A Course of Love

We’re just beginning to get a bit of light snow, the kind you can barely see.  It’s been such an odd winter. People around here joke that we missed it, or it us. There have only been two days all winter when I couldn’t walk  because it was too slippery, and barely a half dozen when I turned around before going my full length due to the cold – and I’m a wimp about the cold.

I’m sitting in my sun room office now with the heater on.  Because of all the windows, it’s only 67 degrees in here (according to its readout) but I’m feeling snug and toasty.

There’s been something so drab about the exterior world lately.  The only snow that’s been on the ground for weeks sits on lawns. The path to my cabin is the most dangerous spot I traverse for all the footprints that melted, refroze, and left the ground treacherous to the ankles. Streets and sidewalks are bare, but ground everywhere is like my cabin path. What snow is left is half ice and mottled with circles and spirals of brown grass and leaves showing through.  There is something quiet about it. No intensity. No vibrance.  It’s like a waiting time.

It’s matched my mood the past month but I’m ready for the snow today and for those changes you don’t go looking for.

A couple of months ago I was invited to join a Conference with the Scribes, an event taking place later this year in Colorado. The invitation isn’t new but when I received the flyer about it, it felt new, and like one of those things I didn’t go looking for. It also felt like a sign of change.

With the Gathering in Dialogue coming up in May and the Conference with the Scribes in October, there are suddenly new views on the horizon: Two opportunities to meet people in person and be in relationship.  This was the overriding feeling I had after the two deaths that affected me this past month: that nothing mattered as much as being in relationship.  I wrote a post about it but never put it up because it felt so sappy!

It is so clear when people dear to you die. Each relationship is like no other. Each relationship is unique, person-to-person, one of a kind, even while the connection that runs true and deep is the same. I was telling Kathy Scott Perry, the organizer of the Conference with the Scribes all this, and she said something that really made me look forward to the event. She said “Everyone involved has been talking about relationship.”

Maybe this extraordinary 2012 year will be the year of relationship.

(I’ll post on both events soon.)

It’s been so long since I’ve written that I feel the re-entry bends, the feeling that I “stepped out” of the practice, the routine, the sharing…and now what? How do I catch up?  It’s like this conversation I had with my nephew the other day, him mentioning the serious illness of a friend of the family as if I already knew all about it.  I said, “What? I haven’t heard a thing.” He said, “Oh, I thought you were in the loop.”

This has been a time of getting out of the loop.

What’s been happening falls in that category of “It’s just life.”  There’s been death, illness, weather, household adjustments and Henry turning five.  That happened just days ago.  I was about ready for his after school birthday party with his Montessori chums when a trip to the emergency room for a kidney stone (Donny’s) became necessary.  “That’s life” as the saying goes.  There isn’t a plan that can be counted on. It’s a good reminder once in a while. A dozen reminders in a month get it under your skin.

I’ve spent this time feeling the feelings associated with life, doing my best to sit with them and to be aware of the wayward thoughts that defy the desire for reflection and tend toward wanting things to be different or to fix them.  Yet what I knew as the year began has been so undoubtably true. I knew life was going to be different.  Before the year began the state of the world figured largely in my thoughts of this difference. The close and immediate cause was not that, but the failing health of my dear mother-in-law. When she died a mere week into the new year the change was immediate. Life would never be the same. “Never the same” moments kept coming. These are the times when reflection feels particularly needed.  There are graces that come of it, but risks too.  There are instant changes you know to expect and those that are a surprise.

One of my surprises was an instantaneous and total disinterest in the state of the world.  I had been flirting with being an activist in a new way.  The word I kept using for this turn in attention was that it was “interesting.” It was necessary, urgent, new, heartfelt, but also different. I was exploring a side of myself that seemed to have been waiting in the wings to emerge.  After some slight involvement with Occupy St. Paul I became enamored by the idea of telling people’s stories.  I thought I was ready to go out into the community and collect them.  I wanted to come to voice on the inequality so poignantly being heard from in the 99% and I wanted to bring others to voice.

And then the urge died.  Simply left me.

Now, re-entering my vocational life, I realize that the urge that surrounded my “new” ideas is the same as that which fueled my desire to have a gathering in dialogue. I wanted to come to voice and to bring others to voice. The impetus behind the gathering was to hear the stories of people affected by A Course of Love. I wanted to share them face to face, to listen, to hear, and to respond. I wanted to be in dialogue. (See the Event page. Updates will be coming.)

