New Life

This blog has reached a milestone: this post is #100. When I started last June, I thought I'd do this for "awhile." Who knew? The Spirit always arrives in unexpected ways.

My unexpected experience at the Wellness Center at the B&B near Charleston continues to change my life. I returned on Tuesday for another Reiki session and some inner healing work with Diane. It's amazing to say that in three hours one's life can change, but mine did. I have a new commitment to life and an understanding of the part that my subconscious has played in my own health.

I have always shied away from the idea that I could be contributing to my body's frailty in some way. That kind of responsibility was too much to accept. Yet the more Diane and I talked, the more I could see that I was using various symptoms over the years to cope with deep psychic pain. This line of thinking links our minds and bodies and explains the one in terms of the other. We are a system of systems and it's unlikely that our minds can isolate patterns of thinking and inner pain from affecting our bodies. Pain seeks a release and if it is ignored, it will find its own outlet.

Diane led me to face the emotions that lay at the base of my distorted view of life and the inner healing session culminated in a choice to accept and love the self that God made me to be. It sounds so simple, but it was powerful.

I played a game as a young child that serves as a wonderful metaphor for what happened with Diane. The game was called "Under the Blanket." My friends put a blanket over me and then they kept asking me to to pass out to them something that I didn't need. I gave up a shoe and then the other shoe, a sock and so on until I was down to my shirt and shorts. I remember thinking that if stripping was the price of their friendship, I wasn't going to play their game. I stood up and took off the blanket and everyone cheered. The blanket, you see, was the thing I didn't need.

Towards the end of my inner healing session, I saw myself tightly enclosed in an L-shaped box. Being in that box is akin to being under the blanket. My emotional pain had demanded portions of myself for its expression over the years and I had given up my uterus, a knee, my thymus gland, and various muscle and joints. The ultimate demand, of course, would be my life.

In the box in my mind, my torso could move a bit, but my legs were stretched out in front of me and I couldn't move them. That made me feel frustrated and annoyed. All of a sudden I pushed out the walls of the box and stood up. I wasn't going to be "boxed in" any longer. The box was the one thing I do not need: my fears and the compensations I've made for not feeling worthy.

I feel so much freer today. I know that my body will be a good barometer for how well I am coping with my own and others' expectations. I also know that my life is much more in my control than I had previously thought. This is God's gift: "I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly."

To the abundant life!

Connections

Often we talk about illness being genetic, but my experience at the Charleston Wellness Center added an additional dimension to that reality. Not only can we inherit a damaged gene or two, but we are also prey to the attitudes, fears and pain that pass from family to family as the generations pass. The wounds of our great grandparents can be as present in our own time as they were in the past because of the stories we share and the attitudes we unthinkingly absorb.

For instance, my father’s ancestors fled the potato famine in Ireland. My mother’s people left a deprived situation in Norway. In both cases, there were many mouths to feed and finding enough food for them all was a daily concern. The feelings involved must have covered the gamut from fear of want to guilt over not providing enough to shame over wanting more when others still had to be fed. To them, food was an enemy to be conquered; food was the answer to the problems of life.

My extended family and I all have digestive problems and the attitudes we have are rooted in these experiences. In our ancestors’ homes, food was always associated with tense dinner times or guilt ridden conversations. Food was the barometer that measured the quality of their relationships: providing it, eating it and giving it up as a sacrifice were signs of love. In these households, food was not nourishment for our bodies, it was legal tender. Every time we, their progeny, eat and drink, these attitudes are present in our emotional genes.

As I’ve thought about my connections to all those who have gone before me, I feel deep compassion and a strong link to each of them. They were doing the best that they could and each person in the chain bears the wounds that came with the trying. I am a product of these individuals, but I have the choice now to continue to internalize their fears or bring healing and forgiveness to them.

I’ve chosen to do the latter, but as I entered into their pain through prayer, the list of people I was remembering grew longer and longer. Each person had touched another person who had touched another who had touched another and I soon realized that I would wind up praying for the world. We are all connected to each other and because we are all in God, we are all one.

I think this is what is meant by Jesus taking on the sins of the world. He saw through all our poor choices to the pain, guilt and terror of everyone who ever lived and who will ever live and loved us all. He reached into our heart's pain and cried out on our behalf: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” and brought pure, unconditional love and forgiveness to us all.

We can look back on the legacy we’ve inherited and do the same. We can stop passing on the pain by entering into it and facing it and healing it. This is more than an intellectual exercise. In our empathy, we unite with those who have gone before us. Those in our past become present and we make room for God to bring us peace.

God's Surprises

Every once in awhile, God intervenes in our lives in an amazing way. I call these "god-incidences" because I don't believe in the other kind. This one started with a call from hotels.com that interrupted an otherwise delightful dinner at a restaurant called "High Cotton" in Charleston, SC. We were supposed to stay at a hotel in a nearby suburb and they were calling to tell us that the place had overbooked and our reservation was canceled.

They called around, but there was no availability anywhere. "American Idol" was in town! They were doing auditions for the East Coast and people had come in droves to be insulted or chosen. When the .com agent could find nothing, he turned us over to a specialist who handles difficult cases. After making another slew of calls, she found a B&B and we were finally set for the night.

