"Dust in the wind..."

"I close my eyes,
only for a moment,
and the moment's gone

All my dreams,
pass before my eyes,
a curiosity

Dust in the wind,
all they are is dust in the wind...."

The actual sound of, and the lyrics to, Kansas' "Dust in the Wind," always make me want to cry softly in my pillow for something I can't quite put my finger on.  But, it was the first song that tiptoed across my heart when, a few weeks ago, I found this statement, by Anne Frank, scribbled on a piece of notebook paper in an old journal:

"I have one outstanding trait in my character, which must strike anyone who knows me for any length of time, and that is my knowledge of myself.

I can watch myself and my actions, just like an outsider. The Anne of every day, I can face entirely without prejudice, without making excuses for her, and watch what's good and what's bad about her.

This 'self-consciousness' haunts me, and every time I open my mouth I know as soon as I've spoken whether 'that ought to have been different' or 'that was right as it was.'

There are so many things about myself that I condemn; I couldn't begin to name them all. I understand more and more how true Daddy's words were when he said: 'All children must look after their own upbringing.'

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

Anne Frank

I haven't been able to let it go.  It sits on my desk as a reminder...a haunting reminder of the inconsequence of "age" in assessing a "child's" spiritual maturity, and self-awareness. 

In 1945, Holocaust victim Annelies Marie Frank, passed on at the age of fifteen, while interred as a prisoner in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  She is best known as the author of "The Diary of a Young Girl," which records her family's experience, while in hiding (before their capture, separation, and imprisonment), during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.  The pathos, and power, of its heart-rending honesty  have been wept over by readers of all ages since its publication in 1947.  

It's impact on my girlhood was life-altering.  I began journaling.  I felt like I had a friend in Anne.  She was a girl like me.  She found herself in a situation that often left her feeling a bit discouraged, but she never stopped dreaming about love, finding life-purpose in the simple act of recording her thoughts, and living with a heart full of hope.

In relationship to Anne, I especially remember being twelve.  In so many ways, I felt helpless.  I didn't have many friends because we moved so often.  Sometimes I was overwhelmed by my family...they were wonderful, but there were so many of them.  Mom, dad, and five siblings all cozied (or crowded) up together in one little house, after another.  And once the twins came along..some years later, we would be a family of ten.

I remember one particular Saturday when, while wandering the stacks at the public library...unable to decide on the next book to disappear into...when I came across my old friend, Anne's slim volume, tucked between two fat novels.

I'd read "The Diary of a Young Girl" a number of times before, but that particular day it was like walking down the street of a foreign city, feeling terribly lonely, unable to speak the language, and then, quite serendipitously, running into an old friend.  Every plan you have had, up till that moment, for how you might spend the day, disappears like "Dust in the Wind," and you can't imagine doing anything but sitting across from her, and listening, and listening...just catching up.

I pulled the small, slim, clothbound book, from between the broad shoulders of her beefy shelfmates, and took it to a quiet corner filled with sunlight.  There, I fell into the hidden rooms,  the whispered dinners, the unspoken fears, the closeted spaces of the Frank family...their courage, their simple joys, the sweet affection, their terrifying ordeal...through their daughter's eyes, and her musings on love and hope.  As the sun moved from east to west that day,  my family complaints...our tiny house, the cacophony of sharing a small bedroom with three sisters, a tight budget, and no privacy...all seemed so silly, petty, selfish, the annoyances of a selfish child...not the concerns of a person of character, courage, self-knowledge, and grace.  Not the concerns of someone worthy of being Anne Frank's friend.  

I read it through, completely, from cover-to-cover, before I left the library that day.  Then I carried it to the librarian's desk and checked it out.  I needed to take Anne home with me.  She would think that my family privileged,  living like American royalty.  Open windows, fresh air, full tummies, baths.  So that I wouldn't forget what I had, I would also visit her home "in hiding" again, and again, before returning her diary to the library when it was due.  Later I would buy my own copy of her diary from the dusty shelves of a used bookstore.   I think my visits with Anne's family,  changed the kind of daughter, and sister, I became...at least for a while.  It's a "place" I think I need to return to more frequently.