In a moment life can, and does, change irrevocably. The person we were in the morning feels radically different than the person we are in the evening. One moment you’re preparing for a birthday party, the next you’re on your way to the emergency room. It happens to everyone. We adjust, draw on our whole variety of strengths, look our vulnerability in the face. We rise to meet occasions, and fall afterwards into natural states of reflection, melancholy, reverie, or even gloom. Just as the weather changes the scene outside our windows, inner seasons are lived out, sometimes fading with a bang and at other times with a whimper.

It’s a new season.

And yet as the face of the season changes there comes the realization that the changes are other than you thought they were. Down deep, the ground still remains the ground whether it’s covered in snow or leafs or grass. “Interests” may appear to change in radical ways while the underlying focus, the cause of the interest, remains the same.

What draws me is the heart of the matter.

Life speaks to us and we respond. Then we get quiet and listen to our hearts.

This is from a Christmas card Richard sent me a few years ago

A Course of Love, as I reminded my grieving friend Terry, is about our humanity as well as our divinity.  Terry is grieving for our mutual friend Richard, who died on the 9^th. His services are today.

Since I was in the midst of Katie’s services as I heard of Richard’s death, my attention was not with him right away. By the time it was, and I learned that his services are today, I felt that I could not make the trip and yet that I was neglecting something deeply meaningful and that I was failing to respond to Richard’s loss as I would like.

This morning I dedicated my meditation to him and heard, “I am with friends.”

I am with friends. That is how I felt when I met Richard and when through his friendship and love of A Course of Love, I was invited to Florida and was embraced by not only Richard, but Terry, Lee, and Carol.

But let me back up.

I first met Richard just after A Course of Love came out.  He had ACOL and the Treatises but was seeking a copy of The Dialogues and writing me via email. Soon he decided to come to Minnesota to visit me. This was a significant first for me, the first time that I saw that A Course of Love would have such impact and that someone would associate that impact with me and want to meet me.

Later, when I met Terry, Lee, and Carol, they laughed and laughed with me over that visit…finding it hilarious that Donny had to come home from work to check out this man who “could be a kook for all we know”, and that Richard wanted to meditate in my cream-colored formal living room, where no one ever sat at the time, and that I wasn’t a meditator then, and that I was so incapable of resistance, so overpowered to have this man come into my home and just make himself at home and lead me by the hand into my own too formal to bother sitting in room.  It was so “Richard.” That is why it was so funny, my new friends imagining me not knowing Richard as they did and encountering him in this way.

As sweet and funny as that visit was, and as meaningful as it was to me to have my first visitor of this kind, it was more of an impact in other ways that came of Richard’s nature. For one thing, I was a mess at the time. I can’t remember exactly what was going on now but I know I was in conflict with my co-presenter for one reason or another and that I told Richard all about it, and that I felt free to say the f word in his presence and that he might have come expecting some serene and wise person but if he did he never showed it. He accepted me exactly as I was and did not take my discombobulated state as evidence that I had nothing to offer.  No, he invited me to come speak at his Unity Church a while later – the trip on which I met the others.

It was one of the most magical trips of my life, occasion of my first more formal dialogues, first time learning how to walk on the beach and falling in love with the ocean. The sequence of events has left me, but I know I visited Richard’s home, met his son Isaiah, his beloved dog (s) and was in every way that could happen in a short time “let in” to his life, and I suppose that was as true of me too when he came to see me, was in my home, met Donny, the cats and dog, came to the coffee shop where he likely would have met one or both of my daughters.  At any rate it happened. That was it. We were “inside” each other’s lives.

He sat and talked to me in my hotel room as I ironed my clothes, which for some reason is one of my most intimate memories; took me to a bar where he told everyone about A Course of Love, fed me a dish I’d never had (crabs?), treated me to wine and even got me up to dance.

He didn’t have a pious bone in his body or have a bit of a problem “being real.”  He didn’t know any other way and had no division between his work and his surfing and his spirituality.  He was a guy’s guy in so many ways – ex Navy Seal, robust, full of life. He didn’t negate anything that I could see – being a family man, a tender man, a generous friend or a guy’s guy. He was totally willing to proclaim his loves – whatever they were – and A Course of Love was one of them and that was no problem in his energy field, being on the same level as everything else and yet somehow elevated too.  It was all sublime.

Not that he was perfect or never had a problem. He called with a problem on occasion and counseled me through some. He even called once when he’d had too much to drink!  We were that kind of friends. One bit of advice I always remember is him telling me to get out and walk.  He could tell when I was stuck in my head and needed movement, but never, ever, did any amount of stuckness lessen me in his eyes.  He’s one of the few people I ever met with whom I didn’t doubt myself in that way of feeling bad for saying the wrong thing, being in the wrong place, or just being myself.

