"I'm gonna watch you shine..."

"I'm gonna watch you shine.
Gonna watch you grow.
Gonna paint a sign,
so you'll always know...
As long as one and one is two,
there could never be a father
who loved his daughter
more than I love you...."
- Paul Simon

Songs like this one -- Paul Simon's, "Father and Daughter" -- songs that you might hear at wedding receptions, during daddy-daughter dances...used to make me ache for a dad of my own.  Someone who would walk me down the aisle, someone I could turn to for advice about cars, and electricity, and how to build a picket fence all by myself.   Someone who would stand up for me against the tyranny of a bully, the bullying of a gossip...someone who believed that I deserved better than my even own hopes and dreams would allow.

I didn't have this.  I watched girlfriends get married and waltz across a parquet floor on the arms of their dads, I listened to brides describe their wedding dresses to doting fathers, I longed to be the fallen toddler on a playground, scooped up into the arms of her protective papa.  

But an afternoon in later winter some years ago, started  a seismic shift in my heart... from one of longing, to one of contentment. 

I was standing outside the large auditorium where our church headquarters...The Mother Church...had hosted an all employees meeting about fiscal integrity, wisdom in economy, and thoughtful spending.   I was feeling deeply grateful to one particular member of our governing Board for expressing such clear "fatherhood," when that same dear  man breezed through the doors, into the soft dusky light of a February afternoon, like a zephyr. 

Seeing me standing out of the wind, in a concrete alcove, he stopped to say hello.  I thanked him for his wise counsel during the meeting and mentioned that I'd been touched by the example of fatherhood he'd given that afternoon. 

He turned to a Bible verse that was engraved in the concrete above my head, it read:

"Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father,
and attend to know understanding."

He reminded me that it, the Word of God, had been there all along, every moment, of every day, in my life.  It had never been inaccessible or unreachable.  It had defended my integrity, defined my place in the world, comforted and supported me.  This man, himself, was a loving father, but you could see that he deeply depended on this truth in the way he trustingly parented his own children.  And in that moment, I could feel that I was no different.  He was giving me the same gift he would have given them.   There was such impersonal, but deeply loving tenderness in his care, and counsel. 

From that day forward, I dove headlong into the Scriptures whenever I felt clingy in my relationships, or neglected by the circumstances that had left me without a dad.  When I felt far away from my mom, without a friend, fearful for my children, or uncertain about the future in my most significant relationships.  I searched the Scriptures, because I knew that it was a reliable place, for me, to find the spiritual substance of my relationships...with my father, my husband, my sisters, my brothers, my friends, my neighbors.

Poetry is my native tongue, the language of my heart...So, here is how my heart boiled down this truth:


"Why don't
you hate him?
she asked
brows furrowed in
a mixture of
consternation and
disbelief.

"You really should
hate him, you know...

no little
girl,  as sweet as
you were,
should be
left...and forgotten...
like that

especially by
someone
she
loved
and trusted.

You really have
every right
to hate
him. 

"But I don't.
I say with
a new
born
innocency

I don't have that
space
left in me
anymore

The space that
was once carved out
by violated trust,
loneliness,
despair,
darkness,
and
confusion.

It is full
again

it is full of
me.

And I am innocent.

I am not
empty...at all.

I am complete...
there is nothing missing,
there is no one missing...

I am
wholly whole,
fully content,
deeply loved,
completely adored,
inviolately free.

and I know it.

"No," I say,
"I don't hate him,
I love him..."

I love him,
because,
it is
who
I
am.

there is a place
beyond
forgiveness...

I think
I will
stay
here....

It will be
my
home

it is
where my
real
Father
lives.

Our children have all been blessed with extraordinary dads...kind, gentle, attentive, selflesh, supportive men who will dance with their daughters...and perhaps even our son...at their weddings.  But it is the sense of God as their Father, that these men have given most generously as gifts, to each of our children, that will make the biggest difference in their lives.  Thank you...

offered with Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"...the root of the root of your own soul..."

"Poems reach up like spindrift
and the edge of driftwood
along the beach,
wanting...
They derive from a slow and
powerful root
that we can't see..."
- Rumi

A friend called the other day.  He asked, "My God Kate, where the hell are you these days?  I read your blog, I see the quotes you put on Facebook, and there is a part of me that thinks you've gone mad.  And then there is another part of me that thinks I am seeing you...the real you...for the first time.  It's damned disorienting!"

