"i love to tell the story..."

 

"i love to tell the story

of unseen things above

of Jesus and his glory

of Jesus and his love..." 

I love to tell stories.  But it is the stories that have God as the main Character, and Jesus as the protagonist - well, those are my favorites. That is what delights my soul.  Finding this video of Emmylou Harris and Robert Duvall singing "I Love to Tell the Story," made me smile this morning.  It is simple -- and it is real.  

As an essayist -- or storyteller -- I have wrestled with the "why" of writing these posts -- for the past 16 years.  Over seven hundred essays later, I still wake up wanting to tell the story of Jesus and his love.  Of God's unfailing law.  Of how deeply and profoundly I have felt the power of grace:  "the unearned and unmerited favor of God" [Webster.] 

My wise, kind, and brilliantly talented sister-in-law shared a book with me as I headed out from a short visit with her earlier this month.  It is a collection of essays by Maine writer - and author of the children's book, "Charlotte's Web," - e.b. white.

White writes, in its Foreword:

"The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.  He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work.  Each new excursion of the essayist, each new "attempt," differs from the last and takes him into new country.  

"The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen. A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem, or a play, and leave the essayist to ramble about -- content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence.  

[But] "there is one thing the essayist cannot do, though -- he cannot indulge himself in deceit or in concealment...."  

I understand what White is saying so clearly.  Without a clear sense of purpose, these posts -- "you are not alone in your search for God," -- they could become, as White continues:  "self-absorbed and egotistical."  I still worry that they come across as self-absorbed.  But, that said, I wake up each day with so much gratitude for how God has shown me his grace.  And how his son, Jesus Christ, has inspired, guided and encouraged my every step -- every hour, of every day.  And I don't know what to do with it all.  So I write.  

Mostly I write little poems that start out as big poems that I whittle down to their most distilled essence over the course of the day. But I also journal, and make notes from Scriptural study,  and take notice of how grace is moving my heart, and observe how nature is teaching me about God's love. 

In short, I love to tell the story -- but it has to be, "of Jesus and his love."  His love for God.  And God's love for each of us.  

So, if you ever read one of these posts and think to yourself, "wow Cate, do you really think that your personal experience, observation, story is worth reading?" I can tell you -- I have probably asked myself that question thousands of times over the course of these past 16 years.  But, I can't seem to stop myself from wanting to tell the story of Jesus and his love.  And of how all nature is teaching me about God's love.  Every facet of God's presence is beautiful to me -- and rich with wonder.  So, if this seems self-important -- please forgive me.  

offered with love -- always with Love, 

Cate

"oh, i wish I had a river..."

"oh, i wish
i had a river
i could skate
away on..."

I hope this Sierra Eagleton cover of Joni Mitchell's "River," gives you some hint of how I was feeling the other night. Not so much the lyrical meaning -- but the "feel" of it. A bit of melancholy. A bit of "why?"

It wasn't that I was unhappy or feeling a lack of purpose. It was something unreachable. I felt detached. Not only from those around me, but from the meaning of the feeling itself. It felt deep and full of message, but in a language I couldn't understand.

That was, until a friend I hadn't seen in quite a few years, caught my eye across the room. As I walked in her direction, something said, "listen."

We embraced. We talked about "how long it had been..." And then she said the "something" that I knew was the message I was being asked to listen for. I felt it stir the fallow space in my heart.

"Thank you for your blog."

Really, I thought. I didn't even know she read this blog. Then, I stopped. She was giving me something profoundly dear. I realized what a gift her words were to me that night. I had been feeling like a stream overflowing her banks. Flooding a field that was already saturated. I had been feeling as if all the words that spill from my heart, had nowhere to go.

In that moment, I realized that if there was only one reader who found companionship in what I was writing -- it was enough. This blog is a conversation about God's love and how I have experienced that love. And that each post was as vital and relevant as a call from a patient, or a meeting in a coffeehouse, or an appointment in my office.

I have been sharing those experiences in words that feel as real as the clay in my hands in the studio - palpable, honest, and beautifully taking shape in sentences, paragraphs, epigraphs, font colors, a photograph, a title. They were as real as each prayer and treatment God unfolded in my heart throughout the day.

So, thank you -- if you are reading this, I hope you realize how much you blessed me the other night. I hope you feel the gift that you gave to me -- relevance.

I don't know how this will inform the future of this blog. I've been writing for it since June of 2005. That's almost 15 years of unlacing my mental corset and letting my heart be laid bare. A young friend, Megan Neale, once wrote these lyrics for a song, "You're a Good Man," that she performed in her senior presentation:

“I'll write you a letter,
my heart is dripping ink..."
 

