Breathing God?

I am just beginning to read The Naked Now by Richard Rohr and am struck by some very simple yet profound thoughts.  The Jewish name for God, YHWH, was considered unspeakable.  It wasn't that it was a 'taboo' to speak the name of God, as I always believed, but that it was literally not something that could be shaped or spoken by the human mouth.

But it gets even more interesting.  The word wasn't spoken..... because it could only be breathed!  The thinking goes that the proper 'pronunciation' for YHWH is actual the sound of inhaling, then exhaling.

Imagine!  The thing we do naturally from the moment of birth to the moment we leave this earth - from womb to tomb as the boys used to say - is breathe.  And in so doing, we say/pray the name of God every moment of every day, sleeping and awake, in our torment or despair as well as during our bliss.  God is available to everyone in every moment.

This author went on to say something - not really 'new' but stated in such a simple way - that it made me laugh out loud! There is no Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu way of breathing.  There is no American or English or African or Chinese way of breathing.  There is no wealthy or poor way of breathing.  We all breathe the same way, the same air, for the same reason for the same moments of our lives.

Not long ago I listened to a lecture that beautifully overlaps with this line of thought.   It was suggested that the word for 'heaven' in the ancient text actually means 'the air that we breathe', so that when we pray the Universal Christian 'Our Father',  we are actually identifying 'our Father' as the air that we breathe.  All around us, all the time, inescapable except in death.  And even then?

"And isn't it wonderful that breath, wind, spirit and air are precisely nothing - and yet everything?"

"Just keep breathing consciously in this way and you will know that you are connected to humanity from cavemen to cosmonauts, to the entire animal world, and even to the trees and the plants.  And we are now told that the atoms we breathe are physically the same as the stardust fro the original Big Bang.  Oneness is no longer merely a vague mystical notion, but a scientific fact."

Breathing God.  Breathing God!

The Missing Rib

There is a story that God made man from the dust of the earth and woman from a rib removed from man's side.  The idea is that man was made first and woman was an afterthought..... the missing rib that caused man pain from the moment of creation.  I am well aware that there are a lot of men who still think this is an apt analogy. 

I was thrilled to find a venue in the form of World Pulse that allowed women from all over the world to tell their stories of courage and strength and with their words dispel any thought of second-class world citizenship.  When the invitation came to write about personal heroes in honor of the 100th anniversary International Women's Day I was excited and then stumped.  What one woman is my hero?  There are so many women I admire and cherish and want to emulate.  My mother prayed me into existence and nurtured my dreams and inspired me to reach for the stars.  Many teachers nourished my mind and my hopes and aspirations. Friends throughout the years have encouraged me and cheered me on and held me when I hurt or stumbled and fell.  My daughter inspires me every day to continue to want to make the world a better, kinder place for her.

But choosing just one has been problematic.

And then it occurred to me that it is all of the women of the world - the mothers and teachers, sisters and friends, grandmothers and aunts - that inspire me and give me the hope of a dream that this world can be lovely and kind and compassionate and fair.  

It is the women of this world who are caring for the children orphaned by disease and war.  It is the women who bake the food that goes into homes of families that are wailing with grief over a lost loved one. It is the women who rock their hungry children to sleep at night, listening to stomachs rumbling while they sing the lullabies that help their babies forget.  Women are there when friends are sick or troubled and need a shoulder to lean on.  Or cry on.

It is said that the women of the world do two-thirds of the world's work,  grow 1/2 of the world's food while earning 10% of the world's income and owning only 1% of the world's property.   Startling and impressive statistics that make a person truly think. 

And I have always believed it would be women who eventually said 'no' to war and violence and hunger and greed.  It is the women who have delivered cherished babies in blood and pain that know life is precious and not to be wasted on the battlefields or in the violence of the streets.  No woman sends a son or daughter into the killing fields of any battle without something dying inside of her.

A friend of mine recently wrote a poem about the idea of women holding up half the sky.  The imagery of the metaphor is haunting and beautiful.  The other, equal half is held up by our men who we love and want and need to walk with us through all our lifetimes.