Mary Baker Eddy says, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"Thou art right, immortal Shakespeare, great poet of humanity:

Sweet are the uses of adversity;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff, -  a broken reed, which pierces the heart. We do not half remember this in the sunshine of joy and prosperity. Sorrow is salutary. Through great tribulation we enter the kingdom. Trials are proofs of God's care. Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth. Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love."

I believe this is true.  I pray that my friend, Anne...that funny, smart, creative, deeply kind, ridiculously hopeful friend, Anne...found beauty, new views of divine goodness and love wherever her journey has taken her.  That she is enjoying "the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth."

It is this "taint of earth" that, like "dust in the wind" only lasts for a moment, and then, those moments...of fear, worry, doubt, plotting and planning...are gone.  But what remains has weight, substance...is good,  real, lasting, eternal, and pure.  Like Anne's thought they take root, they germinate in thoughts, they grow wild in us as deeds, and they bear rich, abundant, bountiful fruit...the fruit of lives lived humbly, joyfully, gracefully, simply in service to God, and to mankind.  

If an ordeal-free life is the goal, the measure, the outcome of a well-prayed spirirual existence, none of my heroes have succeeded.  Jesus Christ, Mary Baker Eddy, Julian of Norwich, Anne Frank, Ghandhi, Nelson Mandela, my mom,  my mentor, my best friend..none of them has passed through this human experience without a detour throught a fire, a prison, a war, a loss, a trial, persecution...or two.  But if the measure of a man, woman,...or child, is the self-knowledge, humility, love...and grace...with which he or she,  travels that journey, then my heroes...as well as each of you...are champions. Those fiery ordeals have only served to melt away the dross...the dust, the chaff, the tares...and reveal the substance...the gold...the true metal of who you are. 

Eddy, in her definition of "children," says that they are:

"not in embryo, but in maturity."

Rarely has this statement rung so true, as in the heart of Annelise Marie Frank.  I love her childlike wisdom.  I love the raw self-knowledge, humility, and love she shares with us in the passage above, that opens this post.  I just love her. 

always her friend...and yours,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[lead photo credit:  St. George Island - Ryan Kingsbery 2010]

"...but, according to Him..."

"According to Him
I'm beautiful,
Incredible,
He can't get me out of his head.

According to him
I'm funny,
irresistible,
everything He ever wanted..."

I know, I know..."According to Him" is one pretty poppity-pop pop song by Orianthi (just don't underestimate her guitar riffs, there's nothing poppity about them...it's pure rock and roll Stevie Vaughn style!).  But its "hook" so perfectly illustrates this experience, that I couldn't resist...so please bear with me.  Bottom-line, sometimes the messages we tell ourselves in the mirror, are worse, than our worst critics could ever come up with...but I am getting ahead of the story.

I was sitting in church that morning, feeling rather uninspired.  The words sounded like "just words," and nothing was penetrating the fog of self-dismissal that had been gathering since dawn. 

It wasn't a new feeling.  It was an "old, old story," and it was one that had lulled me into self-sympathy for years.  And even though it was a story I really didn't love telling, or listening to...I couldn't kick it out.  It seemed like an endless loop of mental static playing in my head. "You are not worthy, you are small.  Anyone who thinks you are worth knowing...much less loving...is being fooled by your thin veneer of self-confidence.  If they really knew you, they would see that you weren't worth their time or attention."

Over and over it played.   

The Scriptural readings from the desk were beautiful words.  And I tried with all my heart to focus on their message, rather than the one that was trying to force its way into the door of my thinking, and hijack my fragile hold on peace. 