I imagine that this was true for everyone – that once Richard loved you – you were “in” and he was totally with you and totally loyal.

I drove to Florida on my first visit, and as I left, I felt what I remember describing then as though I was attached to him and my other friends and the ocean and Florida, to that time and place and the connection we’d made, by a bunge cord.  As if, were I to take my foot off the gas my car would bounce right back there. If my hands hesitated on the wheel, the car would turn itself around.  I’d never felt anything like it.  I’ve lived in Minnesota all my life with not a desire ever to live elsewhere and I was shaken by my desire to stay and the imaginings I had of another life that could be had there.

Terry and I have been friends ever since. Lee and I talked on the phone once a month for a long time afterwards. And Richard was our connector.

I am taking the message that “I am with friends” not only as a confirmation that Richard is held in an even wider embrace of friendship and love, but as a message to carry forward in my life. “I am with friends.”  I can live everyday with that knowing, with that safe feeling, with all the enemies of the world (real or imagined, large or small) transformed into friends. I can let go any desire to see anything else, to feel slighted or undervalued or wronged or under attack. I can see that I am with friends everywhere, every day.

That is Richard’s gift to me and to many – a view of a friendly world – a universe where love is real, and where our humanity and our divinity are all of one piece and one peace.

His ashes will be spread today near the beach where we walked.

I had been going through my boxes of pictures to make a video of Katie’s life, and found this card from Richard before I heard of his death. I put it up on the top of my bookshelf without reading the inside. Today I did. I don’t think Richard would mind me sharing it. It says it all.

“I believe that Love is the Answer. Spread the word…I love you…”  Richard

I was late walking Sam this morning. Day was beginning to dawn when the school bus came around the corner.  That was when I realized that it was an ordinary weekday; a Tuesday.  I’d been on Katie time.

Katie is my mother-in-law and friend. She died early Saturday morning, was waked on Monday and her funeral was today.  It might seem odd to some that I’m writing so soon after, but I feel the need to write.

Katie time is the kind of suspension of the everyday that you experience when a person you love dies.  It is mundane: I won’t worry about the recycling now. I can do that later. And it is foggy: I start out to do one thing and do another and then walk around in a circle.  Katie time has been gentle, sweet, sad, and busy in a totally non-ordinary way.

I don’t think I ate a sit-down meal from the time she went in the hospital on Wednesday until what is called, in our church, the “mercy meal.” I am told that 500 people were served.  That is not an ordinary number.

I called a couple of my friends who knew Katie.  One said outright, “Ohhh, that’s too bad. Katie liked me.”  The other didn’t say “Katie liked me” right out, but that’s what she said.  I decided that this was the key to Katie’s iconic stature in her church, neighborhood, and community.  She didn’t just like people. She made them feel liked.

At one point in the day a couple of her friends were talking to me and I was looking around for Donny, totally accepting that each of my conversations would be brief as I passed through the crowd and shadowed my husband.  Only later did I think of how Katie never did that.  She’d have 15 minute conversations here, and 15 minute conversations there. She didn’t look around.  We’d tease her that she’d hold up any line she was ever in.  If she didn’t know you, she’d get to know you.

She was very like my dad that way, and I’ve thought of him a lot in these weeks when it seemed so clear that Katie was failing, and as we waited for the doctor appointment that would confirm what we could see and sense.

I fell in love with grief during the “Dad time” of his preparation to die and his death. I fell in love with the suspension of ordinary time, with the feeling of intensity and meaning that hung about each day, and with the hidden nature of the dying that slowly revealed itself. I lingered a long time with grief after Dad died.

Tomorrow life is supposed to start getting back to normal. I will take out the recycling. I’ll start to clean up all the messes I’ve left in my stupor or my haste.  The ordinary conversations will start up again.  And then, just when life’s texture seems to be returning to normal, I know that Katie time will rear up again. There will be different Katie conversations and the “business” of death to attend to. The effort to follow her wishes.  All the transitions of the grieving, the adjustments to the change.

Katie has been my mother-in-law almost 25 years, and my elder care companion for the last two of those.  Her living has been part of the fabric of my days.  As my own mother talked of a recipe the other day, I found myself thinking, “Katie would like that.”

It was both a relief and a challenge to let her go into the hands of the medical professionals who assisted her last days. I’d grown accustomed to looking out for her.