For that is how I feel everyday. I take calls, I see patients, I pray, I give treatment, I listen deeply for God's messages of Love, and Truth, and healing -- of divinity's coincidence with humanity, but all day long my heart is dripping words. I have often wondered, "how many little pomes can you post, how many experiences can you share in one day? When will you reach that point - each day - where you seem self-important and arcane? So I have retreated into a place of restraint.

I am realizing that this is not what God wants of His daughter -- to give her beautiful experiences and the words to describe them, but then asks her to hold them back like a river restrained by self, and saddened with unshared views of goodness and grace.

I don't know how this will inform the next chapter of my blogging journey. But if you are the only one reading these posts, I will be here for you -- and with you. I will be honest. I will be as "laid bare" in my sharing as I think I have always been. And I will be faithful to the God who puts words in my heart -- words that beg to be shared. Even if just with you.

I will be the river that I, too, can skate away on -- if just long enough to let myself feel the words fly from my fingertips like sparks from the blades of my skates. And, perhaps, by writing them down, they willfind another heart to be in conversation with.

Thank you dear friend -- you gave me a great gift the other night. Your words were the voice on the other side of the conversation - and I needed them more than you knew.

offered with Love,

Kate

"write, hard and clear..."

"Don't cry out loud,
just keep it inside,
and learn how to hide
your feelings..."

Melissa Manchester's "Don't Cry Out Loud," was a theme song in my early twenties. Put on a smile, never let them know you were hurting, don't admit your mistakes or failures. How did that go?

It didn't work. By the time I was in my late twenties, I was bottoming out. I had a moderately successful career in education -- but that was about it. My relationships were in shambles -- all except for the ones where I held the purse strings and felt some sense of control. My body was falling apart, and I felt scattered all over the philosophical map -- a spiritual homelessness that I pretended didn't bother me. Sometimes it takes something as minute as a pinprick to burst the bubble of denial. Mine seemed like a slow leak.

Recently I came across a quote that served as a reminder that my journey back from the facade of self-certain control about my "story," came in a series of small moments. Ernest Hemingway once advised:

"Write hard and clear
about what hurts."  

That statement scared me. The things that hurt were ugly. I felt exposed and broken whenever I even thought about them -- how would I ever be able to write them down? And yet, I knew writing was one of my great loves. But I also knew that if I was ever to be able to write with conviction, I would one day have to find a way to write about the darkness -- in order that it might give context to the light.

After coming back into a working relationship with God - through the study and practice of Christian Science - I felt that there was so much that I was grateful for -- and I had to write about it. My life was transforming, my heart was healing, and my hopes were soaring. I wanted that to be my only story.  

But everything I wrote felt pale to me. It was all daystar. A healing of self-worth almost disappeared without the contextual backdrop of decades filled with self-destructive behavior. To the most distant star, is the night ever too dark? I thought it was. I wanted a new setting. I longed for the beautiful, good, and true to be the only page on which my life-story was written.

The problem with that was, that it just wasn't true. 

 So, now to the purpose of this post, which is ultimately the purpose of this blog.  Here it is.  I needed to say to anyone who felt that their story was too ugly to acknowledge or own, "you are not alone."  You see, I had felt so alone for so many years. I couldn't imagine that any spiritually-inspired person -- engaged in a healing ministry -- could have a story as dark as mine. It made me feel like an imposter.

That was, until I met a woman who wasn't afraid of her truth. In fact, she used the darkness of her childhood as a platform for the brightness of the lamp that God had lit in her heart.

She reminded me that Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"The spiritual sense of truth
must be gained,
before Truth can be understood."  

Note the capitalization of the word "truth." The lower case truth denotes the actuality of our human experience. The upper case Truth points to the fact that God is All-in-all. That there is no moment, situation, experience or memory that is without God's presence, power, and love. To deny my life as ugly and dismissible, was to deny that God was All-in-all. I needed to own those stories, not as human mistakes or failures, but as a divine adventure in which I could find the face of God in the most tragic moments.

I remember one very specific memory that haunted me for decades. I was being serially threatened by someone I should have been able to trust to care for me. It left me feeling like a small animal that didn't deserve to be treated humanely. But reclaiming that moment for God and recasting the story as an opportunity to find the face of God in the midst of darkness, I began to see that right there, right in those moments of terror and humiliation, I was aware that what was happening was wrong. I was clear and sure that what I was experiencing was not the way that a child should be treated.

It took me five decades to write that story. I wrote it hard and clear. I wrote it honestly and I wrote it with God - and not a frightened child or an evil grown-up - as the main character. I was able to write with complete honesty about my hurt, without having it hurt me any longer. If fact, that story elicited hundreds of notes, calls, and comments from men and women who had faced similar life-narratives. 