I sat in one of the creaky, red boucle'-upholstered auditorium seats in our church sanctuary, straining to hear.  The Bible passages that opened the service were from Psalms:

"What is man, that thou art mindful of Him?"

Sigh...I knew this one so well.  Too well. 

I tried to let it sink in, but it was like pouring water on the parched, wind-hardened, and impenetrable surface of a sun-baked pasture on the Colorado high plains.  It rolls right off, or evaporates under the searing heat of a mile-high summer day, before it can even reach below the dust on the surface.

I sat back into my creaky seat, trying to disappear, even more deeply, into the background of my own life.  Perhaps I could blend into the fibers of the upholstery and never have to propel this sad, sorry "me" through space ever again. 

I know, it sounds like the ego was having a personal-drama field day...and it was.  But I didn't have a clue in those days about how the ego could, and would, take on the voice of false-humility, and coo its message of "You are unworthy..." just as easily as it would arrogantly assert, "You are the best..." if it thought it could get me to believe that I had a self-created (or destroyed) identity separate from God. 

It was a fickle whore who was more than willing to say whatever it thought would get me to believe that I was special, an originator, a creator, and thus undermine my sense of God as the All-in-all, the one and only all-powerful, loving Father-Mother...the only Cause and Creator in, and of, the universe.

But that was when God pushed Her way through the ego's over-confident space of "gotcha" and walked onto the platform in the form of an angel in a pink and aqua floral chiffon prom dress.  Really!

Our church hired students from the local university to sing an inspirational solo during each Sunday service.  Sometimes these students were familiar with the Bible and brought spiritual insight to their interpretation of a piece.  And sometimes, it seemed as if they were singing a Scriptural text with as much understanding as they would bring to an Italian opera, phonetically sounding out each syllable perfectly, but without contextual meaning. 

As she opened her black folder and the introductory notes poured from the organ, I was slipping further and further into the ego's grip. 

That was, until she sang,

     "What is man?  That Thou art Mind,  full of him."

Her freedom from a more "traditional" spacing and emphasis gave the passage a whole new meaning. And the text for this particular solo, was just a repeat of that line from Psalms...over and over again.  Rising, and rising...in pitch and volume...to a crescendo-ed message of divine promise and unfailing spiritual self-reference, then gently closing with an almost whispered, benediction of "thou art Mine."

I will never forget the feeling of awakening that poured through me like water penetrating dry ground.  I could almost feel the roots of new spiritual insights digging deeper into my being searching for the source of that refreshment.  I sensed the brittle outer covering of dormant seeds splitting and peeling away from the plump green endosperm of spiritual promise.

The next Bible verse read from the desk was like soft rain on the savanna after a drought.  Not a torrential downpour that would have eroded all the seeds awakened by those first drops of divine Love's "living waters," but a gentle wash of nourishing waters to slake the thirst of the soul.  It was a spoken repeat of the text from the solo:

"What is man, that thou art mindful of Him."

But after the solo, I knew I would never hear it, ever again, as anything but:

"What is man?  That Thou art Mind, full of him."

God wasn't something I filled my mind with, I was what God, as Mind, was filled with.  I was the beautiful images, the songs, the poetry, the stories and promises He was cherishing, nurturing, reflecting upon...all the time.  That was me!  That was my identity!  My thinking had nothing to do with creating "me." Only God's thinking mattered.  And the better I knew, and understood, His identity, His character, His name and nature, the more I would know the kind of thoughts He entertained...me.

I sat in that auditorium seat for a long time after the service was over.  I can still feel the texture of that red-boucle' upholstery fabric under my fingertips as I softly stroked cloth, while quietly pondering the emerging seeds of true identity that were springing into birth within me. 

