The path of love

Light weaves a path through these grasses 

As love weaves a path through life — 

The only path we can follow 

 That leads to wholeness. 

We’ll never get there while we’re snarling 

At the souls who blindly chose 

To follow lies and are now too frozen 

By their need to have been right 

To see their way back to the light.

Such is grace

To find beauty in the wholeness of things, 

Up close, mid-range, and far; 

Past, present, future, 

All that was and is and shall be, 

All combined into 

 This one imperfect gift of a moment: 

Such is grace.

Why cast blame?

Which do we find more beautiful: 

The reflections water casts on the boat? 

Or the reflections cast by the boat upon the water? 

And why be forced to choose? 

Isn’t it the wholeness of the scene 

That has the most impact? 

As in any relationship, isn’t the beauty in it — 

Or the darkness —

 Compounded by and greater than 

The individual contributions?

Justice will prevail

What’s now a gray day 

 Was a beautiful dawn: 

An opportunity, of course, 

To feel that things have gone down hill. 

But it also reminds us that though things change; 

The others — the staples of the view — 

The water, the sky, the clouds, the sun, 

The wholeness and underlying unity 

Of all creation, 

 The divinity that infuses every particle and atom 

Will remain constant , 

Despite the clouds that occasionally drift by. 

Take hope from this, my friends, take hope, 

And continue to believe, in spite of everything, 

That the arc of the universe, 

 Which seems so long, 

Continues to bend toward justice.

Beyond the boundaries

To see beyond the boundaries that divide us 

To the wholeness that lies beyond 

 And all around us:

 That is the greatest challenge, and it calls us 

Every day to new, magnificent, horizons.

We need you

I know that you have heard this before,

 But I want to remind you: 

You are unique, 

And the world needs your unique 

Perspective and contribution 

 To help it on its way 

To wholeness; to completion.

Embracing our brokenness

Wholeness was never meant 

To be about perfection; 

It’s about embracing our brokenness 

As an integral part of the picture.

The journey to wholeness

Always before us, there is a path beckoning, 

Calling us forward into health and connection; 

Inviting us deeper into the mystery. 

The way may be rocky, and muddy at times, 

But still we persist on the journey to wholeness.

The golden hour

Think of this as the golden hour — 

The last gasp of light, 

The last leg of the journey into night, 

When the restorative powers 

Of hearth and home and darkness 

Work their magic, so by morning 

We’ll be rejuvenated and ready 

To embark again on the journey into wholeness.

In close quarters

When dealing with humans in close quarters,
It’s best to take a panoramic view;
To accept the sweet green wholeness of their being.
But if you have to focus on one aspect of personality,
Let it be the open fields, the trees, or the sheds,
The fences or the fruits of their labors —
Anything other than the pigs:
They’re really such a small part of the picture...

The song in your heart

There’s a song playing, deep in your heart.

Can you hear it? Close your eyes and listen

To the music of the soul. Let it sing to you

Of wholeness, and love, 

and the path you’re meant to follow 

Today.

From the shores of wholeness

You are not as alone as you feel.

There’s always something reaching out to you

from the shores of wholeness,

longing to connect you once again.

Building a wall

Whenever you build fortifications

— whether around your heart or your opinions —

you’re cutting yourself off

from the beauty and the wholeness

that lies waiting in the breadth of experience.

Invitation to wholeness

The world lies waiting before you,

an open invitation to wholeness and completion.

The path to wholeness

The path to wholeness may not always

prove to be this clear,

but the light at the end never wavers.

The gift of attention and the Meaning of Life

(Warning: 2 or 3 highly charged words ahead)

Due to a variety of circumstances, I have recently taken on what is essentially a full-time job. It's a volunteer position; I fell into it because the person who had it before me is moving away and there was no one else familiar enough with the work to take it on.

So I've noticed that my meditation periods have been suffering -- it's been hard to focus, and my normal automatic 20 minute awakenings have been shortened to 15 minutes or less as I am propelled into awakeness by a compelling/distracting list of to-dos.

I've also noticed that this blog is suffering as well: readership is down, which is almost always an indicator that my posts are fueled, not by spirit, but by thought.

And as I sat in meditation yesterday morning, I was forced to face that fact that I'm finding my new role very stressful, and that's what's interfering with my peace of mind. So last night, over dinner, I sat with my husband, who is carrying a similar load for similar reasons (see explanation below) and tried to talk through what it is that I find so stressful.