And still, the half that is held up by women will be better for the living out loud, raising our voices and expressing our ideas and dreams and asking - expecting - to be heard and included and admitted and deferred to when what we say makes more sense.

So I have to thank the women of today, of days gone by as well as days to come for their courage and wisdom and love to keep holding up their half of the sky while keeping most of the world running underneath it.

And, if the story is true, I have to thank that man for giving up his rib so that we could do it all together. 

Be Thou My Vision

One of the most beautiful hymns I know is Be Thou My Vision.  Countless times I have stood in a congregation on Sunday morning feeling a little dis-sorted or un-something and then this hymn is listed as one to sing, the organ starts playing, the congregation stands and I am in humbled and thankful awe, once again, for the blessings of God Moments and serendipity and community and small miracles.



Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, Be Thou my true Word;
Be Thou ever with me and I with thee, Lord;
Be Thou my great Father and I thy true son;
Be Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my breast plate, my sword for the fight,
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight.
Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower.
Raise Thou me heavenward, Great Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Be Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Be Thou and Thou only, the first in my heart,
Thou Sovereign of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heav'ns Son!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be Thou my vision, O ruler of all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_qL6FNwEsY&feature=related

Amen.  Amen.  Again and again. Amen.

The Christmas Rose

There is a lovely Christmas song....  that anyone who ever sang in a school or church choir probably had the great privilege to learn.  The notes float out and around you and if you are lucky enough, you sing in some wonderful venue where the notes resonate around the room and back, singing, ringing, floating in a kind of Christmas music magic.  The last time I sang this, it was with my precious children for a Christmas Eve service.

My memories are many - and sweet - of singing with my children.  From the first days of their lives, holding them gently in front of me, looking into those eyes that were so recently bound to me physically... inside of me, and now were a separate, breathing, heart-beating entity magically and lovingly created.  I sang 'Ash Grove' and 'Summertime' and 'It Had to Be You'....... and continued to sing them every night putting them to bed after lights were out.

There were long car trips home to see grandmothers - 'journeys of misery' as my drama-queen daughter dubbed them - where we played the 'Matching Game' and sang at the top of our lungs along with the songs, repeated time after time until we were ready to move on, starting with all things Raffi and Hans Christian Andersen - 'Down By the Bay' and 'The Ugly Duckling' will always be songs with a story in our house - and eventually on to the Broadway musicals that inspired my talented babies eventually to recreate on the stage (Godspell and Les Mis to name a few).

I remember the first Christmas Eve service that my children stood with me in a darkened sanctuary and sang 'The Friendly Beasts'.  That first Christmas Eve was the beginning of many family performances, eventually leading up to us singing together as a complete family - Tom included.  Tom will say that these are among his favorite memories.

And there were the nights sitting in a darkened theater waiting to hear those grown babies singing from the stage while I sat, breath held, in the audience. And, yes, crying.  For joy.  For the memories.  For love.

Babies.  There is such magic and such power and such overwhelming and profound love that goes with that word.  So much so that just trying to write this, the tears are streaming down my face.

And this time of year, I think of the baby that this whole season was created to celebrate.  The Christmas Rose.  My relationship to this baby is simple.  I call myself a "Christmas Christian" because it is the life that this baby went on to lead that thrills and inspires me.  I don't need or care whether he was the result of a miracle any greater than the pure miracle of conceiving and bearing a child into this world.  I don't need a 'virgin birth'.... but I love the story and the tradition and the life that was the reason the story was ever told to begin with.

And I think of the mother, young and frightened, huge with a child that I know she wondered about.  I'm referring to true 'wonder'... filled with awe at the absolute miracle of being able to help create and grow inside of her a human life until it was able to take its first breath independent of her body.

All mothers feel this way, don't they?

And then the miracle of delivering that child into the world and getting him through his first year, alive and well and walking.  And then helping him learn to 'be' in this world on his own, year after year, kissing boo-boos and rocking to peaceful sleep and cheering him on as he continued to grow and separate more and more from where he first started.... deep inside of her, connected and part of.