I let the cool Colorado air...passing through the branches of the large pine trees just beyond the open windows next to me...waft across the fertile space of my heart and blow all the old, brittle, chrysalis-like seed coverings away so that something fresh and vital could grow into something...something that I didn't need to know the exact form or function of at the moment.  An aspen tree, a tomato plant, a peony bush, a blade of grass whose identity is maintained by Mind...or even a bean sprout, here today, in my sandwich tomorrow.  It didn't matter.  Whatever it was, it was good, it was of God, it was perfect...it was me.  And that was a good thing. 

Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"Mind maintains all identities,
from a blade of grass, to a star,
as distinct and eternal."

"According to Him.."  That's enough self-knowledge for me.  Whatever He thinks...that's what I am!!

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"A Whole New World..."

"A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming

A whole new world
A dazzling place I never knew
But when I'm way up here
It's crystal clear
That now I'm in a whole new world...
with You..."
from Disney's "Aladdin"

When all else fails...go back to Disney.  Or at least that's where my heart seems to go.  I was raised on Disney films...Mary Poppins taught me how to approach overwhelming tasks with "A Spoonful of Sugar", and Mama Jumbo gave me the song I would sing to myself as I fell asleep (after my mom was finished singing lullabies) with "Baby Mine".  So it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that New Year's Day would find me singing "A Whole New World" from Aladdin.

Our daughter received her loved "Jasmine" Barbie for that year's birthday, and within weeks of seeing Disney's Aladdin (for the first...of many times) we had all the songs memorized for singing in the car, and she and her best friend, Heather, had decided that they would be Arabian princesses that Halloween...and they were.  But not before Miss Mitzi, their tap teacher, had them tapping their hearts out on stage to "Prince Ali...fabulous he...Ali Ababwa..."  I can still see bolts of purple polyester chiffon studded with silver sequins and glitter whenever I hear that song.

So...it's only appropriate that it would be our daughter who would take me on the magic carpet ride that would reveal a "whole new world" to me, just when I needed it most.

I needed a new view of myself and how I fit in my world.  I had lost my way and nothing I did seemed to be able to pull me out of a tailspin of self-doubt, regret, and confusion about who I was beyond the boundaries of memory. 

I had arrived in South Africa with a broken toe, and a broken sense of myself.  I had become accustomed to silently apologizing for my very existence. Whenever anyone was genuinely kind, extending a helping hand or a moment of fellowship, I would find myself on the verge of tears .   An authentic smile made my knees buckle.  A thoughtful gesture made me want to throw my arms around the neck of the person responsible and weep alligator tears of appreciation for the mercy their kindness represented.  I could be kind to others, I could be compassionate and loving...but did I deserve it myself. Did I deserve the healing that I knew with all my heart (and had seen) as a spiritual fact, an inalienable right, in the lives of others?

I was praying each day for freedom from self-doubt, but I sensed I wasn't making real progress.  I was stuck in stage two of the three stage process towards "absolute cure" in Christian Science that Mary Baker Eddy lays out in her article "The Way" from Miscellaneous Writings: "self-knowledge, humility, and love."   And I knew it. I had somewhat mastered self-knowledge in this case, and that self-knowledge had driven me to my knees in humility...but I hadn't gotten up...I was still down there weeping each time someone was kind...to me a sinner.  I'd get clear glimpses of freedom, rise to take a few steps only to run into a carnival fun-house full of distorting mirrors in every direction which sent my gaze echoing too far back and forth between memory and regret to keep from getting dizzy and stumbling...and before I knew it, I was back on my knees again.

But arriving in South Africa with a broken toe stopped me in my tracks. Sitting in the African sun one morning...in a place where no one but my daughter knew anything about me, my past, my achievements, my dreams, my mistakes, my choices...and it came to me clearly that if my feelings of self-doubt and punishment were well-deserved because I had truly offended God, it would have to be true wherever I went.  God's laws were universal and impartial.  If I deserved to be doubted...by myself or anyone...then it would be true all the way around the world.  God would cause me, and others, to doubt my right to be good, to be an effective healer, to be worthy of kindness, friendship, genuine joy...right there.    But if that punitive doubt and unworthiness were not His, God's ongoing means of correcting my heart and my life...and were therefore unwarranted, then I could be free of them immediately.

