"You are more..."

“You are more
than the choices that you've made,
You are more
than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more
than the problems you create,
You've been remade...”

I came upon Tenth Avenue North's song,"You are More,"and it took my breath away. It said everything I wanted to say to "her" tonight.

Her, is me. And it's you, and him, and her...and so many other girls, women, men, and boys I've met, listened to, shared Scripture with, encouraged, comforted, held, and prayer with.

We are all more.

Accepting the fact that we are more than our mistakes...well, that's not too much of a stretch for the spiritual thinker...right?

But I would posit, that we are also more than our human accomplishments and achievements. We are more than our biggest dreams and our wildest imaginings.

Until we can fathom the infinite range of what it means to be all that God is...we are still more.

And about this "remaking," which Tenth Avenue North refers to...it is ongoing. It is God's constant reclaiming of us, of our right to be "more." It never stops. It is insistent, perpetual, proprietary, demanding. It is a divine imperative that only wants one thing...our hearts. It never stops homesteading, setting up shop, claim-staking its sovereign territory, carving out a kingdom...in our lives.

It is a voice....the Voice, that never stops singing:

"You are more..."

Maya Angelou, in titling her 1969 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, references a stanza from African American poet James Laurence Dunbar's "Sympathy:"

"I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, 

When he beats his bars and would be free; 

It is not a carol of joy or glee, 

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, 

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings – 

I know why the caged bird sings...."

And I know why this song, "You are More," is giving words to my prayers today.

The Psalmist, David...the King who wrote most personally about the power of tender mercy and divine promise, of long falls from grace, pinnacles of praise, and of God's restoration of the "soul," once wrote: 

"Create in me a clean heart, 

O God, 

and renew a right spirit within me..."

He knew...

David knew why the caged bird sings, why the abandoned babe reaches to touch the face of love, why the empty womb calls us towards a Romanian orphanage, why the forgotten never stop hoping to be remembered, the imprisoned dream of freedom, the diagnosed refuse to consent, and those believed to carry the smallest promise, have the audacity of hope to think they can make a difference...

I believe it is because we are all more...so much more...infintely more...

with Love, 

Kate

"Goodnight you moonlight ladies..."

"Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rock-a-bye, sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won't you let me go down in my dreams
And rock-a-bye my sweet baby James..."
-James Taylor
"Sweet Baby James"

It occurred to me as I was driving home from Tulsa, well before dawn on Tuesday, that although lullabies are most generally associated with mommies, it is the voice of a father...a man, that I hear when I listen to the inner songsmith singing me to sleep in the dark. 

This surprised me greatly.  Every single night of my childhood, my own mommy sang us to sleep with a series of lullabies and hymns.  The same songs in the same order...night after night.  I repeat this tradition every night with my own daughters. And yet, when I thought about listening to the comforter within, his voice was, to me, clearly...well..."his."

Because of an earlier commitment I had made to myself, I was listening to no radio/CDs while alone in the car so that I could enjoy more silence each day.  I knew this would give me over 7 hours of quiet listening to examine the character and nature of the voice that speaks to me as consciousness...its tone and timbre, its strength and intonation.  And as I listened, I discovered that it was actually quite genderless.  It was strong, yet gentle.  It was musical, but not sing-songy.  It was soothing, but not hypnotic...in fact, it was rather invigorating while still bringing great comfort.  It was a glorious 7 hours that stretched into 13, as I stopped in rest areas over and over again to climb into the back seat and just close my eyes and listen with more focused attention.

I love the "voice" of God.  It is why, from the time I was a small child even till today, I have often thought that I could be perfectly happy living in a small darkened, silent space (like the cell lived in by Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story") alone with my thoughts.  My family well knows that the opportunity to lie perfectly still for a moment (or hour) of non-sentience is a mini-retreat for me.  The perfect kind of spa. 

It is in these moments of total self-surrender to "the Voice" that the most remarkable insights and ideas occur.  And they don't just come and go,  leaving me with a return to silence.   They come and unite in community,  building on one another...angel upon angel...bringing new gifts to build on the one that has already been shared...morphing into even fresher, every evolving viewpoints, perspective, answers...and even more wonderfully...they result in more questions.   It is almost as if I am watching a team of angel gardeners planting, tending and harvesting a mental time-lapse garden in the space of a divine moment...or two.