And I remember standing in front of The Pieta in St. John's Basilica in Rome with my husband and the father of my babies, and weeping with him, at the sheer power and beauty of a mother's agony and love, holding her precious child in her arms.  I was looking at a marble sculpture, but could literally feel the searing pain of that mother, holding her grown baby in her arms after his life had been extinguished.

At that moment I wanted to rattle the rafters of every public/political building in the world and throughout history that had ever entertained the discussion of war and death.  I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs that babies were never made to slaughter.  Only to love.  We make our babies to live and thrive and love and continue on in the world, not to march into war and die.  Mothers would never declare war.

Would they?

Tom and I had been to Florence and saw so many of the Christian paintings of pain and torment and death.  We wondered how anyone who had not been steeped in the stories of Christmas and a loving Christ wouldn't be frightened away by these images of sorrow and fear.

But this one sculpture, this Pieta..... this one silent declaration of love and loss and love eternal..... this could change the heart of anyone.

No, I don't need a virgin birth.  And I don't require someone else dying for my sins.  I believe we were all made in the image of God and will - all of us - return to that light and love, regardless of choices made or beliefs or lack thereof.  I do pray for peace and compassion and enlightenment and awakening.  And I pray that everyone who wants to hold a baby in their arms - and to sing to - would have that chance.  And to see it grow strong, healthy and happy into a world of peace and purpose. 

Because that, to me, is the Christmas miracle.  That we can experience a Christmas Rose of our own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyuOIYCERc4

Merry Christmas.  Blessings and love.

Trees

Trees captivate me.

Some of my earliest memories are of trees.  I remember lying in the grass and watching the sunlight playing through leaves and just....wondering... about being alive and breathing and being in love with that perfect moment of stillness and beauty. (We are so wise as children and then, for some reason, we lose it.)

My brother Paul and I used to scout through the woods looking for treasure and adventure and one day discovered a magnificent beech tree.  This particular tree was like a ladder to the clouds and we knew we had discovered something incredible.

The first thing we did was climb that behemoth!  The branches were close enough to the ground that small people could easily reach and swing skinny legs up and over and then it was just a hand-over-hand climb up, up, up.  The trick was to keep climbing and always concentrate on the next hand and foot hold... and never, ever look down.  I know this because the once that I did look down, I was frozen in place.  My precious brother and best friend had to help me down, one branch at a time, until I was close enough to earth that I felt safe.  Lesson learned?  Keep looking up.

We immediately ran home and reported our find to our mother who promptly agreed to be shown this monster tree.  She put aside the work she was doing and followed her excited and happy children back into the woods to check out their discovery.  Mama had exactly the same reaction to that tree as we did.  She started climbing.  It is a wonderful thing to discover for a child that you have a mother willing to drop her work, follow you into the woods and then climb an enormous tree!

When mom moved into her current home, she wasn't satisfied until she had a beech tree sapling planted squarely in the middle of her enormous back yard.  She planted it for Paul and me.  That's love.

Over the years I have continued to be drawn to trees to the extent that my husband refers to me as a Druid, an apt moniker.  He has had to stop the car in order for me to take pictures of particularly striking trees.  I have an album dedicated to the pictures taken over the years and a dream to publish my work or display it somewhere.  Tom has seen me throw my arms around particularly impressive trees as well as witness me mourning the mutilation or death of trees.

The only thing sadder than the untimely death of a beautiful tree (through storm or fire or ill-planned construction) is the scalping of a tree in the name of tree husbandry called topping - as if something akin to tree torture could be considered beneficial to the life and growth of a tree.  I know that those responsible for this kind of abuse believe that they are doing the tree a service but they wouldn't dream of cutting off fingers and toes of a child to help them grow better.  I see no difference.

But enough of my personal rant and back to what I love.....

There is something profoundly beautiful about a tree in winter.  Partly because without all the dressing of green or outrageous fall colors, a winter tree stands proudly naked for all the world to see without regard to age or infirmity assuming, of course, that it hasn't been trimmed and topped and pruned into submission or some other definition of beauty.  A winter tree shows us what it is truly made of.  We can see that each species of tree has a specific shape and quality making it uniquely an oak or a maple or a sycamore or a walnut.  It doesn't hide its weathering or wear.  The breaks and falls it has taken over the years can be seen, but one can also see the self-healing the tree has accomplished given enough time.