I found that when I write about what is hard, it suddenly becomes clear that God was always there, always with me, always giving me the courage, wisdom, strength to navigate each experience.

Elsewhere in his vast archive of advice on writing Hemingway states:

"All you have to do
is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know."

 
The truest sentence I know is always the one that has God as it's subject, love as its verb -- and me - as the one who has experienced the presence and power of that love - as its object. I can only write a true sentence from my own experience -- and hope it reminds others that they are not alone.

This is the reason I write, this is the reason I pick up the phone, this is the reason I do everything I do -- to let someone know that they are not along in the darkness -- or a pale insignificant star in the harsh light of their day.

Today, I cry out loud, and I listen quietly. I am grateful to have learned to write hard and clear about what hurts -- so that it is defanged and doesn't hurt anymore. Mary Baker Eddy writes:

"Think of this, dear reader,
for it will lift the sackcloth
from your eyes, and you will behold
the soft-winged dove descending upon you.

The very circumstance, which your suffering
sense deems wrathful and afflictive,
Love can make an angel entertained unawares.

Then thought gently whispers:
“Come hither! Arise from your false
consciousness into the true sense of Love,
and behold the Lamb’s wife, — Love
wedded to its own spiritual idea.”

." 
May you feel this wedded bliss with your one true Love - the main character in every story.    


offered with Love,

Kate

"Why..."

It seem like, every couple of years, I need to be reminded why I ever started posting to this blog. At the deepest level, the original reason is never far from my heart...but it's easy to lose sight of at times. Thank you, dear S., for your email suggesting that I revisit this post from 2007:

"You are not alone..."

"…you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart
you are not alone…"
- Jackson

Someone asked me the other day, "why do you write these posts twice weekly?". 

Was I trying to teach readers something new about spirituality? No, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy...as well as countless other inspirational books, magazine articles, blogs and websites are lovingly dedicated to this kind of pedagogy. 

Was I trying to get my writing seen by blog surfing publishers? No.  Did I have an irrepressible urge to write? Yes, but this is not the reason I blog. 

I have been writing and journaling, at least two hours daily, for many, many years…I write a lot.  I didn't need another focus for my writing life. 

So, as I sat in front of this computer screen and really pondered her question: "Why do you blog?"

Then, the AOL icon at the bottom of my screen started bouncing, up-and-down, alerting me to a new email.  I shook myself from the deep reverie of self-examination to check the message...just in case there was an urgent need for attention.

This was the email that greeted me (shared with permission…all personal and identifying information deleted):

Dear Kate,

I had a difficult day and then read your web-log ("Sunrise, sunset") and nearly burst into tears. Of all the many things I have wanted to ask you is how you bear this very thing … this changing and growing and going. I feel it as sadness and loss. I can't seem to find joy there. My little girl, the world's very best baby, is turning (age deleted). I love to see what she is becoming, but I miss the girl she was even last year.

I have more birthday preparations and it's late. I want to thank you again for your writing and the healings on your website. I turn to it so frequently during the day.

Love...

In reading her message I remembered with such clarity why I post on this blog each Tuesday and Thursday…it is not to share my insights or inspirations, it is not to see my words self-published on the internet, it is not to receive notes of praise…it is for one reason…and for me, there is just one message:

"You are not alone."

Just before I sit down at my computer,  to write a piece for posting, I try to become very quiet and listen for a silent cry that speaks to my heart. I am listening for the tears of those who feel -  that in the darkness of their own private sadness or confusion – they are alone.  That somehow, they are the only ones who have every felt this frightened, angry, hungry for compassion or kindness. 

And then I listen for my own heart.  What in me is reaching out, from the posture of "experience," to try and offer understanding, compassion, comfort, and be a beacon of faint light in that darkness.  What can I share that will assure them that someone else has been there and that there is a way out. 

I am, in each posting,  trying to say…"I will sing this song, of God's amazing grace, loudly, so that you can know that you are not alone in the darkness. To remind you that God is there…right there in your own heart… impelling you forward.

"...Just the other night
I thought I heard you cry
Asking me to come
And hold you in my arms
I can hear your prayers
Your burdens I will bear
But first I need your hand..."

To know that we are not alone...that God is there at every juncture to take our hand and lead us into our own light...is a message so powerful to me.  To know also that God has appointed angels of kindness in our lives...friends, sisters, mothers, brothers...to be the hand we feel, the song we listen for...this makes me weep with gratitude.

Here is my reply to my friend's email (with some minor editing):

Dear...