Here's what we're doing (you can skip this part if you want): For the last few years the two of us have both been involved in what initially was intended to be a local radio station. For a variety of reasons it became instead a local podcasting channel which posts 3 or 4 interviews a week about people and events in our community. The man whose vision this was, who started up the organization, had hoped it would grow. But -- again, for a variety of reasons -- while the number of podcasts, and people interested in being promoted by them, and people listening to them, grew, the number of people actually involved in producing them shrank, until it was just the original visionary and his wife, and my husband, and me, with a few other folks who were peripherally involved.

Which meant that without some serious fundraising we could not afford the rent on the recording studio we were using. So we ended up folding ourselves into another larger community organization which was building a new facility that had a tiny bit of room in it for a recording studio. As a result, we no longer pay rent, but we are now responsible for providing training in a variety of media arts for the over 1,000 members of the organization we now serve. And then the visionary and his wife decided to move to Denver to be nearer their grandchildren. So my husband is now in charge of the training arm of what is now a Media Arts Studio, and I am managing the podcasting arm.

So where am I going with this? (Yes, here comes the good part.) This morning I was reading Krista Tippett's new book, Becoming Wise. She was talking about the gifts of the L'Arche community in which Henri Nouwen lived his final days, and she said this: "Loving reality in all its imperfection is the necessary prelude to discovering God present and alive." (Note: so there's your first highly charged word: God.)

That single sentence triggered a whole train of thought, which is really what this blog is about. Because I found myself thinking about what Jesus said (highly charged words #2) about the Kingdom of Heaven in Logion 51 of the Gospel of Thomas: "What you are looking for is already here. you simply have not recognized it." To me this verse has always meant that we achieve that sense of wholeness, of infinite possibility, of oneness and connection that is the hallmark of what I think of as Heaven whenever we are able to be 100% present in the moment.

Think about it. What's the happiest you've ever been?  For me it's the times when I am fully present, when I am hugging my daughters, or creating art, or (here it comes, highly charged word #3) having an orgasm; when I am completing a project and know I've done it well, when I'm teaching and my students actually hear me and learn, when I'm meditating and I actually lose myself in the moment; when I'm sitting in the living room and that first ray of sunshine pours through the window and onto my husband's chair -- any of those times when I am just here. Now. Totally in the moment. It's the gift of attention.

And then I thought -- perhaps that is the gift and curse of addictive substances and actions -- that they give us the illusion of being fully present when, for whatever reason, we find ourselves unable to embrace that moment without them. And isn't that also the source of trauma -- when an event or a life becomes so intolerable that we are forced to step outside the moment to separate ourselves from the present?

And finally the aha moment: the stress I've been feeling is not about any of the particular tasks associated with this job I've taken on. The stress is because the sheer attention involved in tracking all the tasks and people I now manage is attention being taken AWAY from the present. This odd sense of joy, that both my husband and I have been so appreciating, the pleasure we've been finding these last two years in our new home, in our lives, in each other, and in our children, has been a joy of presence. We've been able to be fully here. And now, with this work we've taken on, that pleasure in the moment is lessened by the sense that we're always supposed to be thinking about or doing something else.

Which is, of course, how most people -- consumed as they are by the various demands on their lives -- job, household, finances, children, disease, pain, loss, etc. -- live. So then the question becomes, how can we both function successfully, be fully engaged with the lives we're called to lead at this moment in time, AND be fully present to whatever is right here, right now.

I suspect that if we can find the answer to THAT question, we'll have discovered the meaning of life...

When the past enriches the present

Though I've taken advantage of a couple of recent sales to acquire new canvases, I've basically spent this summer reclaiming old paintings that I never really liked.

It's certainly one of the things I love about working with acrylics -- if you don't like something you've done, you can just paint over it, and somehow the works of the past, textures and colors, have a way of enriching what's been laid over them.

It's a little bit about redemption, to be sure; that old mistakes can be turned into something wonderful. And it's a little bit about giving myself permission to fail: you know, paint whatever you like, explore new techniques, be free with colors and forms, because whatever doesn't work can be painted over, replaced.

It's also about learning to listen to my heart, and learning to trust my instincts -- something I've traditionally found it difficult to do. I'm particularly aware of this this morning for two reasons. The first is a bit of a story; I'll try to keep it brief.

Back when I was in my 20's I had a little radio show -- Pooh Corner -- in which I read children's books aloud, often accompanied by various jazz musician friends. It was fun, I enjoyed it, and I knew even then I had a good voice for that sort of thing. So years later, after I moved to Seattle and had quit work to raise our daughters, I thought about pursuing a career in voiceover work: you can pick and choose your hours, you can often work at home, and I could be using this odd gift that really took very little effort on my part.