My drive home was filled with "the Voice" waking me to "new and glorified views" of Her place in my heart, His presence in the desires of those I love, Their Father-Mother parenting in the lives of children of all ages...everywhere.  

Enjoy JT's video of "Sweet Baby James" a lullaby he sings and tells the story of writing one night as he drove from New England to North Carolina to meet his namesake nephew.  I think he must have been surrounded by a host of angels that night, don't you?  And thankfully, we've all enjoyed the blessing of the garden-song he harvested for over 40 years now.  I'm not thinking he was just driving along, chilling, and listening to the radio that night...he gave space to "the Voice" and what he heard was divine.

with Love,
Kate

"The sound of silence..."

"Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence…."
- Paul Simon

Have you ever spent days in a cocoon of self-imposed silence waiting for a message from God.  I have.  I have wrapped myself in quilts and spoken as little as was humanly possible as a wife, mother, healer, friend, and neighbor.  I have silenced human reasoning….you know, the lists of pros and cons, the "if this, then that", A + B = C thinking that circles back and leaves you standing there looking at the tail end of your first premise…and let's face it nothing really looks all that great from the tail end.

I have held my tongue, held my opinions, held my peace…I have waited for the moving of the waters, the winds of change, the parting of the sea.  And just when I think I can't wait for one more second to hear God's answer to my prayer for direction, comfort, guidance, inspiration….it occurs to me that what I most needed was to know something about my relationship with God.  And what I discovered in this self-imposed "silence" was my love for His voice.  And His voice…was the silence.

For me, God's voice is often the silence that actually turns a cacophony of sound into a symphony.  A friend once referred to it as "orchestrated silences". Those carefully placed silences amongst a litany of notes that turns sounds into music. 

If you can, imagine an orchestra on stage playing Beethoven's 5th symphony, not every instrument is playing at all times.  If they were all playing at once, that would sound like…well, noise.  But it is the silences, that are built into the symphony, that create the beauty of the music.  The composer is carving out silences as much as he or she is placing notes.  And those silences aren't idle.  The cellist who only has four bars of bowing during the entire second movement doesn't get to take a nap.  She is as actively engaged in that movement as the violinist.  She is marking the music…watching each note. Waiting for the moment when she is to pull her bow across the strings.  Her silence is as much a part of the beauty of the performance as the flute's lilting solo. 

I have learned something about myself, and my relationship to God - the great Conductor, during these silences.  I have discovered that I am not afraid of not knowing everything, of not having an answer, of not being self-certain…because I am God-certain.  I have learned that I  am God's child.  By this I mean that I have come to realize that like a child, I don't need to know  how something is going to work out, or when, because I so trust my Parent's love for me and His/Her ability to take care of me that I am at peace with just knowing that my Parent knows...it is enough.  I've learned this…in the sound of silence.

Mary Baker Eddy has this to say about silence in her primary work Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The infinite Truth of the Christ-cure has
come to this age through a "still, small voice,"
through silent utterances and divine anointing
which quicken and increase the beneficial effects
of Christianity.  I long to see the consummation of
my hope, namely, the student's higher attainments
in this line of light."

For me this "consummation of her hope" is a sacred goal…to speak less and let the sound of silence…the voice of God felt in the heart of man - that inbreaking song of grace…reach where human tongue has no voice.  Nothing can compare to this feeling of sublime surrender to our divine Parent's governance and wisdom.  Nothing can replace that feeling of resting in our Father-Mother's encircling arms…in the space of a silence so sweet - so full of trust - that no words are needed.

Kate

My native tongue...

"Deep in your blood or a voice in your head
On a dark lonesome highway
It finds you instead
So certain it knows you, you can't turn away
Something or someone has found you today..."

I pray in poems
Unrhymed stanzas of
long undulating metaphors and
vivid mental pictures
that pierce complacency
and leave me aching
for moments
that are pregnant with Your
infinite nearness...
your touch so familiar
I cannot tell if it is my own
hand upon my heart...or Your
fingers on the pulse of my desires
palpating them into life...
so close I sometimes
cannot see
the Forest for
the trees...