I burst into tears sometimes too when I later read the raw nakedness of what I have felt about something and posted to the blog.  These issues of motherhood and of journeying towards evolving as a spiritual  woman in a world that is constantly inviting us to want, want, want...more, more, more...are such powerful catalysts for my own spiritual development (de-envelop-ment).  They strip me clean day after day of all pride and ambition and leave me childlike in my need for a divine Parent's embrace and care.

I often find that the ideas I have shared are so new to me when I finally read them. It is almost as if I wrote them without even thinking of them...as if they poured out of my fingertips without passing through the medium of this false mind that would like to call itself sovereign in my life….memory, speculation, imagination.  That they come from a more silent space – the heart.

But as for your question - I am realizing that the best thing I can give my daughters is HONESTY about the journey.  Allowing them to think that I have it even one bit more "figured out" than I really do, is cruel and sets them up for failure by comparison.  So...I am staying focused on integrity in parenting my children...integrity of heart, mind, spirit, actions, words...emotions.

It is sometimes very messy and organic...but it is true...and I like truth...alot...

love,
Kate

This is my truth.  I don't write from a longing to be heard, I don't write from a need to say something profound or pithy....but I do write from a deep desire to answer the call of  someone crying in the dark, to let them know that they are not alone. That their divine Father-Mother is there to comfort them, as She has been there to comfort me on so many long journeys through the wilderness.

"I speak from experience."
- Mary Baker Eddy

Here is a Youtube clip of Michael Jackson's"You are Not Alone":

"Even dynamite can purr..."

"When you hear the sound from
far enough away
even dynamite can purr..."
-     David Wilcox

Those who know me, know that I love quotes.  I love the feeling of relationship/friendship I find in a shared love for ideas...and for that writer's succinct articulation of those ideas.

I also love the connections, the synapses made between seemingly disparate ideas when they move through the corridors of my heart.  That happened for me today on a number of fronts. 

It started when I came upon a tiny scrippity scrap of notebook paper on which I'd written the following quote one wintery afternoon, a couple of years ago. 

"She liked unfinished.  She liked process.
She liked moving things -- rivers, clouds, heartbeats."
-  Alice Hoffman  (The Third Angel)

The quote struck me immediately the first time I read it...and it did again this morning when I found my scribblings, in the leaves of Hoffman's book. It resonates with how I feel about things.  I like process...I am not at all eager for things to be "done."  I like the feeling of Life (vitality, creation, surprise) flowing through our lives like a river...changing and shifting its outline and form moment-by-moment. 

And by reciprocity, the river has a transformative effect on the landscape.  The "ground" which gives the river its surprisingly beautiful undulating and meandering boundaries, is changed by the river's course.  It alters those same banks...molecule-by-molecule... moment-by-moment as it carves and sculpts its host landscape.  There is something so organic and alive about things that are pulsing with process.  There is a relationship that cannot be one-sided. 

So, this morning, as I was reading this quote, I started thinking about rivers and couldn't help but start humming, "Just Around The River Bend," from Disney's Pocahontas. 

"What I love most about rivers is
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing
always flowing..."

"Yes," I thought, "it all fits."  That serendipitous sense of Life in which we allow one moment to flow into another.  When we surrender to a divine surprise.  When we are more in love with the process, than a product. 

And then I caught my friend Randall's posting of a David Wilcox house concert performance of his song, "Dynamite in the Distance" on Facebook. 

In his opening remarks David gives words to what I feel, in my heart, about the process of writing, praying, living.  He says:

"I have loved the process of writing for a long time...not the product, so much, but the process.  It's my way of finding the elements of my story that I don't want to miss, before it's too late.  

"It's about finding places in my heart that have been covered and buried, and locked in storage, and getting them back so I can be more alive. 

"So, it is bewildering for people who come, when I teach songwriting, because they are expecting me to tell them how to make a song sound like a song, how it ought to sound...how to fill out the form.  

"But I don't want to fill out the form,
I want to be informed.

"I want the song to tell me what it knows, I don't want to make it do anything.  If I start out with a guitar riff, or a little phrase, and it moves me, I trust that it moves me because it's coming from a place that I am going.

"And my heart catches a point of view as if it's a vista that I haven't even hiked to yet.  But it's a way of seeing.  It's almost as if I could see from the point of view of who I could become.  Wow...now that saved my life.

"I need music.  I need it to remind me."

"Wow," I thought, "just wow..."

Then I remembered the writings of the late Celtic sage - poet, philosopher, and spiritual luminary - John O'Donahue.  I have been swimming, floating, drowning in his words for the past few weeks. His quotes have been the thoughts I've wrapped myself up in...like the old quilts hanging on walls, and folded in piles and cupboards throughout our home.  Here are two, that are like snipped pieces of fabric from favorite old dresses.   They are so softened by wear that I often find myself stroking them whenever I am snuggled under the weight of his words:

"As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become."