Ruthie B is in love with trees for all these reasons.  I especially love the metaphor they represent to a life well lived -  their strength and individuality and character, their ability to provide shelter and protection,  their invitation to climb and explore and reach for the stars.... and their willingness to expose their hearts for all to see.

Thanks

It is the last day of November as I sit here capturing this thought.  The Christmas lights have been officially lit on 'The Plaza' and the Mayor's Tree is aglow.  The seasonal songs have long been playing on radio stations and in stores.  How we do love to rush our holidays in this country!

Oh, I love the nativity and the carols and the coming snow and the twinkling lights and presents under the tree, too.  But it is this holiday of food and family and parades and footballs games and gathering together that I am most thankful for.

Because?  Because of the promise that Thanksgiving makes to all of us.

It is the one day that, all family strains and cares aside, we really do understand we are expected to stop and reflect and be thankful for everything in our life.  Every wee thing.  Every major thing.  Everything.

And I am.  Boy howdy, I am!

At a recent writing workshop we participants were given a list of journaling tools to help our writing juices flow.  One of these tools is to keep a 'Gratitude Journal' in which we would write every day three things we are thankful for then answer why these good things happened to us.  What did we do to bring these good things about?  Then, once we understand what led to these, keep writing what else we are grateful for.

So, I wrote.

I am thankful for my family:  For my mother, who prayed me into existence and who lived selflessly all her life for her children.  For my husband who knows me better than (almost) any other human being on this planet.  Who understands my passions and moods and need to GO!  Who has loved me through the ups and downs of an often-tumultuous marriage and has stood by me when I needed encouragement and behind me (pushing or kicking) when I needed a little more.  And for my children without whom I do not honestly know how I lived before.  They are the reason I was born. 

What did I do to deserve these precious people?  This is a hard question to answer.

I lived and loved.

I am thankful for my healthy, strong body.  I am incredibly aware that I am fit and strong despite my years.  This isn't an accident.  I spent plenty of years being not so fit and healthy, just getting by, getting on airplanes, going from one hotel and one company event and meal to another and not really paying much attention to the toll it was taking on my body.

Then one memorable day I was in Colorado traveling with my young children and husband and looking at the sign at the head of a mountain trail deciding if I 'had it in me' to make it up what had been warned was a 'strenuous' trail.  I was saddened and dismayed that at the tender age of 40-something I was really questioning whether this trail was something I was capable of doing.

So, what did I do to bring this thing about?

I listened to my heart's desire and started walking.

At first I used my poor dog as an excuse to get me going.  He walked with me until he just couldn't anymore and would lie down in the shade getting his second wind, looking at me pitifully to just, please, stop already!  And I kept walking. Eventually I walked 60 miles in 3 days as part of a cancer awareness walk.  Then I walked 27 miles in one day just to know I could.  Now I am hoping to walk across my state of Missouri next year with a delicious band of Wild Women who will be walking across the U.S.A.

I am thankful for my mentors and teachers and friends.  They have instilled in me my wish - my prayer - to speak and live my truth with courage and wisdom and love.  They have encouraged me to use my outside, out-loud voice and not be afraid of what will come out.  I thank you Diane and Orlando, David and Charlie and Jim.  Thank you Kim and Jenny and Diane, Susan and Sheri and Helen.  Oh, the list is so long and I pray that I have told you who you are!

What did I do to bring this 'good thing' about?

I listened and I loved and listened some more.  

What other things can I think to be grateful for?  Oh, is there ever enough room to record it all?!  For wine and music and dancing.  For beautiful food and romantic movies and books.  For glowing sunsets and crisp sheets and snow.  For thunder storms, birthdays and soft April afternoons.  For trees on fire with fall colors and reflections in the water.  For last first kisses and whispered dreams.  For love and laughter and baby-powdered baby-bottoms.  For the ability and forum and freedom to write these words.

