"wanting to belong..."

"as the ruby
in the setting,
as the fruit
upon the tree;

so are you to me..”

Some habits fade slowly. Feeling the first stirrings of a post, seems, more often than not, to come with a song. It was EastMountainSouth's  "So are You to Me"  that underscored those first stirrings this morning.

Here is my confession. I want to belong. I have always wanted to belong. Yes, I have often shrugged off the importance of clubs and sororities, teams and groups, but not because I really think they are unimportant - but because I always felt like I was on the outside looking in.

This morning I watched four groups of girls welcome new members as into their world as initiates. It was heartbreakingly beautiful to watch the faces of girls - who had felt outside of an inner circle - suddenly feel welcomed in. One after the other they waited - until their name was called and their team was announced. Then, cheering, hugging, smiling. I cried. Yup, walked outside and bawled like a baby.

I wanted my name to be called. I wanted to have a forever family, a team affiliation that would follow me for the rest of my life. I wanted my children and grandchildren to feel the legacy of place.

Last night, I was talking to a dear friend who had missed the opportunity to be on one of these teams. And even though she knows that this does not define her sense of place, she also told me that some of her friends had shared with her that they just knew, that if she had been on a team, it would have been on "this" particular team. [She has given me permission to share this.] I could see that this meant something very special to her. But I understand.  I feel the same way today. When a young relative received her team "assignment" this morning, I wanted to say, "can I be one too?" So this morning, I secretly chose to join her team -- for life.

I don't know that I have anything profoundly spiritual to say about this. I am still listening for inspiration and peace. But I know this, I want to belong.  I think we all want to feel a sense of belonging.  I want to know that there is a place where when I return, they will take me in and love me. I want to know that I don't have to show up perfect to be welcomed in.  I just am.

And perhaps this is the small seed of spiritual inspiration that I can bring to this moment. When I turn within, when I enter the sanctuary of prayer, I am always welcome. God never makes me feel like I don't belong here.

This morning as I walked away from that ceremony, I could barely speak. My throat was tight, and my chest burned with unspent tears. Self-knowledge is a powerful catalyst for growth in humility. I had to face the fact that I, too, so wanted to be on a team. And this is something I don't think I could ever have admitted to myself before this morning.

So, where is this going. I have no idea. But I have a better sense of myself and the girl who I was. The girl who never belonged to anything and wanted it more than she could bear to say. Owning my name, owning my heart, owning my words, owning my mistakes, owning my feelings, owning my place in the world, owning my deep need to belong -- that seems to be the theme of this summer.

In the meantime, thank you to all the people and places who are helping me see the beauty of the things I have not always allowed myself to feel. I am so deeply grateful.

I wonder if this desire to belong to something bigger than ourselves, is one of our first natural steps out of being defined by a personal, limited sense of self. To have a sense of belonging to a more inclusive sense  of:  "I am..." Perhaps it is why Jesus' Lords Prayer reads:

"Our Father which art in heaven;

give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts
as we forgive our debtors;

and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil...”

Could this have something to do with the success and popularity of the Harry Potter book series.  Does it hint at an innate desire for belonging -- Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw.  Did this series speak to children who were simply hungry for the promise of belonging?  

Just some thoughts to ponder and feelings to examine in the light of Spirit.

offered with Love,

Cate

"we are each other…"

"we are the daughter,
we are the sisters
who carry the water.
we are the mothers
we are the other,
we are each other..."

I don't know where this post is headed -- really. I just know that when one of my daughters sent me this video of Lissie's, "Daughters," I had to show up in front of the keyboard -- and let it rip.

So, here goes. For me, this is all about having each other's back. Not just as sisters, daughters, best friends, and neighbors, but as fellow citizens on a very small planet. And yes, you are right. There is nothing new about this message. Maya Angelou, Mother Teresa, Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Friedan - most great women - have encouraged this one thing in all the women they hope with forward their legacies: Be kind to one another. You will not achieve anything on your own.