So, on the recommendation of a friend, I began studying voiceover with an instructor in Seattle, heading into the city every week to learn more, to correct issues, and to read various and sundry scripts into a microphone in a recording studio, listen to the playback, and correct some more.  This went on for months, and I kept thinking I'd get a demo and an agent out of the deal, but somehow the work was never quite good enough, there were always imperfections, always more work to be done; more weekend workshops to be charged for...

Eventually I decided this was going nowhere, that clearly voiceover was a dead end for me; that I would never measure up, never have what it takes to succeed in the field -- or even get an audition. So I stopped going.  It wasn't until several years later that it began to occur to me -- because I got involved with a little podcasting group -- that perhaps the problem wasn't that I didn't have the chops, but that the instructor  just wanted to keep taking my money.

So when I received an email about a voiceover workshop that would result in a demo, I decided to sign up. The workshop was yesterday, and it was terrific: not only did I learn a lot, but I got tons of positive feedback -- and it looks like I'll get a demo, and even possibly a couple of demos, and an agent (?) out of the job.

We'll see -- the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding hasn't set yet. But I'm realizing several things as I look back over this story. In staying with that first instructor for so long, and then assuming that her assessment was correct, I may have cheated myself out of a career -- simply by not trusting my instincts about my own gifts. At the same time, I am amused by how thrilled I am by the positive feedback I got from yesterday's instructor. Why does it make me feel so happy and uplifted, and why can't I generate that kind of confidence on my own, without the feedback?

And yet -- there's a part of me that doesn't trust the feedback, and wonders if "oh, you say that to all the girls," you know, it's just pat praise, because that's what gets the instructor his jobs. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in the middle of all this, but until I actually get the demo that's supposed to result from yesterday's activities I won't really know quite what to think.

Which brings me to the second story (sorry this post is so long). Yesterday our daughter sent us a link to a blog post written by a former engineer at Google, in which he blasted another Google employee who made the mistake of sending a company-wide memo saying women should not be engineers. This particular daughter, who holds a managerial position in an engineering firm (as did I, back in the day), has always struggled with imposter syndrome -- a phenomenon many women know well, that sense that we don't belong here, that we don't really know what we're doing, even if we're getting lots of positive feedback. CF my struggles with voiceover work, cited above.

The blog post was wonderful, and talked about how basic engineering skills are essentially a commodity; that an engineer's real task is to learn to make those skills work in the context of an organization, attentive to both fellow workers and the needs of the customers being served by the product -- and that those skills are exactly the sort of "feminine" skills that the Google dude was decrying.

This kind of open backlash against women, which began surfacing back in 2014 in what's referred to as Gamergate, an attack on women in the videogame industry, seems increasingly common these days as political correctness slides sickeningly down the tubes with the advent of our current administration. The feminist in me is both horrified and oddly pleased to see this kind of thinking exposed after years of knowing it existed and seeing it buried under false platitudes. And some part of me is thrilled to hear that there's a man out there who "gets" that it takes a blend of masculine and feminine skills and gifts to make something work: as the parent of two daughters, each of whom has what I believe to be a very healthy balance of masculine and feminine traits, I would like to think that the world I will be leaving behind for them will appreciate that and somehow be more into respecting gender equality.

But I digress. Let me see if I can cut to the chase here. I guess where I'm going is this: I believe that by meditating, by consciously endeavoring to stay connected to the Divine, by consciously endeavoring to listen to that voice as it filters through the wisdom of our own hearts, we can rise above the push and pull of the voices around us -- both the undeserved criticism and the empty praise -- and somehow know the truth that lies at the center of all that; the truth about what we bring into the world, and the truth about what we're meant to do in this moment, now, to give voice to wholeness and somehow bring a better world to fruition.

The results may not be perfect, anymore than any of the recordings I made yesterday were perfect. But if we can keep listening and improving, the results may be good enough to share -- like this painting, which is just so much more pleasing to me than the ones that lie beneath it. And we just have to trust that everything that went before feeds into, informs, and enriches what is now.

The incompleteness of things

Our lives are spent in an endless search

for wholeness and completion.

But it is the incompleteness of things

that pulls us ever forward into the light...

To gather, not to scatter

May your strongest impulse be

to unite, not to divide; to gather, not to scatter;

to welcome and accept, not to disperse or disband:

the invitation to wholeness is all.

An inaugural prayer

I pray today for these divided states of America,

that somehow we may find our way back

to the wholeness and compassion

that led our founding fathers to declare

that all are created equal and entitled

to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;

that we may once again become one nation, indivisible,

working together to ensure liberty and justice for all.