But...
in these poems
There are lines
I cannot speak
Sentences that
catch in my throat and pen
and make my fingers
hover above the keyboard
hesitant to string letters
together in a way
that will reveal what
simmers within
the chambers
of prayer

my sacred words
may
not be welcome
in 
their sanctuary

i write about
You

i pour my
prayer
onto the page
and it reads like
a lunatic woman
beating her breast
weeping and
wailing

i can't seem to find
the words to
say
how
far into
this sanctuary of earnest
     longings...
this chapel of surrender
this triage of healing and salvation
this gnashing 
and wrestling with angels...
Your eloquent silence
has taken me

is the sacred in us
so raw
and unsettling
and naked...and messy
that
all the hymns we sing
all the solos written
all the articles
all the testimonies

are only a tellable
version
of
what
causes us to
rock ourselves to sleep
...tears
pouring
out so endlessly
that we  finally
have enough
to wash
feet

were the first
40 days
so unspeakable
that he only shared
the thoughts
that followed...
thoughts that were
more palatable to
a world of followers,
admirers
and disciples
that would
make him
their Messiah

or were they so private
so intimate
so completely
self-shattering
that
he could not let them
(or us)
into that place
of deep
nakedness

I have no default behavior
no
practiced coping skills
no
false convenient mask
of acceptable words
for painting
the landscape
of
this
journey....

toward You

"I don't remember a voice
On a dark, lonesome road
When I started this journey so long ago
I was only just trying to outrun the noise
There was never a question of having a choice..."
-Mary Chapin Carpenter

Kate

"Let the River run..."

"Let the river run,
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem..."
- Carly Simon

Okay, I admit it…I love Facebook.  But not for the all the reasons you may be thinking…well, maybe some of them, too.  But in addition to the social networking--staying in touch with friends from camp and from my work at the college--there is "a something more" about this site that makes me feel like I am back in the 60s and we are rallying a movement.

Take my friend Joe…he's just out of college and has such a deep and abiding commitment to social reform that he has started a green initiative "group" on Facebook.  This young man and his ideas have great potential for becoming an environmental movement of global proportion. He's found a forum for his activism that is limitless in reach.

Or consider Warren and Megan, long known for their skirmishes with the politically apathetic. They campaigned tirelessly in 2004 for Dennis Kucinich. Today they find a new meeting place to connect with those who share their "voice of reason" (and to introduce their ideas to those who may not) on this remarkably facile online social network.

On Facebook I can hear the roar of grass roots lobbying every time I log in.  I can almost feel the wet paint on my fingers as virtual placards and signs for one candidate, movement, cause, or another is painted, and posted, each day.

Part of the fun for me is to visit the pages of those causes or groups that either interest me or confuse me…and I can wander through the virtual halls of their leaders and acolytes weighing in on issues, or just quietly listening to their debates.  This is the place I go when I want to hear the cry of the people or take the pulse of the world today.  This is where I get my prayer agenda each morning.  If something is percolating in global consciousness it is may just surface here first.  If there is going to be a Woodstock today it isn't going to find its roots in a cornfield in upstate New York…no, I think it will rise from the fertile valley of Facebook where seeds of social responsibility and global ethics are sown each day.

Yesterday I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the live coverage of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker's visit to the Senate.  The level of political maneuvering was toxic.  The live coverage (even on NPR, a network which usually leaves me feeling informed) left me instead feeling a bit schmarmy.  I didn't know whether to trust that the questions being asked by Senators, who are also 2008 presidential hopefuls, were part of a political strategy or came from a genuine desire to bring transparency about the war to their constituency and inform them in making wise decisions.

Normally I would have just hoped that The Christian Science Monitor would help me find some perspective the next day…while I continued to pray that my hard-won sense of hope hadn't been crushed.  But instead I decided to go to Facebook and "listen" to the hearts of young activists who were thoughtful and cogent in expressing their perspectives, concerns and, yes, wise "next steps" for us as voters, global citizens...and spiritual thinkers. And, I could do it at 2 in the morning when all the coffehouses and student unions were closed for the night. Here I could find a community of political night-owls still ready for discourse and action.