And yet, I see this terrible pattern repeating itself throughout history. Women hurting women. It breaks me. More than most, this is the one thing can make me feel like crawling under the covers for a few days, and never come out. To hear that a woman has thrown another woman under the bus. To hear women encouraging each other to unload a pile of hurt on another woman - behind her back. To hear the drone of gossip -- and trust me, there is no other sound like it -- from another table at the local coffeehouse.

Do men do this? I can't tell you -- I am not a man in a relationship with other men. I don't know what they do or don't do. This is about us. Girls, women, sisters, mothers, friends. We must stop it.

We are each other. That's not just hyperbole. Think about it. To criticize another woman is to fill your own heart and mind with a lesser sense of  womanhood.  This lowered consciousness of any woman, effects the way you feel about all women -- yourself included.

What you hold in thought is projected upon the screen of your own body, face, family, interaction with the world. If I feel disdain for someone -- even when I think it is perfectly justified and reasonable -- everything I look at through that lens is going to be colored by speculation and doubt.

So, today I am holding myself accountable. And yes, I am taking it one day at a time. I can easily attain this better version of me, in a calm, clear hour of prayer -- but can I sustain it for weeks, months, years? I hope so.  I have written a symbol on my hand - with a Sharpie - to remind me that, "Love never loses sight of loveliness," as Mary Baker Eddy promises. Even if I have to rewrite it daily, it will remind me to stop and take stock. To examine my own heart through the lens of a simple axiom:

"When you point a finger at someone,
three more are pointing back at you." 

Whenever I think I am thinking something about someone else, it's not really about them. I am the only one actually harboring those thoughts. I am the one populating my inner landscape with those thoughts. It has nothing to do with the other person. They are just the screen I am projecting my own thinking on. The same with the words I speak, or the negative reactions I allow myself to indulge in -- based on what I think is someone else's behavior.

I love that Mary Baker Eddy gives us this great filter in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"In a world of sin and sensuality
hastening to a greater development of power,
it is wise earnestly consider
whether it is the human mind
or the divine Mind
which is influencing one." 

The human mind loves to reason. It loves to find reasons. It loves to compare, criticize, and contrast. It loves to sort and compartmentalize -- to file people, places, and things into hierarchies. The human mind wants -- desperately -- to feel important. It's opinions are its greatest currency. 

 The divine Mind on the other hand simply knows. It just knows what is true. It doesn't need to convince, debate, discuss, and pat itself on the back. What is true, is true about everyone. What is a lie, is a lie about no one.

This morning, I read this passage from, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté, and it awakened a new place of compassion in me:

People will jeopardize their lives,
for the sake of making the moment livable.
Nothing sways them from the habit -- not illness,
not the sacrifice of love and relationship,
not the loss of all earthly goods,
not the crushing of their dignity,
not the fear of dying.

The drive is that relentless."
 

I am standing up to this drive. I am going to do everything - in my own life - to not be driven by a need to just "make a moment livable." I will not say something that is not kind, just because it might make me look or feel better -- in that moment. I will not capitulate to pressure, just to make an awkward moment end more quickly. I will try to never -- ever again -- let a harsh word slip, or sarcasm spill, just because it will break the tension. 

 And I will be more patient with you, because I now have a clearer sense of how demanding, and insidious the need to just "make the moment livable" can be.

We are each other. And what I want for my daughters, I want for your daughters. What I want for myself, I want for you. If I want my daughters to have clean water, I must do as much to achieve clean water for a young girl in Burkino Faso, as I would for my own sweet girls. If I want my sister to be treated with respect and dignity by her colleagues, I must treat every woman I interact with, with that same respect and dignity. If I want my dearest friend to be heard when she speaks, I must listen more deeply to my neighbor when she speaks.

There is no you and me, us and them. We are one. We are each other.

offered with Love,

Kate

"You were only waiting for this moment to arise..."

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings
and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting
for this moment to arise..."
Lennon/McCartney

We'd been friends and colleagues. We loved music and coffeehouses, Joni Mitchell and anyone singing "Blackbird."  It was our song. 