The beauty of grief is the beauty of all of those things – like the weather – that are beyond effort, intention, or feeble attempts at control.  It is a visitation with surrender that does its best to become total.  Grief sweeps you up and deposits you on the other side of life’s door.

And you realize, once outside and beyond the threshold, that you can’t turn back.  You stand somewhere new.

I know myself well enough to not be surprised by the deep desire to hibernate that arises in me almost the minute Christmas has passed. It descended heavily last night.  As I readied myself for bed, I looked over at my bookshelf. What would it be that would speak to me? I reached for Merton.

In my desire for quietude I’d begun to question, as I do and must do from time to time, the direction my life is taking.  I was working on a blog posting for Occupy St. Paul, to which I’ve been contributing lately. I followed my initial idea for a post from link to link, gathering information like a journalist writing an article, feeling somewhat relieved of my “I’ve had too much” feelings by being engaged in the work and interested in what I was finding.  The words “interested” or “interesting” have spoken to me more recently than ever in my adult life, causing me even to question if I have been bored with my life and the way I spend my days. Such eagerness for the interesting! For engagement of mind!

And so the questioning – has my quest for the interesting come only by default? Due to something else being lacking?  Has my interest itself been pure or tainted by a seeking after something to relieve the common and every day, the small talk and the errands, the routine and the chaos?

I opened “The Intimate Merton” to a page I’d either marked to return to, or where I’d left off in my last reading, and read with soothing comfort Merton’s gratitude for his hermitage.

His journal, Feb 16, 1953

“It seems to me that St. Anne’s is what I have been waiting for and looking for all my life and now I have stumbled into it quite by accident. Now, for the first time, I am aware of what happens to a man who has really found his place in the scheme of things.

With tremendous relief I have discovered that I no longer need to pretend. Because when you have not found what you are looking for, you pretend in your eagerness to have found it. You act as if you had found it. You spend your time telling yourself what you have found and yet do not want.

I do not have to buy St. Anne’s. I do not have to sell myself to myself here. Everything that was ever real in me has come back to life in his doorway wide open to the sky! I no longer have to trample myself down, cut myself in half, throw part of me out the window, and keep pushing the rest of myself away.

In the silence of St. Anne’s everything has come together in unity, and the unity is not my unity but Yours, O Father of Peace. … The silence of it is making me well.”

Returning today I read of another side of Merton and this too comforted me. It is surprisingly timely (as all those universal truths tend to be – holding their truth across time and space):

From his journal of December 29, 1957

“In a world with a complicated economic structure like ours, it is no longer even a question of “my brother” being a citizen in the same country. From the moment the economy of another country is subservient to the business interests of my country, I am responsible to those of the other country who are “in need.” In what does this responsibility consist? To what does it obligate me? Who can answer? Is Marx right in saying that the Capitalist world does not and cannot seek an honest answer? I am bound to agree with him.

Hence the problem of cooperation with those who exploit. A frightfully difficult problem. What have moral theologians done so far to open up new horizons? Nothing as far as I know.

Hence my obligation is by no means in conflict with my “contemplative” vocation.

Until my “contemplation” is liberated from the sterilizing artificial limitations under which it has so far existed (and nearly been stifled out of existence), I cannot be a “man of God” because I cannot live in the Truth, which is the first essential for a man of God.

It is absolutely true that here in this monastery we are enabled to systematically evade our real and ultimate social responsibilities. In any time, social responsibility is the keystone of the Christian life.”

February 15, 1958

“This afternoon I suddenly saw the meaning of my American destiny – one of those moments when many unrelated pieces of one’s life and thought fall into place in a great unity toward which one has been growing.

My destiny is indeed to be an American – not just an American of the United States. We are only on the fringe of the true America. I can never be satisfied with this only partial reality which is almost nothing at all, which is so little that it is like a few words written in chalk on a blackboard, easily rubbed out.

I have never so keenly felt the impermanence of what is now regarded as America because it is North American, or the elements of stability and permanence, which are in South America. Deeper roots, Indian roots. The Spanish, Portugese, Negro roots also. The shallow English roots are not deep enough. The tree will fall.

To be an American of the Andes – containing in myself also Kentucky and New York. But New York is not, and never will be, really America. America is much bigger and deeper and more complex than that – America is still an undiscovered continent. …

My vocation is American – to see and to understand and to have in myself the life and the roots and the belief and the destiny and the orientation of the whole hemisphere – as an expression of something of God, of Christ, that the world has not yet found – something that is only now, after hundreds of years, coming to maturity!

