Spiritual musings – Page 2

A visit to my mother, from the Great Mother

Dear sweet child,

You won’t remember this vision when you wake. You’ll only feel the echo of my message, but please trust this echo, and revisit it often as you grow.

I want you to know that you are god. Holiness lives and breathes through you. There is nothing you can do to stop god from being you. You can only dim or brighten her light. You’ll know the vibrancy of this light by the signs your body gives you, so it is of upmost importance that you learn all you can about this body— about the parts you can see and the parts you can’t.

Let the body be your compass.

Make friends with the breath, the heartbeat and the pulses that respond to your surroundings. Discover the ways your body prefers to move. Know your belly and what it desires as fuel for your play.

Play with your body.

Give great care to each and every one of the body’s portals to the outside world. Pay close attention to where your body gives and receives energy; observe how it excites and how it recoils. Learn what depletes the body too. Know which environments, situations and conversations stoke the body’s fires and which dim the light.

Take exquisite care.

Know also, sweet child, that God is nature. Be in nature. Observe carefully, learn from the patterns of her plants and animals. Listen to the water and to the stones. Know in your bones that you too are nature. Study your seasons and cycles well. See your patterns. Feel your feelings.

Feel your nature.

Finally, sweet baby of mine, know that just as you are god, all other creatures on the planet are too, in various shades of dimness and brightness. Pay most attention to your light, protecting it and caring for it while letting others tend to theirs. Do not confuse your light with the light of others. Do not give permission to others to control your light.

You are the keeper of your light.
You are the keeper of your light.
You are the keeper of your light.

Sweetest dreams to you, my love. I am here.

Always.

Art credit — Priyanka Rawat Sharma

Late summer thistle

This isn’t the first summer in which grief has tried to wrap her arms around me. Sometimes she shows up just after the solstice. Other times she waits until the Fourth. She generally lets me be on family vacation, but no doubt has her claws out come time to buy school supplies. She visits in response to the shifting sun, the abridging days and the upcoming autumnal new year— kids each a grade higher, me a year closer to elder hood. Grief reminds me of the poignancy of life, digging up regrets and I-wish-I-would-haves that go dormant in other seasons. This is the anxious anticipation of returning my people to society, duty and academic formation. I feel an ancient sacrificial ache.

This August I’m grieving a bit differently. I’m crying openly at the pool, while chauffeuring the kids and as I lie curled up on the couch on a beautiful day. I’m admitting to people who ask how it’s going that I’m sad. This summer I’m not shrugging grief off. I’m letting her have her way with me. I’m saving my fighting energy for something more productive. I’m succumbing to the sweetness and the requisite flip-side of being in love.

Summer invocation

Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity. — Simone Weil

Today is the last day of non-summer break for me. Tomorrow afternoon the house will once again be full of boys. I feel the urge as I do every year to create lists: goals, expectations, screen-time rules, guidelines for sharing communal space… but I’m being pulled to approach this summer a little differently.

This summer I want to help the boys (and myself) be really aware of our energy and our attention. Where we put our attention grows. I want us all to increase our awareness of both where we are directing our attention and how our energy feels when our attention is shining in different places. Are we antsy? needing to move? to rest? to be outside? to be in water? to create? How is our energy affecting others? How is the energy of others affecting us?

I am realizing that more than I want my babes to be rule followers and contract honorers, I want them to be in touch with their ever-changing needs and desires and tuned into their relationship with their environment. I want them to understand the importance of attention and the power we can harness by placing our attention on purpose.

For little bits each day I want to focus my attention upon each one of them so fiercely the generosity is palpable.

My pro-choice conversion

Growing up and into my early twenties I was both a good Catholic and pro-life. Though I could see lots of holes in Catholicism, I didn’t see any wiggle room in my belief that every life created deserves a chance. This was an easy belief for me to have. I grew up comfortably, in a homogenous middle-class, middle America town. I didn’t see much poverty and the only case of violation I knew personally was that of a dear friend who was raped orally, which though completely rocking (and still rocking) our worlds, didn’t have us worried about pregnancy.

Though we didn’t talk about sex or pregnancy at home, I knew what the consequences would be, and the one my teenage brain was most worried about was humiliation. I did not want to walk around town with a scarlet letter in my growing belly. I knew two girls who had teen pregnancies, one gave her baby up for adoption, and the other chose to raise her daughter with her family’s help. I said prayers of honor to both. They were the bravest women I knew. The whole world was aware they’d had pre-marital sex, yet they held their heads high and went about their business as mama-warriors. Their stories strengthened both my fear of sex and pregnancy and my pro-life stance.

Being a staunch pro-lifer, senior year in college I did an internship at a home for teens that accepted those who were pregnant and/or parenting, as they were difficult fits for foster care and the state’s juvenile detention center. My favorite part of the job was accompanying the girls on outings. One day the outing list included taking a girl of twelve to a doctor’s appointment. I wasn’t thrilled as she always smelled of urine; she was a bed wetter and an infrequent bather.