I nodded, from the other end of the line, in complete surrender, and with utter resignation.  "I know the feeling..." I said with a soft smile of sympathy as I shook my head almost imperceptibly.  "I come face-to-face (and heart-to-heart) with this strange, and oh-so-curiously disarming version of my 'self,' every day," I thought, "in the mirror of my own soul."

These days, I am living in a space of divine paradox.  I have never felt more grounded...and yet, un-tethered.  I have never felt more at peace...and less worried about chaos.  I have never wanted less...and had more. I have never felt more intrigued by the questions...and less interested in finding answers.  I have never felt more content with aloneness...and a better friend.  I have never felt more dead to want...and more alive with purpose.  I have never been more fully empty...and more filled with promise.  And all of this...all at once.

But, I've also never felt more clearly the healing, transformative, redemtive wholeness of spiritual consciousness. This, for me, is the space of understanding where, as Mary Baker Eddy says, "loss..." really, "...IS gain," [emphasis added]. Not, "loss is only temporary, and only seen as loss, until we get gain, again..." Nope, right here and now, right in front of my eyes, "loss IS gain."

Navigating the landscape of this paradoxical inner labyrinth always seems to take on new dimension in the middle of the night. In this quiet space, up becomes blue, light becomes yesterday, and the number nine smells like lavender. All things are spiritual, and I can walk through the flashing images of this mental flipbook, and beyond, into the contiguous space of Consciousness...where the paper is changeless, and the view is spiritual.

I have been finding companionship...during the wee small hours between midnight and dawn...in the poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, Emerson, Blake, Eddy, King David, Browning, Dane, Henley...and on...and on.  Poetry is my native tongue.  It makes sense to me, then, that this language of my own spiritual infancy, would be the most familiar...a syntax, a rhythm that rings most true...when I am seeking the voice of a friend along the way.

Last night it was my 13th century Sufi cousin, Rumi (music in video by Yanni),who sang to me in the darkness:

"For ages you have come and gone
courting this delusion.
For ages you have run from the pain
and forfeited the ecstasy.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Although you appear in earthly form
Your essence is pure Consciousness.
You are the fearless guardian
of Divine Light.
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

When you lose all sense of self
the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish.
Lose yourself completely,
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

You descended from the pure Word of God,
but you turned your sight
to the empty show of this world.
Alas, how can you be satisfied with so little?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Why are you so enchanted by this world
when a mine of gold lies within you?
Open your eyes and come ---
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

You were born from the rays of God's Majesty
when the stars were in their perfect place.
How long will you suffer from the blows
of a nonexistent hand?
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

You are a ruby encased in granite.
How long will you deceive Us with this outer show?
O friend, We can see the truth in your eyes!
So come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

After one moment with that glorious Friend
you became loving, radiant, and ecstatic.
Your eyes were sweet and full of fire.
Come, return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

The King of the Tavern
has handed you an eternal cup,
And God in all His glory is pouring the wine.
So come! Drink!
Return to the root of the root
of your own soul.

Soul of all souls, Life of all life - you are That.
Seen and unseen, moving and unmoving - you are That.
The road that leads to the City is endless;
Go without head and feet
and you'll already be there.
What else could you be? - you are That."

- Rumi

For today, this helps me understand Mary Baker Eddy's statement that:

"...conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart,
and nothing else can."

I quietly offer this....with Love,


Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Nathaiel Wilder 2010]

"...simple and profound..."

"Tis the gift to be simple,
'Tis the gift to be free.
'Tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be.
And when we find ourselves
in the place just right,
it will be in the valley
of love and delight..."

I woke with "Simple Gifts" as my morning prayer.  Simple gifts.  Nothing complex, complicated, or difficult, but simple. sweet, and timeless.  As ancient, and new, as the first cry of a baby.  Thirteenth century Sufi poet, Hafiz says:

"We should make all spiritual talk simple today."

Over 600 years later, spiritual reformer, Mary Baker Eddy would write:

"When hearts speak, however simple the words,
its language is always acceptable
to those who have hearts."

and elsewhere in her primary work on spiritual healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she would state:

"Love one another," is the most simple
and profound counsel of the inspired writer."