I'd sat knee-to-knee with her in faculty senate meetings. I'd listened to her ideas on countless conference calls, and we'd enjoyed talking mission and vision in the company of colleagues with opposing points of view. I'd helped her with curriculum planning.  She'd helped me with tenure, promotions, and appointments decisions.  The goal was a better institution, not to be better than one another.  Ten-year plans and organizational strategies were our favorite board games.  I trusted her.  I respected her.  And in the blink of a moment, our relationship was gone. 

As our career paths had crossed, converged, and diverged over the years, we'd each had opportunities and disappointments, successes and setbacks.  We were each other's shoulder to cry on, and biggest fan.  That was, until one of us broke through a glass ceiling of sorts, and became the other's "boss."

I'd never felt more misunderstood and alone.  Navigating this new territory was terrifying.  No matter what I said it was taken as a slight.  No matter what she said, it felt like an attack.  Our mutual friends were traumatized, our families were confused, and our hearts were breaking.

The funny thing was, I now know that we were both praying…humbly, meekly, importunately. And we were both hearing our “angels” (God’s thoughts passing to man, spiritual intuitions – pure and perfect) but, in our own, personal angel-inhabited versions of heaven, we were, each, the only one who could possibly be right…leaving us both alone. She stole my voice, I undermined her vision, which of us had more authority, “who’s on first” …and on, and on it went, until we found ourselves avoiding department meetings if we thought we’d run into eachother.

Then one night I was sitting in my office, long after the cleaning crew had come through, and I heard sobbing from the other end of the hall.  I wondered if it might have been a graduate assistant with boyfriend troubles, and decided to offer my sage twenty-something counsel. 

I got up from my desk, headed towards the "bullpen" at the far end of the hall where staff assistants and student interns, had their desks. 

But the sound of crying became fainter with each footstep.  So I turned and headed back toward "our" end of the hall, where private offices lined the corridor.  As I passed my own office and continued further away from the bullpen, the weeping got louder until I was standing in front of my friend's office.  It was obvious.  She was in deep emotional pain.  These were not frustrated, angry tears, this was the sound of a broken heart.

I didn't have to know if I was at the core of her heartbreak, just the thought that I might be, was more than enough.  Tears flooded my eyes and washed the darkly imagined personal sense script of hurt, and ego-centric "me-vs.-thee" thinking from my heart.  The compassion I immediately felt for my friend...in that moment...was like light radiating from within.  A laser-like Love that cut through mis-understanding with the only kind of "understanding" that ever really matters...an understanding heart. 

It didn't matter who was "boss."  It didn't matter which of us had a better working understanding of the lives of early women thought-pioneers, or a more scholarly understanding of the importance of suffrage, or who understood the history of feminism or spiritual texts that honored the divine feminine.  The only understanding that really mattered was our sisterhood, our compassion for one another.  The only thing that would make a difference was an understanding of where someone else might be coming from, what they might be going through, and how they might be feeling. The understanding that mattered was the kind that was synonymous with compassion, not intellectual achievement or scholarship.

In that moment of compassion, divine Love pierced the membrane of self, and deflated the ego. 

I tiptoed away from my colleague's door and back towards my own office where I picked up the phone and called her at her desk.  I somehow knew that if my own ego-hardened heart could be spiritually re-booted, perhaps so could hers.  I can now see that we'd both been hoodwinked by "the ego," and we were discovering that it was time to kick it out of our relationship...together.

When she answer softly...probably having seen my office extension displayed on her phone console, I told her I'd noticed the light under her office door and wondered if she wanted a cup of tea and some of the girl scout cookies I'd brought in that morning.  I knew I was on sacred ground, we shared a great love for Thin Mints...and eachother.

Within ten minutes, we'd started over...tea, chocolate cookies...and understanding.  We were not two isolated blackbirds singing in the dead of night...alone and broken.   We were women, sisters, friends...waiting for "this moment to arrive" like an updraft, a thermal of Love, lifting us above competition, hierarchy, comparison, and the insidious invitation to jockey for position. We were beyond glass ceilings...we were soaring in the space of Love's genderless sky where all sing...where all sweep, and glide, and speak, and dance in Pneuma's ever-equalized, rarified spiritual enviroment. No drop in pressure, no ozone layers of pride and selfishness, no toxic envy or arrogance....just Love.