Mary Baker Eddy once said that, "This age is reaching out towards the perfect Principle of things; is pushing towards perfection in art, invention, and manufacture.  Why, then, should religion be stereotyped, and we not obtain a more perfect and practical Christianity?  It will never do to be behind the times in things most essential, which proceed from the standard of right that regulates human destiny.  Human skill but foreshadows what is next to appear as its divine origin."

Facebook is one invention that I was very grateful for last night.  I love the fact that spiritual, political, global, environmental, and social activists are finding a larger forum for their rallying cry.  I am grateful that as a once-upon-a-time (heck, still) bra-burning, draft-resisting, war-protesting hippie, I can weigh in, listen up, drop in, sit in, attend a love-in, or march with these extraordinary young thinkers on a global scale every night...and not get arrested. 

To be able to watch the numbers climb as groups, set up to champion candidates, swell with supporters is invigorating.  I don't feel the loneliness I often felt in the early 70s when returning to campaign headquarters (after getting door after door slammed in my face), I found the office dark and the mimeograph machine quiet.  Student campaigners today can discover, with a click, that the rank and file of supporters has risen by the hundreds between classes.  With that kind of encouragement there is so much reason to stay the course. The calvary isn't just on its way…it has arrived!!!   I can almost hear Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan singing in the background.   Well, actually they are...on my iTunes...isn't this a great time to be on this planet!

So, here's to Facebook, an "invention" that, for me, foreshadows the grandeur of Mind…the all-inclusiveness of Spirit.  This is a forum that knows no hierarchy and silences only that which is mean-spirited...or unkind. 

If you haven't visited this online peace movement that knows no political color, either red or blue (and I am convinced that both want peace no matter how different their approach to reaching that goal may be), ask your child or grandchild to show you.  Ask them to give you a guided tour of this virtual Washington monument pool filled with flower children….and policy-wonks, and lobbyists...and me.  And if you are a Facebook regular, feel free to "friend" me.  I'd love to get to know you…and your ideas.

"We the great and small
Stand on a star
And blaze a trail of desire
Through the dark'ning dawn.

Oh, my heart is aching.
We're coming to the edge,
Running on the water,
Coming through the fog,
Your sons and daughters.

It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching.

We're coming to the edge,
Running on the water,
Coming through the fog,
Your sons and daughters.

Let the river run,
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem."

See you there,
Kate

"Screaming has no authority..."

"...and a great strong wind rent the mountain
and brake in small pieces the rocks before the Lord,
but the Lord was not in the wind:
and after the wind an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
and after the earthquake a fire;
but the Lord was not in the fire:
and after the fire a still small voice."
- I Kings

The twins were active four year old preschoolers when we moved into the cottage.  Once the original house on a large piece of property in "the country",  the only remnant of its homesteader status was that it still sat on almost a half acre in the middle of our sweet historic village nestled in the middle of urban sprawl. Our modest cottage was surrounded by mini mansions and rambling ranches on postage stamp lots.

This little farmhouse was as close to "home" as we could find on this latest move from "the land of light and space" to a Midwest metropolis where nothing felt familiar.  I couldn't find a grocery store that had the same feel as our small organic market "back home" and our older daughter has gone through every ballet school in the city and still wasn't comfortable in her slippers.  Every day I felt as if I slogged from one necessary task to another with a headache knocking (no...banging) at the door of my thoughts begging me to just give up and crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

About this same time the girls were finding their own way of coping with the move.  The preschool that served the University community where we had come from was only a block from our home and the drive took less than three minutes...door to door.  If they had to go potty when we left the back door of the school they were home before the need was urgent.  If they were hungry or thirsty as they waved goodbye to Miss Zorina (really...it was perfect name for this wonderfully magical preschool teacher...sigh) they had snacks in hand and their thirsts quenched before they could say "John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith".

Our move had increased the door to door travel from two minutes and twenty seconds to twenty minutes if we fortunate enough to hit all (and only) green lights.   By the time we arrived at the back drive and I had parked the car, they were ready to explode out of the Jeep and into the back door of the mudroom that led to the kitchen.  I would be left to gather backpacks, shoes, wrinkled art projects and by the time I jostled it all into the kitchen they were at the counter with sippy cups in hand, banging them on the counter next to the refrigerator screaming "We're thirsty....we want juice"....not once, or twice, or even six times, but in a constant stream of urgency.