In the exam room the doctor went over the list of the girl’s medications, lithium for Bipolar Disorder among them, and then asked if there was a chance she could be pregnant. I didn’t even look up from my magazine, knowing she wasn’t in the mothering wing at the home and knowing it would be difficult for anyone to crawl in bed with her. Besides, she seemed to be the social/emotional equivalent of a preschooler.

Yes, she replied.

Do you know who the father could be? asked the doctor.

Either my uncle or my cousin, she said matter of factly.

Time stopped for me. I can remember the moment as if it were yesterday. Reality as my 21-year-old self had known up to that point was forever changed.

That moment marked my unwavering conversion to being pro-choice.

I knew deep in my bones that if she was pregnant and the decision was left to me, I would choose to abort this multi-med-absorbing embryo-of-incest. Not doing so wasn’t fair to the future baby, nor to the bed-wetting, friendless and family-less child of the state.

From one second to the next, the world became much more complex, and much less black and white, than I had ever imagined.

And continues to be so.

Out beyond

I acted hastily this week, as I often do.

Interacting with the world without mindfulness frequently leads me to opportunity for apology, loss of -or damage to- personal property and the need to redo tasks. I am aware of this, and in the last few years I have slowed down significantly. That said, just last week upon leaving one of my favorite clogs in an Argentine hotel, I was witness to the mental beating I still give myself for being careless . Continue reading Out beyond

Yirah: magic fear

Earlier this week we had a friend over who had recently watched the documentary series Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds. Her multiple references to the program over dinner inspired us to snuggle up between the ancient crackling fire and the modern flat screen TV to watch part one. Full-bellied and sipping cups of tea, the boys took it in with a mixture of perplexity and boredom until the violin scene. In this scene the camera showed a violin being played before a tray of sand and the sand responding to the frequency of the music by forming beautiful geometric patterns– familiar to anyone who’s seen a mandala or indigenous pattern on a piece of art. All of a sudden Gus was jumping up and down, covering his eyes and begging for it to stop.

I don’t like magic! Magic is scary! Shut it off!

At the time, I thought it was super cute and interesting, especially coming from the boy who still believes in Santa and begs to watch any scary movie his brothers may be watching. The next day the scene was still at the forefront of my mind and worthy of a mention to a close friend. Today I’m seeing the relationship between Gus’s reaction to the magic moment in the movie and my reaction to seeing and feeling magic in my life.

Often I feel chills as I realize the power of sending a wish, making a vision board and more recently creating my first altar of intention. The tingles come when I sense the universe is responding to a question I have posed or a request I have made. When I ask to learn something and the lesson-opportunity shows up quickly, or when I have a flash of insight and the lesson gets reinforced by a story in my newsfeed or a book recommended by a stranger, I feel connection to the universe. I sense the role I play in co-creating and conversing with her. Lots of times this whooshing feeling of connection feels empowering, supportive and delightfully playful, but other times I respond like Gus.

I don’t like magic! Magic is scary! Shut it off!

And then I do what humans do. I eat it, social-media distract it or busy it away until I feel I’ve landed back in my comfort zone (albeit a bit numbed and detached). Eventually, I am ready to crawl back out, so I make the wish, set the intention and the cycle begins again.

Awareness is the first step to change right?

I am hoping with awareness of my fear cycles I can begin to shorten the time I spend in the disconnected zone. Besides awareness, another catalyst for change is looking at things from a different perspective. As someone who has dealt with anxiety since my teenage years, I welcome a better understanding of fear. Recently I’ve been reminded of a long-forgotten interpretation of fear that is helping me to reframe my anxiety both around the sacred and the mundane, which I’m finding more and more to be one in the same.

According to Rabbi Alan Lew, the Old Testament speaks of two different kinds of fear.

Pachad: an overreactive, imagined and projected fear that sees danger and threats; the panicky lizard-brain fear for survival that often includes unconscious thoughts such as rejection could destroy me or I could combust if I step out of my comfort zone

and

Yirah – the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of more energy than we’re used to, when we’re taking up more space than we’re used to and when we feel that we are in the presence of the sacred

I am betting that both 9-year-old Gus and myself are experiencing moments of the yirah type fear. We can sense that the sacred is being made known. This is weird and scary, so we want to stop.

But it’s also exciting.

Perhaps being able to more specifically name the fear as well appreciate that humans have been experiencing it for time unknown can help us ride the sensation of awe and connection with a little more trust.

And joy.

Heart cage expansion

Basking in the afterglow of a lovely Valentine’s Day, with a full heart I realize I have made it to a new level, as if I’m participating in a live video game. I have earned some sort of badge that has launched me up a rung on the ever narrowing spiral of vertical development. (I can almost hear Mario sounds). Although I’ll continue to have trials, I know it will only be possible to fall so far, due to some sort of safety net. Perhaps it’s the support system I’m building, the faith I’m cultivating, or the expansion of my physical heart space and the softening of the tendrils surrounding her. In the future I may feel like I’m sinking lower than ever, but in reality I won’t be, because the learning I’m doing is integrating at a cellular level that my gut says is impossible to un-know.