It was when we looked at the hotel's web site that we realized that, indeed, "everything happens for the good...". The B&B was a Wellness center and the proprietors practiced a stress-reducing, inner healing technique called Reiki. With all the health issues that I have, this seemed to be a Divine gift that I would never have gone on my own to find.

When we arrived, our proprietress was as aware of the serendipitous nature of our meeting as I. Our conversation immediately went deep and I found myself sharing my life with this stranger. Our session was wonderfully freeing and I saw a pattern in my illnesses that I hadn't noticed before. Better yet, I was able to see that my attitude and thoughts have contributed to my health and she helped me to see that I had more control over what is happening in my body than I had thought.

There's much more to this that I want to share, but I'll save that for another post. Meanwhile, as today's scripture readings attest, "in everything, give thanks."

Carousel of Life

My life is rather unsettled at the moment. Our new pastor is making changes and he hasn't collaborated with the parishioners nor has he explained his actions. Things just happen and practices that have been a part of the identity of this church for 40 years have simply disappeared. It is a most difficult time.

When life isn't going quite the way we would wish, what's the next step? Well, for me, it's going to God and asking for some direction. It may come through a thought, a comment, a song, a scripture verse or some "chance" encounter or event, but I trust that God will, at some point, provide what's needed. While at chuch earlier tonight, the answer was immediate: the choir began to sing "To everything, there is a season..."

The lyrics have been going through my head ever since, but not the hymnal version. Instead, I'm hearing the one sung by The Byrds back in 1965:

To everything (turn!, turn!, turn!)
There is a season (turn!,turn!, turn!)

It's the instruction to "Turn!" that sticks with me. In my mind, I see myself on a carousel and as it's going round and round, I am leaning over the edge trying to grab at something passing by. "Wait! Wait - go back!" I want to say, but the carousel goes on and on as I look backward at what is retreating from my view. The prompt to "Turn!" reminds me that I must turn around and face the future instead.

The truth is, of course, that life is always moving on and to try to ossify it in one place or another is to go against its nature. In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul relates the story of his conversion and quotes Jesus as saying: "Saul...it is useless for you to kick against the goad." The gist of his meaning is pretty clear, but I've never known the exact definition of a goad. Turns out, it's a cattle prod. So the instruction is, once again, very clear: "Move on!"

My church is different. Right now, other people might be saying, "my job is different" or "my new spouse doesn't do what my last one did" or "my illness means that my life can never be the same."  All of us have the same choice: we can decide that only the past is good enough or we can try to appreciate what new strengths the new situation brings.

I know which choice is the loving one. I know which choice is the one that makes the most sense. I even know which choice I want to make. I'm just not there yet. With God's grace, maybe tomorrow. As for tonight, I'll sing myself to sleep: To everything (Turn! Turn! Turn!) There is a season (Turn! Turn! Turn!)...

The Taffy Heart

We all have friends and family members who live in our hearts in a way that is so real that we feel totally connected. It is as if when they move, we quiver or if they reach out an arm, we are there. In that heart-space is a oneness that belies our separateness; in that heart-space, we recognize that we are bound by a love that is at the core of who we are.

Right now, I see this tug of the heart playing out in a very public way because yesterday was moving day for the priests of our diocese. My parish has a new pastor who has been torn from a congregation many hours away and our retiring pastor of 17 years is moving on to his new assignment. Fr. Jim's presence lingers even as we change the picture on the wall of the Commons to welcome Fr. Chuck. Hearts across Virginia are like emotional taffy which is being pulled to bridge the physical distance brought by the change.

We all experience this tug of the heart when we love someone. To the other is where our thoughts stray; the other is where our feelings exist and our desires live. When we love, the unity is palpable. We may think we love separately, each with our own special someones, but in that experience we recognize that same love occurring all around us: Love and the world loves with you. We are all drops of water in the same ocean.

If God is Love, then it is God who is joining us. The omnipresent God is the web of our existence. We can't move without someone else being affected. We are connected, a cosmic body, joined by love and moving towards our common end. We are like a planet caught in its gravitational journey around its mother star. We are part of that gravity, all drawn to the center, to the God who keeps all of us in motion. To separate ourselves from each other or from God is like Saturn trying to break away from its rings. It is impossible; we are joined by a web of love, even if, at times, we don't feel it.

When we are hurt or angry at others, we fool ourselves into thinking that we can drive away the pain by severing our ties, but the gravity is too strong. The more we push away, the more the other is imprinted within us because the struggle is so great. We are trying to fling ourselves into space, but breaking the bonds of love is impossible; the person will always be with us in our memories and in our pain.

God is our core and there is no place where God begins or ends. That makes you me and me you and all of us are one in God. That means the panhandler who wants money for a bottle as well as Mother Teresa and the Dali Lama. In our empathy, we can change the world by spreading love through the underground connection deep within even if it is thwarted in the visible sphere.

The Kingdom comes down to this: Faith that the web of Love is true, Hope that it will make a difference and Love that stretches like taffy to touch all wherever they may be.