We would go on to celebrate eachother's victories, encourage one another to dream very special dreams...even after we ceased to have offices on the same hall...make big differences, in an even bigger world, and pledge to never stand on the shoulders of another woman, but link arms with our fellow sisters and rise together on that updraft of spiritual compassion and love...to bring other women higher with us as we learned to fly.

I am so grateful for the sisterhood of sweet-throated blackbirds...sharing a thermal is the best way to travel!!

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"A tapestry to feel and see.."

"My life has been a tapestry
Of rich and royal hue;
An everlasting vision
Of the ever-changing view;
A wond'rous woven magic
In bits of blue and gold;
A tapestry to feel and see;
Impossible to hold…"
- Carole King

Our lives are like a "Tapestry,"and each person weaving the golden threads of their love, joy, compassion through out lives, makes that tapestry stronger...and more beautiful. I remember as a teenager thinking that if I couldn't grow up to be my own mother, who was my hero, I wanted to be her sister.

Aunt June was pretty near perfect as a runner-up.  She was a home economics teacher and it seemed as if she could do anything.  Cook, sew, garden…there was no end to her talents and accomplishments.  To one who had spent a lifetime with only one adult female role model, who, it just so happened, was now the person telling you "no" most of the time, having a perfect aunt was, well…perfect!

I have often wondered if my cousin Christie, Aunt June's daughter, thought her own mother was as perfect as I did.  Or was she, in her parallel teenage universe watching my mother through the same rose-colored glasses of distance…the way I was with hers. 

I would not get to know my aunt until the year I turned twelve.  That summer,  my family of eight piled into our old station wagon and drove 2,000 miles across the deserts of the southwest, through the endless beige plains and into the cool green of the mid-Atlantic.  First stop: The Audubon bird sanctuary outside Princeton, New Jersey.  You see, not only was June perfect, but she had married an equally perfect Uncle Doug.  If she was my 12-year-old model of a perfect grown-up wife, mother, and teacher (the three things I aspired to be), he was the perfect partner. 

Doug was the resident director of th sanctuary/outdoor education center and so our visit included immersing ourselves in the world of  field guides, binoculars, and duck blinds.  We walked through forests and sat beside marshy fields  learning about silhouettes and migration patterns.  A man who was smart, handsome and kind.  Not a bad resume for a dream uncle.  Forty years later I remember that vacation as clearly as if I were standing at the top of the broad curving staircase of the large old house that was home to the sanctuary's offices, exhibits, classrooms, and living quarters,trying to memorize the pattern in the red and white quilt that hung on the wall.

Day trips to visit other relatives…grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins…were filled with laughter and singing. The Turtles "Happy Together" poured from the chrome-dialed radio in the dash of our station wagon serving as the film score to our vacation.  I felt like we belonged to an even larger and more wonderful family than I had ever imagined possible. 

Those few weeks of bird watching, visiting our parents' childhood stomping grounds,  and discovering what we had in common with our cousins were extraordinary.  Yet it was an early morning visit with my aunt that I remember most poignantly.  So much so, that to this day I can still actually feel the outline of the roosters, painted in the glaze,  that my finger traced on the tuscan yellow plates and cups in her kitchen while I drank weak tea, nibbled on a buttered piece of toast, and watched her teach my cousin Scott basic reading skills.  I was smitten.

My cousin, whose learning needs were not being fully met by the local school system, was being "home-schooled" for the most part…long before the current trend in parent-based educating.  June was patient with Scott's frustration and unswerving in her persistence, despite an uber-schedule that surely left little room for rest and visiting relatives (our family of eight was not easily tucked in to even the most welcoming of home).  She must have repeated the same lesson twenty times that morning, and each time with the freshness and joy of an enthusiastic recruit eager to try new and inspired ways for  introducing the curriculum to her pupil.

For me, this was a pivotal moment in the way I looked at the uncharted territory I then called my future.  Up until that point, I think I just wanted to have things "when I grew up."  I wanted to have a nice home, a good job, a smart and funny husband, and loving children who, with their parents, were devoted to church, community and family.  Not a particular make of car or brand of clothes…my family was socialistic enough for me to have subjugated any overt consumerism from my wish list.  But I did have a full inventory of"wants" that were more spiritually-acceptable in the culture I had been raised in.  