Here is my heart's simple reflection, in its native tongue:

The ego
begs for words...

it wants me to
say something

it 
pleads
for pithy platitudes,
researched,
inspired,
scholarly words,
rich with
similes and metaphors
perfectly mined quotations,
poetry that sings
like notes
from the
lute of a repentant King...
prayers that
will turn the key...
treatments
that unlock the door
to the
inner sanctum
of the
temple.

But they
have no
power
anywhere,
but in the heart of
the inner ear,
the space of the hearing,
the heart of the
hungry who
sits waiting
for
a simple
wafer,
a
sip
of
wine...

My words,
her words,
his words,
their words...
are interesting,
beautiful,
rich with allegory.

They are woven with
golden threads of
Scripture
and
the musings of
a
saint
who walked the
streets of
India
feeding
children,
or a prince
who
sat beneath
a tree
and wept
for
all
the pain
he'd never
seen.

But these words
themselves,
they do not
heal,
transform,
liberate...
cure.

"Love one another."

Love.

simply, love...

love one.
just one,
then,
love another...and
another...

love.

It is enough.

The Quakers understood it from the space of extended silence and a deep cavernous listening for the echoing of His breath upon their heart.  And they sway to the music that sings without words, without complex stanzas and a carefully turned phrase...and they bow to His calling, and bend to His will, and turning, turning...they come round right within themselves....within the kingdom...within.  Where simplicity is a delight.

"When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend,
we will not be ashamed.
To turn, to turn
will be our delight.
Till by turning, turning
we come round right."

Simply....gratefully,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"If I could ever say it right..."

"If I could ever say it right
And reach your hostage heart...despite
the doubts you harbor
Then you might,
Come to believe in me.

If I could only do one thing,
Then I would try to write, and sing
A song that ends your questioning
And makes you believe in me
Oh, you can believe in me...."
- Dan Fogelberg

Does God say it right...to you?  Does Love reach your hostage heart...despite the doubts you harbor?  He does in my life...and often, through "the Word."  The Word comes to us in many forms.  There are the more accepted and obvious literary vehicles.  The Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the poetry of Hafiz, tablets of stone carried down from Mt. Sinai, spiritual texts from many philosophies, religions, belief systems...all satisfy our hunger for something enriching, comforting, and edifying.  And then there is the presence of the Word as the Logos.  The Logos is often defined as "divine reason" the presence of Truth in the heart, divine discourse, an indwelling grace.  This is where God's voice feels most real to me.  This doesn't lessen, but enhances, my love for reading the Bible, Science and Health, and other spiritual texts. In their company, I find a timeless sense of community. 

Someone asked me recently, "Why do you read the Bible?  Is it so that you will have the right ideas to heal someone?" I didn't have to pause long to think about my answer.  It's one that I've given a lot of thought to.  It came in the form of a quote I read once on a Celestial Seasonings teabag:

"We read to know we are not alone."
- CS Lewis

I believe that CS Lewis got it right.  Since Mind is All-in-all.  We already include all intelligence, all knowledge, all inspiration.  So we are not reading to discover something new.  We are reading to discover we are not alone in the thoughts that keep us company in our silence, in the sweet sacred waking hours of the night, in the holiest of holies...the space of prayer.

I do not read the Bible to find something I think I have never known. I read the Bible, the Tao, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" to remember more of what I already know, already include, already delight in.  I read to feel fellowship with another thinker who can't stop him/herself from writing a "song" that forwards someone else's questioning, and helps them believe in themselves...in the presence of the great I AM within themselves.

Spiritual thinker and thought-leader, Mary Baker Eddy, said it so beautifully when she wrote:

I have nothing new to communicate;
all is in your textbooks.
Pray aright and demonstrate your prayer;
sing in faith."

Tonight I was listening to Dan's song, "Believe in Me" and I found myself wandering into the pages of the Gospels, walking with Jesus on his journey from the baptism, through the wilderness, and towards his destiny as a healer and pathfinder for spiritual thinkers of every age and tradition. 

Poetry is "my native tongue" as I wrote in this linked post from September of 2007.  And the poem that follows below, is one that I found my heart singing...again..as I kept pace with him along the dusty road earlier today.  The words and rhythm felt familiar but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before, until I was led to finally clean out a folder that had been recovered from an old hard drive two years ago.  This poem was there.  It is one I'd written in 2005 and had not read since.  It had poured out late one night when I was hungry for a more genuine relationship with Jesus.  I'd been feeling a like he was someone I spoke about...not to...or more importantly, with.  This poem was the beginning of something more timeless, present, and rich with fellowship between us.   