To be able – possibly – to reach out and embrace all the extremes and have them in oneself without confusion – without eclecticism, without dilettantism, without false mysticism, without being torn apart.

No one fragment can begin to be enough – not Spanish colonial Catholicism, not 19^th century republicanism, not agrarian radicalism, not the Indianism of Mexico – but all of it, everything. To be oneself a whole hemisphere and to help the hemisphere to realize its own destiny.”

Merton, Thomas. The Intimate Merton, His Life from His Journals. Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo. HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., NY, NY, 1999 by the Merton Legacy Trust.

Pp 110-11, 120-22

It’s solstice, and I thought I’d share a few photos I took on my morning walk before the snow melted. We had a dusting yesterday right after Henry’s Christmas pageant at his pre-school.  It was such a wonderful day! At the pageant there were about a dozen kids and Henry right in the front with his new Christmas shirt on. It’s a checkered, button-up shirt, the colors Christmas-like within being too obvious. He spent almost the whole time futzing with his shirt. It started with pulling it up as if he was airing his stomach. Then he appeared to be trying to unbotton it. Then he stuck one hand through the space between two buttons and waved. Next he pulled at the arms.  We were all silently laughing until we shook and tears ran down our faces.

When the program was over his mom asked “What was going on with your shirt?”

He said, “I was hot!”

Afterwards I took him to get a present for his mom just as the snow started to fall. When we got out of the car he stood trying to catch it in his hand and then as we ran from car to store he did this little skip and a hop and I joined in. It was just perfect.

There really are moments of perfection in this life.

Thank you so much for sharing some of them with me! I am honored that you do and that we’re living some of our moments together.

The human spirit is so vibrant at this time of year…it can be like lights in the dark of morning.

May your light shine brightly~

Mari

Another December day so glorious that it surpasses all the very fine ones that have come so far. I am in the cabin in nothing more than my hoodie. Sam came out with me and got a really disgusted look on her face when I entered the cabin, as if asking what the heck I’m doing when we could be taking a second walk! It’s so warm and she’s so healed that I’ve begun to have to remind her to stay in the yard. She’s ready to resume her travels to visit the neighbors, the way suddenly free of snow and full of scents once again.

It was not nearly so nice before sunrise when we did take our walk. Who knew then that the sun would come out and the sky go as prettily blue as a summer sky.  There’s only been one winter-white day so far – only one day when the sky and ground and the very air were opaque.

Despite Sam’s look, I feel like I’m part of the day when I’m here…as close to outside as I can get and still have the benefits of electricity and a laptop. Here, I can write simply because I love to.

I’ve been wanting this whole December to write about the coming of A Course of Love in the season of Advent.  It’s been on my mind like something needing expression but the feeling of quietude I need to write has been largely missing, replaced by a new energy that is amazing for being peaceful. I’m doing more-or-less what I feel like doing and have spent two Sunday mornings now in a floor-length blue robe that I never wear. It was the last gift I received from my friend Sally before she died, so I couldn’t get rid of it, but it’s hung in my closet, shoved to the back so its bulk wouldn’t get in the way, since 2003.

And now I’ve worn the blue robe twice, last week until 10:30!

That’s got to sound like a restful activity, but all I can say is that the energy of this month has been different, and maybe that’s why I’ve kept thinking of the December, thirteen years ago, when A Course of Love first came to me.

Being raised a Catholic, I grew up going to Mass but never understanding the Mass.  I felt a sense of the sacred there, in the mystery, the ritual, the music, the architecture, the art, in the sights, sounds and smells in the combined experience…which I tell you only to explain that this was enough for me and that I never understood the Mass or its symbolism other than for in the very most minimal of ways.

So it was that when I was getting close to the coming of ACOL yet not knowing that it was coming, and attending daily Mass in hope of clues, I felt as if I got them in all kinds of ways.  One I don’t think I’ve ever talked about before was that in the week preceding ACOL’s reception, the priests kept talking about the week being the end of “ordinary time.”

You’ll see now why I had to explain my experience of Mass, because most Sunday’s of the year, if you’re looking, you’ll see something like “third Sunday in Ordinary Time” printed somewhere…but I’d never noticed it!

I have since looked up this bit of church lore and found that Ordinary Time is a season of the liturgical calendar. Ordinary Time comprises the two periods – one following Epiphany, the other following Pentecost – which do not fall into the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter.