I watched my aunt patiently and persistently teach her son the simple lessons that his younger siblings, cousins and friends had learned so easily at much younger ages.  And it made me realize that what I really wanted was to make a difference in someone's life.  To be a person who gave…not got.  Getting a particular house in a particular neighborhood was less important after that morning…it was giving one's family a loving sense of home that really mattered.  Giving someone the opportunity to learn was much more satisfying a dream to cherish than getting into the right school.  Or, as Barack Obama said in a talk he gave at Principia College last spring, "I don't want to become something, I want to do something." 

On the long drive home I thought about my aunt and what I had learned from her in the kitchen that morning, but it was Mom's example I was observing hour after hour in the car. I realized that she had always been there as a model for how to live a life of giving, rather than getting.  Day after day she modeled joy in the face of hardship, patiently walked a path of hope rather than wallow in discouragement, and gave opportunities to her children rather than pursue personal desires.

Although I left my aunts' house with a clear desire to become a teacher, I arrived home from that long drive wanting to also become someone who could turn a loaf of day-old bread and jars of peanut butter and strawberry jam (a serious vacation indulgence when grape jelly was so much cheaper) into a midday party.  That Mom could hold the attention of six restless children at a weathered old picnic table in a Salina, Kansas while she spread jam and poured juice was a miracle I wanted to learn how to perform.

By the end of that drive I didn't care if I drove a battered old car when I grew up…if I could only learn how to keep everyone in it feeling as happy, loved, and cared for as she did.  It took me years to realize how blessed I was to have the examples of two amazing women that summer.  One would awaken in me a desire to live a life worth giving…the other would show me how. 

When I look at my sisters and myself, and the relationships that our children have with each of us, individually and collectively, I am humbled by the divine design of it all.  It may take a village to raise a child, but in our family of five sisters (another story about brothers and spouses later), we are, perhaps even without realizing it, holding hands with one another as we share in the warp and weft of weaving the lessons of giving and grace to our children. 

Today the sumptuous, color-filled tapestry that Mom and Aunt June carefully wove for us is as strong as their love for one another and for all of us.   They each brought to their shared loom, the richly textured and strong, yet subtly colored of threads of their own lives as women, wives, mothers…and sisters.  Side-by-side, maybe without knowing it, they created a pattern, now so interconnected and entwined, that today we feel only the tensile strength, warmth and beauty of its fabric.  We, their sons and daughters, trace these soft, worn threads with our fingertips and can make out the story of sisters who have lived generously and courageously. 

No matter who we are, or where we live, whether we have sisters or girlfriends, colleagues or neighbors, we live our lives of giving in the context of others.  We are weaving life patterns that will give our children profound stories to trace for their sons and daughters..

The legacy of these life stories is found only in how well they point us towards the future…toward lives of strength, beauty and grace.  Like my mom and her sister, we can work together, each of us gathering our own richly colored threads of love, patience, humility, meekness, and grace,  weaving them, as we sit side-by-side,  into this beautiful tapestry called life.

"…In seamless gratitude I weave
A silent, healing prayer,
With shining threads of ceaseless joy;
For man is God's great heir."
- Violet Ker Seymer

Kate

[the above photo is of my sisters, Lila and Fawn..and I
it is with regret that I have neither a photo of
my mom and her sister...together,
or one of all four of my sisters and I...
if anyone has either...please send it along
and I will add it to this post...with great joy!]

"Cause you'll be in my heart..."

"For one so small,
you seem so strong
My arms will hold you,
keep you safe and warm
This bond between us
can't be broken
I will be here
Don't you cry..."
- Phil Collins

When she was born I was nine…going on 10.  It was 1964, I had Beatles sneakers and I was the only girl in my fourth grade class who loved George.  Everyone else loved Paul.  I was different.  But the Beatles didn't define being nine for me. 

She did.  Lila June McCullough Black. 