I would drop the gear I had dragged from the car onto the kitchen floor and soothingly say, "Okay girls, okay calm down and I'll get you juice" in my own constant stream of yogi-like calm with a silent underscore of "oh please just be quiet my head hurts so badly I can't think".   I felt bad.  I felt bad that we had moved them to this place where they were not close to preschool, where they were thirsty and starving by the time we got home, where it was cold and I felt lonely.....heck, I just felt bad all around.

One day after about two months of our little song and dance at full volume by the refrigerator door, I was at the end of my rope with the pain in my head....and my heart.  All morning long I had prayed for some relief from the discomfort.  I had tried to quiet the endless loop of "This pain is screaming so loudly I cannot think" praying  with affirmations of God's all-presence as the only source of my thoughts, but I was still in battling pain mode  when I picked the girls up from preschool.  The ride home was typical and our arrival at the house was what I had come to rely on as our new "routine".  By the time I made it into the kitchen like a beast of burden layered in backpacks and sweaters, shoes and sundry construction paper-based projects...there they were next to the refrigerator screaming "I want juice...I'm so thirsty...I want juice."

I stood there like a pack horse and thought, "Why don't they just open the refrigerator door and get their own darned juice? Then, on the wings of my morning of prayer I heard whisper from somewhere deep and knowing within me,   "Ahhh,  but don't you see, they are screaming because they know they don't have the authority to do what they are demanding that you do for them! If they thought they had power or authority they'd just DO IT!  They are screaming at you because they want you to give them the permission they know they need."   Well, once  I realized that I was the grownup in authority in this little scene I said, very calmly, "Girls, you can have juice when you put your backpacks on the hooks, your shoes in the mudroom and your sweaters in your room."  They looked at eachother, put down their cups and ran off to do their chores coming back to the kitchen where I stood waiting with the juice pitcher in hand. 

The screaming in my head stopped with as little drama when I realized that it was only screaming because it had no authority to do what it was threatening.  It had been telling me for months (and using my voice, in my head, to do it) "I am in so much pain that I cannot think", but I had been thinking all along.  It was using pain to scream its suggestion because it couldn't actually make me stop thinking.  When I realized that it really hadn't ever been able to accomplish it's threat I stopped listening.  Whether it had said you can't think, or you can't love...I always could...in some way.  I started focusing on what I could (and was) doing...rather than what it was suggesting I couldn't do.

Over the course of the next few weeks the girls would occasionally try to revert to running in the house and screaming, sippy cups in hand, banging on the counter next to the refrigerator, for juice.  But I knew, they knew, who was in charge.  I could calmly say, "First we put our backpacks away...." until one day I realized they hadn't even tried to scream for a long time.

Screaming, pain, fear, dissatisfaction are the "out of control" tactics used when someone or something knows it has no authority.  Kindness, honesty, peace, goodness, love don't need to scream to accomplish their goals, their plans...they just quietly, and with authority, go about being loving, good, peaceful, kind.

The little cottage, that for the first few month was a retreat from the reality of our move, became the very center of a wonderful neighborhood, church and school community full of new friends and activities for us all. And the new preschool, I cried when our twins graduated into first grade and left the "Pooh school" behind. Miss Zorina's shoes were magically filled and overflowing by Mrs. Warner, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Lines... And our older daughter turned her ballet slippers in for volleyball kneepads and went to national with her team four years later.

You don't have to be alarmed when something is jumping up and down and screaming for your attention, whether it comes in the guise of a fear that shakes the ground you walk on, or pain that swirls within or without ripping through your life - cold and biting like the wind in December, or the fire of dissatisfaction that would try to lick at your heels and devour your peace...these "voices" are only  threatening to do something it needs you to consent to...remember it's only trying to engage you because it can't accomplish a thing on its own...and it feels helpless..because it is.

"Breathe through the pulses of desire
   Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
   O still small voice of calm."

                                                                                     - J. G. Whittier
with Love,
Kate