I didn’t look it up at the time either. I was just bowled over by the change that took place, in sync with the reception of ACOL, from Ordinary Time to Advent…the time of the Coming of Christ.

Advent is meant to commemorate the First Coming while preparing for the second.  In church language the second coming is often associated with the end of days and the final judgment, but I wasn’t cognizant of any of that either.  As ACOL began to come and right off announced the second coming of Christ…in us…I simply felt it all to be held within the perfect timing of the sacred.

And so, now that it’s getting closer to Christmas and the perfect day has arrived and I’m in the mood, it feels good to share this and to invite you to…as has happened to me somewhat “accidentally” or synchronistically as the case may be… be with this ritual meaning of the season in this one faith tradition.

What a difference in feeling tone to imagine the second coming as an end of time associated with judgment and the return of Jesus, and an end of time associated with the birth, in us, of the Christ Self.  Having lived with this Course of Love all these years, the old idea of the second coming feels almost archaic.  I feel like…of course it will be us who will be newly birthed.

At the Institute for Sacred Activism I was able to witness Andrew Harvey’s tears as he told of  Fr. Bede Griffith’s death bed vision and words: Grow the living Christ, Grow the living Christ, Grow the living Christ.  Fr. Bede shared a similar vision to Jesus’ message of the second coming.

The second coming will not be he. It will be we.

I’ve been thinking of starting a list, or a file, or …who knows…a book, about People Who Tell Me How I Feel. I am not talking about those who actually talk to me and might say, “You’re mad” when I’m sad or some such thing. I’m talking about the real deal. About those occasions when you get an aha moment from someone who describes their experience in an insightful way that you suddenly realize sheds light on your own.

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Kling for some time for just this reason and if I went back through my journals I could probably find several quotes that Told Me How I Feel.

Kling’s left arm is shorter than his right due to a birth defect. Since a motorcycle accident ten years ago in which he nearly died, and that came close to destroying his “good arm”, he’s become a prolific performer, writer, radio host, playwright and who knows what else.

Here’s his latest Telling Me How I Feel quote:

“When you are born with a disability you grow from it. But when you have a disability experience later in life, you have to grow toward it. You are still the same person you were, but physically you aren’t. You have to transform into this new person.”

My spiritual experiences were my “I am the same person, but I’m not” experience.  I did not have the same abilities I used to have, and that’s something I want to say is “the truth” but I’ll settle for calling it a fact.

I love what he says about having to grow toward the disabilities … or you could say grow toward the inhabiting of new abilities that will replace the old. It’s not a done deal with the experience. You have to transform into the new person that has been thrust upon you by your experience.

This is the best description of spiritual experience I’ve read in a long while: You have to grow toward it. You have to transform into a new person…while staying the same person.

This one theme could take in all kinds of stories about life, and I guess that’s what Kling does. He does it with simplicity, humor, and pathos.

There are others who transform without the lightness or humor that softens their truth telling. It might be profound or beautiful, but it’s not humor. The great spiritual writers are like this.

Creative types of all kinds are great for their Telling Me How I Feel qualities too. Here’s Yoko Ono, speaking on John Lennon’s creative process:

“He was always doing it. It was almost like the pen and the guitar were both his security blankets. His art was directly connected to his emotions. He wanted to somehow survive through all the difficult and depressing times. That’s what an artist does – it’s the basic idea of wanting to express something and connect ….”

And then there are the practical-life folks. I just saw this one in the paper about caregivers from Molly Cox, a fellow Minnesotan:

“Whether you are taking care of your mother, a special-needs child, or a spouse, everyone has the same experience that generates a common response. “If you ring that bell one more time … if you ask me to do one more thing… Everyone experiences it. Only half of the people talk about it.”

What I hear in the expressions of these folks who Tell Me How I Feel – is sometimes inspiring, other times relieving, always appreciated.

St. Paul Pioneer Press,“Care for the caregivers,” by Caryn Sullivan, 12-9-2011, 10B

Kline rap, by Mary Ann Grossman, 6E

Ross Raihala, Music Sound Affects columnist, 6A

Oh my God, I am so, so, happy today! So happy as I ran out to the cabin after a morning out and about, then ran back to get the camera to catch 2^nd snow pictures of Unfuckupable Man, then eating my peanut butter and honey sandwich without having picked up a darn thing in the house, and having dropped my packages where they lie. And just the beautiful, gorgeous splendor of the day, a December 1^st with sunny skies and warm temps as if announcing that the dark of November is over. Halleluiah!