This is just the first poem of dozens.  Dozens of conversations with him that flow in poems.  Conversations that I've experienced on our walks through the holy land of consciousness:

the gift
descended
like a dove
...surprising

surprising
to see a dove
descending from
heaven

to hear
a
voice

to
feel the water
pouring
like
silk over
my forehead
and through dust-coated hair
and lashes

the gift descends
from
where there seems to be no
reservoir of
hope

and yet from the
unseen...
from somewhere
beyond the
clouds
there is a voice
that whispers
thunders
roars
a promise
of
love

the gift descends
and
we are caught
off guard,
breathless,
driven to our knees
in awe
wet from the
baptism,
spent with
surrender,
dazed by the
anointing

we are
on our
tiptoes
waiting
without
sandals
feet bare
unshod
on holy ground

we are
naked before
His
knowledge of
our hearts' most
unspoken
longings

egos are
shattered by His
grace,
by His
love,
by His
gift....

I am His son
He is pleased?


then why
then...
ah..."then"

the wilderness
the hunger
the temptations
the taunting
the false promises and
coercion,
hypnotic offers of bread and
celebrity

but
we
are
not
afraid
of this jeering...
snake
pharoah
satan
baal
herod
devil...

I am well-prepared...
a childhood of study...Hebrew school
Shabbat, Passover
conferring
with the elders
a stolen afternoon at twelve
alone with
doctors, lawyers, holy men
learned Rabbis
hours with the Torah
mornings in the temple
I am ready

I remember

I know...I have always known

"It is written..."

and the Word was made flesh...
and angels
ministered...
the sweetest bread
the Word...

ah yes, the gift...

you remember too...
don't you?

shared with Love,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

[photo credit: Stacey Vandermast Barton 2010]

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

Motherhood Knows No Color

I am discovering that motherhood changes us...alters our way of looking at the world around us...of listening to the way the world sings and speaks...and may even change what we think it is, or was,  saying....sometimes the the message is so arrestingly different, when listened to through those mother-ears, that it stops us in our tracks and resonates within our hearts in a new way...a way that transforms what was once simply the soundtrack of a particular period in history into a moment's inspiration...into a prayer...a message from God...speaking to universal humanity....universal motherhood...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

- Stephen Stills, 1970

A recent Backstory article in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Home Sweet Fortress" details reporter Scott Baldauf's adventures through the labyrinth of personal and home security in the city of his latest assignment, Johannesburg, South Africa.

A timely article for me.  Our daughter, Hannah, just returned to Johannesburg for another month before traveling on to her destination in a small coastal village outside of Capetown where she will spend the next year finishing her secondary education.

Hannah's epic journey to South Africa last summer was the subject of an article on safety in both the Monitor and on this Blog (scroll down October 3, 2006 blog "Securing Children's Safety" ).

When Hannah's dad and I traveled to South Africa in 1989 to pick her up as our newly adopted child, the country was in turmoil.  It was during the height of Apartheid. Our visit there was rife with red tape, governmental intimidation and uneasiness.  Under the surface you could almost feel the red veld itself under your feet, seething with repressed anger and pent up violence.  Hatred surfaced on the faces of the white government soldiers who as a matter of routine carried automatic weapons on the streets of both large cities and small towns.  That hatred was mirrored in the young black men who stood in darkened doorways with older model AK-47 rifles at the ready.  High walls and large dogs that characterized white neighborhoods all gave off an angry heat that made even the African sun pale by comparison.

One afternoon as my husband and I drove from the farm where we were staying to Johannesburg, we passed the local farm school that served the children of black farm workers in that township.  At first glance this could have been the modest playground of any private rural school.  The girls were dressed in pleated red and blue plaid skirts and collared polo shirts, the boys in navy pants or shorts and the same white shirts or red sweaters.  My husband, charmed by the sweet laughter of the young schoolboys playing a version of kickball in the yard and the little girls giggling as their friends moved in and out of double dutch jump rope, pulled our borrowed car to the side of the road to snap a photo or two. 

