...always with love. 

I think I get it this time.  Thank you God for your patience...and persistence...with me.

"Intreat me not to leave you
or return from following after you
for whither thou goest
I will go
And thy God will be my God…"

If you would like to hear the melody to this song…just call, it is so beautiful and I can't find a recording of it online (and no, it is neither the Cohen or Como versions found on Youtube) to share with you.  I promise to sing softly…
Kate

The Daily Prayer
"Thy kingdom come;"
let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love
be established in my,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word enrich the affections
of all mankind, and govern them!
-Mary Baker Eddy