As I opened my heart and my life to God, I prayed with such hope.  And I stayed on that deck looking out at the broad and endless waters of the Indian ocean stretching all the way to where the sky and sea became one most of the next two days.  I prayed for a spiritual sense of self-knowledge, humility, and most importantly...love. I longed for a knowledge of myself that was consistent with what God knew about me, for humility that was based in a surrender to His greatness...not just self-doubt, regret, and failure, and to live a life of love not just because it was the "right" thing to do, but because it was my right to live consistent with the love He had put in my heart.   At one point I rose to refresh the cup of roiboos tea I had been nursing and while in the kitchen ran into the housekeeper who was laboring under a mountain of dishes, pots and pans.  As one of five sisters, and the oldest of eight...in a family of ten...I had often found myself on any given evening laboring under a mountain of dishes.  But if mom or one of my sisters or brothers stood at the sink with me and we talked and laughed and they helped me with rinsing or drying, it went faster and we had fun.  So it was natural for me to pick up a dish towel and start drying while I got to know her, and learned some fascinating things about the Xhosa culture.  We didn't talk about me, my life, my work...I was not really interested in me and I was the one driving the questions...we talked about her. 

When the dishes were done I hung the dishtowel on the rack, refreshed my now cool tea with more hot water and returned to the deck for another hour or two of thinking, praying, reading, knitting, and absorbing the view. 

But within a few moments she came out to where I was sitting on the deck and said that she thought I "must know Jesus," and if she came to work a bit earlier the next day, could we talk about Jesus.  From that morning on I had an sweet moment-by-moment spiritual practice halfway around the world in a town I had never been to, with people who didn't know anything about what books I studied or what church I attended.  They barely spoke my language...or I theirs...and knew nothing of my past.  To them I was as good as my last good deed...my last kindness. And I knew that if I was unkind or dismissive that would be my "history" with them.

I learned that God is truly, and only, the GREAT I AM.  That He alone defines us by the love He puts in our hearts and the desires we have to act on that love...moment by moment...in practical ways that make a difference in the lives of other - and in our own lives. I don't know when my toes ceased to be broken...I can only remember not favoring it one bit during the hikes and long walks on endless beaches that filled our days.

I had to go halfway around the world to learn that we are not defined by our own or another's mistakes, choices, memories or opinions about us...we are defined by our last good deed.  And in this way we have the opportunity to be free of imprisoning self-doubt, regret, painful memories, or sorrow over wrong-doing...we have the opportunity to be made new every moment of every day with every good deed done, every kind seed sown. 

Or as Paul promises in Romans:

"There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus..."

Enjoy being a whole new you every moment you that extend yourself in an act of simple kindness, live generously, care for another, feed the hungry, heal the heart...there is a "Whole New World" waiting every day.

A Whole New World
"I can show you the world
Shining, shimmering, splendid
Tell me, princess, now when did
You last let your heart decide?

I can open your eyes
Take you wonder by wonder
Over, sideways and under
On a magic carpet ride

A whole new world
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming

A whole new world
A dazzling place I never knew
But when I'm way up here
It's crystal clear
That now I'm in a whole new world with you
Now I'm in a whole new world with you

Unbelievable sights
Indescribable feeling
Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling
Through an endless diamond sky

A whole new world
Don't you dare close your eyes
A hundred thousand things to see
Hold your breath - it gets better
I'm like a shooting star
I've come so far
I can't go back to where I used to be

A whole new world
Every turn a surprise
With new horizons to pursue
Every moment red-letter
I'll chase them anywhere
There's time to spare
Let me share this whole new world with you

A whole new world
That's where we'll be
A thrilling chase
A wondrous place
For you and me"
A whole new world...for you and me,
Kate