It started so auspiciously with this dream I now barely remember except there was a man in it and a parcel, and a part about Henry that was so real that when I woke I had to remember that he wasn’t here. The parcel was wrapped in brown and tied with twine and was about the size of a few books stacked together. The most notable thing about the dream was that it notified me that it is December 1 and that I’d forgotten, and that I mustn’t forget.

I did go to the PO yesterday and back today. Today I mailed off a few more copies of Creation of the New, one to my old friend Dan Odegard.

So the dream called me to remember that it is December 1 – birth date of the Course and Dan’s birthday. (Dan was my co-presenter of the Course when it first came out.) I’m not sure how the dream did that, only that it did. I had no notion of it being December 1 today, even though I had a meeting this morning and had called Angie to remind her of a kindergarten open house. I think that having set the celebration of this anniversary to next year, (the Gathering in Dialogue) it was off of my mind, and in that way that happens when you work a lot from home, it is easy to forget the date until you start up your computer for the day.

December 1 and its meaning then came front and center. But it’s not so much the date or the day as the compelling nature of the dream and the zone it put me in  –  it lingered into my waking state as a “message.” This one seemed to be about getting in touch with Dan and honoring this birth/anniversary in some way.

After sending him a note I went in and readied myself to meet with Nathan from Occupy at Jerabek’s. At the door, I went back and retrieved my notebook and Walter Brueggemann’s book on Prophetic Imagination.  As I waited for Nathan, I picked up the book and when he didn’t show, felt as if I was meant to sit there, reading its end on the Practice of Ministry.  I felt so in my zone, right there in Jerabek’s. It was wonderful and the feeling the strongest I’ve had in ages, sort of a “not all there” and yet “fully present” feeling, complete with tingling bodily sensations and the swoony feeling of being held still, in a dreamy state.

From there I headed off to do errands – and that was my whole morning pretty much, and coming home with a feeling of wanting to write about the anniversary but it not feeling particularly important either.

Everything simply felt so right and all of one piece, as if what was happening was exactly the right thing in the right moment, but without any thought of rightness and with a kind of delight that definitely wasn’t with me in the morning as the feeling first hit me in a sort of heavy way, the way things can feel when they come with a sense of import. It has been such a precious day to feel this way – and altogether in a newish way for being able to go out and about and not lose it but only have it become more joyous.

Perhaps it has to do with “distributing” Creation of the New, which I literally did, or with distribution of the Course or of the link between them, and yet none of those things feel as essential as the link between Dan and I, which felt today like a reason for my mood and as if it was brought on by that link and his grace.

This has been enough of a celebration for me today and I note it only because it feels significant to do so and with the thought that, like Advent, it is the beginning of a new year in some way, and a beginning for which I am very grateful. I have the sense today of the new being given. Its time is not up to us, only our acceptance of the gift as it arrives.

On the evening of this 13^th anniversary of the reception of A Course of Love, and the 10^th since its publication, I ended up in the bar of W.A. Frosts, one of my favorite places, having a latte with Nathan, and offering that my days of going to meetings feel as if they are done, and he offering that I can offer my gifts anyway.

So funny that.

One of the things I read while having my first coffee of the day was on Jesus’ way of prophetic ministry. Bruegemann said that,  “On the one hand, he practiced criticism of the deathly world around him. On the other hand, he practiced energizing of the new future ….”

…into the new future.

That is my thought as I end this milestone day.

Creation of the New was submitted for publication today, and will bear the publication date 11/11/11.  It will be available for purchase sometime within the next ten days.

When I went to the Institute for Sacred Activism, I went with a proof copy of the book.  I gave that copy to Andrew Harvey in hopes of a conversation and an endorsement.  He told me he loved the book, but we never got time for the conversation.

On returning home I was processing a lot of feelings about the Institute: what it showed me about process, what it showed me about learning, what it showed me about myself. I lost my impetus to get Creation to press.

Then, day before yesterday, it occurred to me that the delay might not have been in error and that it was meant to be published on 11/11/11.

In honor of 11/11/11 I share these insights from Christine DeLorey excerpted from the Creative Numerology website: http://creativenumerology.com/

The entire month of November is a voyage through the 11:11 vibration which adds up to 22 – the number of large scale accomplishment, especially when it comes to improving conditions for the masses. Remember that all these 11s are made up of 1s. 1 is the number of the individual. Multiple 1s reflect multiple individuals. The masses. Evolution is occurring within and giving the outer reflection of revolution. And every one (1) of us is a part of it. We are 1. November’s sea of 11s is, at its very core, a sea of 1s.