She defined my ninth year.  She was born on a day in late March and I was in love.  She was perfect.  Downy tufts of soft blonde hair, black button eyes, and the crooked little smile of an elfin sage.  She was tiny and strong, alert and pensive...all the things a girl of "almost ten" would want in a new, carryable best friend.   She was the sixth child in our family of eight, which would eventually become ten.  When it was determined that our mother was too ill to come home following Lila's birth, Dad brought their remarkable gift of life and love home for me to help take care of while Mother recovered.   I remember him coming through the door and feeling so grown-up as he placed her in my arms.  How could something so light make me feel like I was holding the whole world in my hands?   I would do anything to protect her from lions and tigers and bears, flying monkeys, melting witches...and wizards behind curtains....if I could.  I was definitely in an "Oz" phase that spring.

That moment was the beginning of a bond that has survived all the emotional ups and downs of 43 years of sisterhood.  Bringing her with me to basketball games in high school,  having her next to me at my wedding and sitting outside our children's kindergarten classroom on their first day of school while we waited for them to emerge no longer babies.   And through it all I think we have come out stronger than I could have ever imagined on that clear blue March day when I first saw her funny little face and wondered what she would become.

One thing was certain.  Lila had a heart of gold.   This was the flawless truth I would cling to one winter night in 1995 when my heart ached for her as she and her husband Floyd grieved following a miscarriage .  All day I had reached out to God for something that would bring her comfort and give her hope.  But it wasn't until we were on the phone later that night that I would feel the complete peace I had been searching for.

Lila had confided in me her concerns that she may never become pregnant again.  I could understand how painful these thoughts must have been to her.  She was the most wonderful mother I knew next to our own mom.  She was kind, gentle, funny and smart.  But most importantly her heart and her home were warm places where everyone felt welcome.  She had shared her love for beauty and her effortless grace with all of us… her family, her husband, her son, and every child to whom she taught art with such generosity of spirit…that we all felt mothered.

As I paced the floor of our kitchen it occurred to me that it was absolutely incongruous for there to be any question about my sister's pregnancy…present or future.  Her womb was an extension of her heart and her heart was so open and generous that nothing could keep it from providing nurture and nourishment for a child…or children.  I could see with absolute clarity that this connection between her heart's open door policy to children of every age and the fulfillment of her desire to become a mother was as reliable as the law of mathematics.  Open, warm, welcoming heart plus desire to mother equals family.  Period!  And I told her so.  I felt such joy for she and her husband and their young son from an earlier marriage.  There just had to be a child "on the way."  There was nothing on earth that could close the door on her home, her heart, or their desire to parent. 

I felt such an abiding sense of peace.  As if God had audibly said,

"Shall I bring her to the birth and not cause her to deliver?"
and
"As the rain cometh down and watereth the earth
so shall my word be that cometh forth out of my mouth,
it shall not return unto me void,
but it shall accomplish the purpose whereto I sent it."

It wasn't a baby that God had sent into the world, but a mother's open heart and willing hands to serve His purpose in the universe.  Lila was already mothering (verb)…the baby (noun) would follow according to God's purpose and nothing could interfere with what He had established in her heart. 

God had breathed a sigh of benediction and "it was done."

When I hung up the phone that night I was certain that "according to the time of life she would be delivered of a child"…and she was.  By the following November baby Tatiana Quinn Jones would join our family.  Her sister, Hailey Fawn Jones, would follow two years later.

I've learned so much from my baby sister about motherhood.  Besides making the best desserts this side of Paris she's helped me see myself through the lens of her heart...and isn't this what motherhood is all about. Four decades ago she trusted my "almost ten" year old arms to nurture and care for her as a baby, and by her example I've learned to trust God to nurture and care for life's most precious desires by placing them safely in the heart where they can grow and take shape before being borne, like seeds of promise, upon the winds of love.

"...Cause you'll be in my heart
Yes, you'll be in my heart
From this day on
Now and forever more
You'll be in my heart
No matter what they say
You'll be here
in my heart always
Always..."
- Phil Collins

Dear Lila...I am so grateful for your example of motherhood...and grace...I am so blessed to have you as a sister and a friend...all my love...always, 
Kate