"I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."

So, I don't know that this post has a punchline.  Tonight there really is no clear "message" or "product."  Just some thoughts to let flow through the landscape of your heart.  If they carve a new bank, or just eddy for a while...wonderful.  I hope you enjoy the sound of this river's song...

with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"You are not alone..."

"…you are not alone
For I am here with you
Though we're far apart
You're always in my heart
you are not alone…"
- Jackson

Someone asked me the other day why I write these posts twice every week.  Was I trying to teach readers something new about spirituality…no, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy...as well as countless other inspirational books, magazine articles, blogs and websites are lovingly dedicated to this kind of pedagogy.  Was I trying to get my writing seen by blog surfing publishers….no.  Did I have an irrepressible urge to write…yes, but this is not the reason I blog.  I have been writing and journaling (at least two hours a day) daily for many, many years…I write a lot.  I didn't need another focus for my writing life.  So, as I sat in front of this computer screen pondering that question: "Why do you blog?" the AOL icon at the bottom of my screen started bouncing to alert me that a new message was in my mailbox.  I shook myself from the deep reverie of self-examination to check the message in case there was an urgent need for attention.

This is the email that greeted me (shared with permission…all personal and identifying information deleted):

Dear Kate,

I had a difficult day and then read your web-log ("Sunrise, sunset") and nearly burst into tears. Of all the many things I have wanted to ask you is how you bear this very thing … this changing and growing and going. I feel it as sadness and loss. I can't seem to find joy there. My little girl, the world's very best baby, is turning (age deleted). I love to see what she is becoming, but I miss the girl she was even last year.

I have more birthday preparations and it's late. I want to thank you again for your writing and the healings on your website. I turn to it so frequently during the day.

Love...

In reading her message I remembered with such clarity why I post on this blog each Tuesday and Thursday…it is not to share my insights or inspirations, it is not to see my words self-published on the internet, it is not to receive notes of praise…it is for one reason…and for me, there is just one message:

"You are not alone."

Just before I sit down at my computer,  to write a piece for posting, I try to become very quiet and listen for a silent cry that speaks to my heart….I am listening for the tears of those who feel -  that in the darkness of their own private sadness or confusion – they are alone.  That somehow, they are the only ones who have every felt this frightened, angry, hungry for compassion or kindness.  And then I listen for my own heart.  What in me is reaching out from the position of "experience" that might bring them honest comfort and be a beacon of faint light in that darkness.  What can I share that will assure them that someone else has been there and that there is a way out.  I am, in each posting,  trying to say…"I will sing loudly so that you can know that you are not alone in the darkness and to remind you that God is there…right there in your own heart… impelling you forward.

"...Just the other night
I thought I heard you cry
Asking me to come
And hold you in my arms
I can hear your prayers
Your burdens I will bear
But first I need your hand..."

To know that we are not alone...that God is there at every juncture to take our hand and lead us into our own light...is a message so powerful to me.  To know also that God has appointed angels of kindness in our lives...friends, sisters, mothers, brothers...to be the hand we feel, the song we listen for...this makes me weep with gratitude.

Here is my reply to my friend's email (with some minor editing):

Dear...

I burst into tears sometimes too when I later read the raw nakedness of what I have felt about something and posted to the blog.  These issues of motherhood and of journeying towards evolving as a spiritual  woman in a world that is constantly inviting us to want, want, want...more, more, more...are such powerful catalysts for my own spiritual development (de-envelop-ment).  They strip me clean day after day of all pride and ambition and leave me childlike in my need for a divine Parent's embrace and care.

I often find that the ideas I have shared are so new to me when I finally read them. It is almost as if I wrote them without even thinking of them...as if they poured out of my fingertips without passing through the medium of this false mind that would like to call itself sovereign in my life….memory, speculation, imagination.  That they come from a more silent space – the heart.

But as for your question - I am realizing that the best thing I can give my daughters is HONESTY about the journey.  Allowing them to think that I have it even one bit more "figured out" than I really do, is cruel and sets them up for failure by comparison.  So...I am staying focused on integrity in parenting my children...integrity of heart, mind, spirit, actions, words...emotions.

It is sometimes very messy and organic...but it is true...and I like truth...alot...

love,
Kate

This is my truth.  I don't write from a longing to be heard, I don't write from a need to say something profound or pithy....but I do write from the deep desire answer the call of  someone crying in the dark, to let them know that they are not alone.

"I speak from experience."
- Mary Baker Eddy