My body and spirit know that…

I am deeply connected. To all humans, blood relation and non. To the earth, to the rivers, to the whole vibrating planet with all of her multiple legged and sans-leg creation, and this web of connection is un-severable.

I create my reality. With spoken and unspoken words, intention and attention, I choose what to see and how to interact. Even if I find myself in physical constraints, I get to decide which thoughts to entertain.

Pain is a blessing. She lets me know I am alive and what part of my body or psyche needs care and attention. She lets me know when a relationship is asking to be examined and handled with care. She is my canary.

Fear is a portal. Like pain, fear provides an entry point for growth and understanding, as well as access to magic. She lets me know when I’m approaching the sacred. Without fear, courage doesn’t exist, and with courage the game cannot be played.

I am worthy of joy. Extended happiness, even bliss, doesn’t mean there is a monster waiting to sabotage. Joy doesn’t mean I’m cheating or not pulling my worldly weight. Joy is part of the human condition I am cultivating.

I have helpers and guides everywhere. Whether in the etherial form of angel and ancestor, or the concrete form of my favorite authors and podcasters, they are always present and ready to cheer me on.

Sisterhood support is for real. My blood sister, the sisters I circle with, and the women I meet on the street know what I may temporarily forget, and they are willing to remind me of my innate wisdom when I may need a gentle nudge or a firmer push.

All this is really truly sinking in. I see it in the resiliency that I am demonstrating, the paradigms that are shifting, the conversations that are evolving and the beautiful life that I am co-creating.

Thank you universe, for partnering.
Thank you friends, for supporting,
Thank you family, for sharing lineage and story.
Thank you medicine wheel, above, for showing me just how playful this game can be.

Finally, thank you, Max, for gifting a token of love and validation yesterday, and for launching me into the biggest realm of growth I have ever known: motherhood.

xoxo,
mm

Dancing with the divine

I grew up reciting at mass at least once each week

I am not worthy to receive you, only say the word and I shall be healed.

This phrase, more than any other, formed my early understanding about my place in the world. Repeating it each week I came to believe not only that was I unworthy, but also that I was at the mercy of an agent outside myself to heal from this state. I had paid attention, so I was well aware that this agent was capricious and difficult to appease. I knew he had sent his son to help me out. His son had died for me and for my sins, and because of that I should be on my best behavior.

Making my first reconciliation further solidified my beliefs. In this sacrament I learned that by sharing a few of my sins with a priest and doing whatever he prescribed as penance, this agent would forgive me of all my sins; my soul would be pure. I remember confessing, reciting the assigned prayers, and then quickly fucking it all up in an altercation with my younger siblings. I remember thinking my soul’s cleanliness was an all-or-nothing situation and that I was dark with sin once again. I wonder now if this transactional encounter with a God-broker was the beginning of my black and white thinking. I wonder if it was the beginning of my perceived lack of agency. I wonder if this was when I began to back away from the magic of the feminine.

By seven, I had already formed a habit of reciting multiple Our Fathers, Hail Marys and Glory Be’s each night, and I added my own version of prayer:

Please God help me to….

Please God let so and so do ….

Please God, Please God, Please God…

To this day I find myself in a knee-jerk reaction reciting a Hail Mary whenever I hear a siren. When I’m super stressed I’ll throw out an unconscious Please God as well, but other than that, my relationship with my childhood god dwindled to almost nothing by my twenties.

This lack of relationship saddened me when I allowed myself to reflect on it, so mostly I didn’t. But the birth of my first child forced the issue. Would we baptize? Would we raise him in a spiritual community? Would we celebrate Christian holidays? All signals from my body and conversations with my husband led to no. The no man-god-in-the-sky decision was mostly okay, except when I was feeling cultural guilt about not teaching my children about him, or when I was wanting community on a Sunday morning.

Over the years, I’ve let the sadness and guilt fade pretty much into the background, finding my connection and spiritual nourishment on the yoga mat and in circle, the outdoors and sacred ceremony. I’ve cultivated a serious gratitude practice as well as a deep relationship with intention-setting. It wasn’t until I was preparing for a recent circle that I made the connection:

Setting an intention is prayer (but without the guilt of unworthiness, nor the belief in dependency)

This may seem like a major DUH, like most bumper-sticker realizations, but it was a huge opening to me— realizing that I haven’t turned away from God over the years, but rather I have turned toward her—- simply from a place that resonates more profoundly. I have found a way to engage with the divine in a more mature, trusting and less co-dependent manner, a more playful manner. Instead of begging a father figure to grant me what I believe I need, I have been sending desired wishes (prayers it turns out!) into the universe to be used as guiding stars as I act on my own behalf, making decisions aligned with my intentions and following gut instincts and the universe’s winks to lead me in the direction I want to go. As author Liz Gilbert would say, I am a co-conspiring with the universe.

As I say, I am dancing with her!