"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

"be extraordinary…"

"you have so many
extraordinary gifts,
how can you expect to live
an ordinary life…"

I have a small confession to make. From my first reading of Louisa May Alcott's classic "Little Women," I didn't dream of being the writer, Jo -- too bold. I didn't want to be the feminine beauty, Amy. I'd already lived the life of big sister: Meg -- thanks, but no thanks. And as much as I loved shy, retiring Beth, piano wasn't my forte. I wanted to be Marmee -- but I wanted to be the Susan Sarandon version of Marmee.

I wanted to be wise, rather than smart. I wanted to be the one to encourage, rather than lead. I wanted to seek inner loveliness, before fashion. Charity over wealth. I wanted to have daughters who would be little women. Daughters who would be devoted to one another, and improving the world they lived in. Daughters who would be amazing sisters. Daughters who sat tall in the saddle, and worked hard for what was right. We have been blessed with four daughters and a son. They are each extraordinary.

This weekend, our seventeen year-old twin daughters went to a local football game. In one photo from the event, they are with another friend -- someone they've known since preschool -- and in the lower corner of the photo you can see that our daughters holding holding hands. I was so moved by this precious reminder of how much they love one another.  They are amazing daughters, sisters, and friends - amazing global citizens.

Yesterday I pulled out our family's copy of the 1994 film version of "Little Women," with Susan Sarandon and Wynona Ryder. The above quote is from that film. It is what Marmee says to Jo, when Jo yearns to feel more at peace with the 19th century expectations for women. When she expresses her frustration with "not fitting in."

Jo just wishes she could be the kind of person who would be satisfied with domestic obscurity. But she isn't. She wants more. And Marmee encourages her to honor her desire for a more expansive life, with this remarkable statement:

"you have so many
extraordinary gifts,
how can you expect to live
an ordinary life…" 

I have been thinking about it all day. Isn't this what every mother thinks about her daughters -- and sons. She sees each of them as having such extraordinary gifts. And isn't this what our divine Mother feels about each of us. That we are remarkable, amazing -- extraordinary. For Her children, there is no ordinariness to be lived -- not in Her household. Every child is wise, beautiful, talented, and called to a holy purpose.

I don't believe -- for an instant -- that God sorts us into children of great promise or children of mediocrity. I can't imagine any mother, saying about her yet-to-be-born infant, "hmmm, I wonder if this one is going to be great, or just so-so?" Every mother thinks that her child, is a child of promise. We learn how to mother, not from humanly perfect or fallible parents, but from our divine Mentor. She teaches our hearts to see what she sees.

We can all learn to see every child of God through Marmee's eyes.


offered with Love,

Kate

"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