For enough days to say 'Thank You'.

It's really a great exercise.  I recommend it to everyone.

Shadows

Last week was one of those exquisitely beautiful autumn weeks.  The air was simultaneously warm with a light chill, the leaves were dancing circles on the breeze to the ground and the sun was coming at the most interesting angle through the remaining leaves on the trees creating a golden glow.

Everything seemed just a little magical and other-worldly.

I happened to be in Indiana, my home-state and where my mother and many of my friends can still be found and somewhere I go as often as possible to escape my now and step back, in many ways, to who I was a lot of yesterdays ago.  And as is my custom when I am home and have spent too many hours in the warmth and stillness of my mother's kitchen, I walk the country roads that are laid out in such grid-like precision that miles are easily stepped off and exact measurements of time can be given to worrying mothers so they won't, well, worry so much.

And I had my camera.

It was late enough that the sun was starting to sink in the west and the shadows were getting long.  I love that time of evening especially for the light and shadows, regardless of the season, but especially in the fall for the additional colors that are showing up on tree-tops and in field furrows.

As I walked this particular stretch of CR 800, I came upon a tree still standing but shattered by time and weather.  I am intrigued by trees.  One might say I am passionate about trees, especially when they have been defrocked by the seasons and are standing proud and strong, showing their species by their bare-boned limbs.  This one, though, had been standing naked for a long time.

I stopped to take in this tree, watching the play of light and color from the setting sun behind me and tried to find the best spot to capture the tree's remaining essence.  I also liked the idea of capturing me taking the picture via my shadow.

The picture was snapped, and I continued on my walk finding many other lovely Indiana fall images that would make it into my camera and, eventually, my photographic journal of this particular trip home.

Back home again in the heartland, I reviewed all my pictures and was particularly pleased with this one.  The colors were lovely, though the tree wasn't quite as singular in the picture as it had been the moment it was taken.  I am always amazed at what the human eye sees in the moment that somehow the camera never can capture.  Still, I liked this picture.  And it haunted me.

 I was reminded of the spiritual lesson of the continuous shadows in our life - the lesson to be conscious of the shadow, ever-present, that is really working for the accolades of 'job well done, good and faithful servant'.   When we work at the soup kitchen in order to show compassion for others who don't have the luxuries of plentiful food and dependable shelter, is the compassion shaded with the relief of 'thank God that isn't me' or the hope that this small kindness is building another step on our stairway to heaven?  When we write a check to the homeless shelter or the soup kitchen or the church, is it considering the need at the other end, or the tax deduction on ours?  When we ask for prayers for another, is it truly lifting that person up or is it a more acceptable, elegant form of gossip?

And my personal shadow game is that of jumping to judgment or conclusions about another only to honestly have to admit that what I am not liking in their actions is something I recognize and dislike in my own.  My lovely teacher and mentor reminds me again and again that we cannot see in another what we don't recognize in ourselves.

That lesson applies to the beauty and talent and specialness we 'recognize' in another as well as the ability to see and label bad behavior.  A friend of mine routinely flies into fits of road rage when fellow travelers aren't driving in a way to suit him/her, but is one of the worst drivers I know.  Another friend is  the first to love the gentleness of a human spirit, but fails to recognize their own gentleness.  Another announces they 'hate liars' but doesn't seem concerned about the small deceits that pepper their own reality.

If I am wounded by a lack of compassion or understanding, have I given any thought to my inability to empathize with the one who is the seeming perpetrator?

I have caught myself jumping to conclusions and judgments recently and thankfully am recognizing the sameness of those judgments and lingering guilt inside of me.  Not only is it time to release my opinions of others, it is time to finally let go of the corresponding sadness inside of me.

Shadows are everywhere in nature - outdoors and internal.  Sometimes they are nearly invisible, when the shining light of personal recognition is directly upon us, and at other times they stretch long into our horizon.  Shadows aren't bad or good.... they just are.  Just like that weathered tree.

So I labeled the picture - A mere shadow of her former self.