Looking closer, things came more clearly into focus.   Suddenly  the disparity between the scene in front of us and a schoolyard "back home" was arrestingly obvious.  The children were all black, all bare-footed. and all so thin.  Until we looked at the frail limbs poking out from voluminous shirt sleeves and pant legs which camouflaged their thinness, we were convinced we had been looking at healthy children at play.  But as arresting as this discovery was, it was not the most sobering element of what filled the lens of our camera and our hearts that afternoon.  Just out of focus, about 100 yards away in a field of tall grasses, South African Army tanks pointed directly at the schoolyard.

I felt a cold chill down my spine as I realized the depth to which the sharp blade of threat had been plunged daily into the hearts and minds of these children's parents as they weighed their child's education with their safety.  Insurgency was held at bay by the barrels of enormous military tanks pointed at small children.  The message of this silent threat was clear: their children could face what had happened thirteen years earlier when hundreds of young school children in Soweto, South Africa were massacred by South African police as the children and their parents protested inferior educational opportunities and demanded the right to be taught in their own language.  I felt faint with horror.

No wonder more than a million strong, intelligent black Africans had chosen not to take to the streets in opposition to the repression of their basic human rights.  It was love that kept them waiting for over twenty years....waiting for a Moses to march them peaceably out of bondage and bloodshed.  Our daughter was nine months old and we were back in the States when Nelson Mandela walked out of Robin's Island prison.  Hannah is now 17 and is a tall, beautiful, intelligent, proud South African citizen with dual American citizenship.  She possesses flashing green eyes and a heart for defending human rights wherever she sees them being violated...wherever and whenever someone is being treated without dignity...from a middle school classroom where her best friend was made fun of for speaking with an accent, to a Sunday School discussion where she opposed the characterization of those who supported same sex marriage as immoral. 

This same daughter, when asked about the crime and violence in Johannesburg that we often hear is the highest in the world, shared with us that, yes, there is a lot of crime and violence, and you have to be very, very alert and wise when you leave your gated, walled, security-system protected and dog-guarded home.  But, she also offered that when she is afraid or feels unsettled or threatened, she just looks for help from an older black woman.  Hannah explained that they have the kindest faces and are always willing to help you and protect you.  She went on to say they are like mothers and grandmothers to everyone and it doesn't matter that she is white...she is a child who needs care.

I can only pray my thanks to these women who once faced the horrors of daily threat to their own children's safety.  These women have strong hearts, tempered by the harshness of their past.  These same hearts have been made flexible and open, stretched from having cared for, loved, fed, clothed and in many ways educated the young white children of their employers while serving as housekeepers, nannies, maids and governesses.

When Hannah was born she was very ill and frail.  My first stop after leaving the hospital with her was our host's farm on the Botswana border where our host and her husband were entertaining friends, business colleagues, and their wives, for a holiday of safari.  When we arrived, Hannah was rather weak and I couldn't get her to take food.  I was surrounded by kindly, well-educated, white South Africans but it was the young black housekeeper, who already had a handful of children herself, who courageously stepped forward to take Hannah out of my arms that day.  The housekeeper later came to my bedroom on the farm and continued to breastfeed Hannah until she was strong enough to take milk more vigorously on her own.   This same housekeeper saw her own very young children off during a ten-mile walk each week to the local farm school.  She would leave them there and make the trek back to our host¢s "camp",  not seeing them again until she or her husband walked back to pick them up at the end of the week.

I think of this young woman today as I ponder my daughter's safety in the arms of the many Dorothy or Maria  "grandmothers" who respond to names  that an employer or sponsor gave them, not names in their native tongue that they were blessed with at birth.  I pray my thanks to them.  I send it over continents and oceans and hope it reaches them where they can be found embracing my daughter on a public bus, in an office building, or on a street corner...or most recently in the airplane lavatory on her trip here for her dad's wedding last month.  During her 15-hour flight Hannah became ill and turned to yet another kind South African black "grandmother" to help her.  This woman held her hair and cooed comfort in her ear through the long night above the Atlantic Ocean.

Nelson Mandela came out of Robin's Island and led his country out of hatred because he held the hearts of mothers who knew what it meant to love and to oppose violence wherever it raises its ugly head.

Motherhood knows no color....I feel secure in knowing that wherever there are mothers of any color, my daughter and her friends are safe and cared for.  I hope and pray that I have the opportunity be a "grandmother" for someone else's child today.  Join me....please...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

K

photo credit: photo of the children in the schoolyard was taken by
Dwight Oyer - May, 1989 - Randfontein, South Africa