Take your time. Notice the details. Be aware of what you’re feeling at any given time. Use 11’s reflective energy to discover who you are, where you are, and what, as a human being, you came here to be.

Be honest with yourself. Be self-accepting. 11 is one reflecting on oneself, facing one’s own reflection, and accepting who one is. 11 = self acceptance, without which there can never be peace in the world, because everything starts within the individual. The number 1 represents the individual, but in November’s profusion of 1s, the focus broadens drastically to encompass the masses of humanity in relation to Mother Earth – our only means of existence and survival on the physical plane.

No matter how things seem in the outer world, humanity is evolving into openness and Free Will. The turmoil we are experiencing on the material plane is the result of resistance to change, especially by those whose fear of losing power and position is blinding them to reality. Of course, we are all afraid of change to some extent, but new understanding about the power and purpose of emotion is helping us to move through those fears instead of depriving ourselves of their insight by denying them. This is essential to our growth because the controlling forces habitually trigger our fears to keep us in line

Our journey out of denial began when the calendar shifted from the 1000s to the 2000s – when 1 began its evolution into 2. At the most basic level, that is what 11 does. It transforms 1 into 2, (1+1=2), and I AM into WE ARE

As the numbness of denial wears off, sometimes we feel great and filled with hope. Other times, we feel like the weight of the changing world is crushing us. But the latter is only because we have never actually experienced our emotional power on this level before – and because layer upon layer of unexpressed feeling from the past still needs to be healed and released before we can truly understand the beauty, power and purpose of the feminine emotional energy that exists within each of us, male and female alike.

Our recognition of reality is creating such a jolt to our inner system that we have energized a part of us which the outer system had always been able to control – our ability to feel and sense; our ability to be honest with ourselves and each other, and to simply be who we are – all of which form the basis of FREE WILL. Those in control were able to do this by hiding themselves and their activities in a shroud of secrecy, while programming us with erroneous information about life and our place in it. We have been kept in the dark for so long that our feelings almost died, and they need to heal now.

And that is where the focus of the world is placed right now – on the inequity between the controlling few and the rest of humanity. Balance must be implemented, otherwise instead of evolving as a species, our top-heaviness will cause us to topple over, and there is little chance that many could survive such a harsh transformation. Equality within, between masculine sprit and feminine will – mind and emotion – will restore equilibrium to the outer world. Everything starts within. Then we will be able to find common ground with each other instead of constantly fighting over ideas and beliefs. 1+1=2, and 2 is the number of cooperation, partnership, the combining of ideas, and balance.

The ‘occupy’ movement is a demonstration of humanity’s rising WILL all over the world,(see PART ONE of this article – link below). The occupy movement is a spontaneous exercise in civil disobedience. It has been non-violent on the part of those participating. The violence has come from the ‘establishment’, via its police forces, as a reaction to peaceful protest. Civil disobedience was a principle strategy of Gandhi in the struggle to dismantle the British occupation of India, and with Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights struggle in the USA.

Civil disobedience is defined as peaceful resistance to what people believe are unfair laws. Peaceful resistance to oppression. Therefore, to suggest that civil disobedience is wrong is to say that we are bound by law to honor our oppressors. The Occupy Movement was formed on September 17, 2011 and, in just 3 months, it has changed the world. The will of the people is rising along with our combined spiritual/emotional vibrations. (Of course, this uprising did not start in the USA. See PART ONE of this article )

“The encampments can’t be used.”

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11961

I just watched this Charlie Rose interview with Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges about the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS).

Without a transcript, I can’t adequately quote from the Charlie Rose program, but Chris Hedges spoke of how we’re no longer a democracy but an inverted totalitarian regime brought about through anonymity.

That – the use of the word anonymity really got to me.  No wonder the 99% website is so moving. No more anonymity…but also no more of the old leadership.  Quoting ACOL, means and end are one.  The non hierarchical structure of OWS, where all are leaders, defining their own narrative, empowers everyone. In other words, structure, or non-structure, is important.

In many ways I feel it coincides with and clarifies the feelings I had returning from the Institute for Sacred Activism where there was talk of all the systems having to come down while the classroom system was still fully in place.

I’ve recently posted a bit about the Gathering in Dialogue on the event page, and even though I feel that I’m comparing a very small thing to a very large one, the Gathering is precisely a small attempt to do something different: To gather in dialogue without a hierarchy and offer space where people can define their own narrative; to hear from people who wouldn’t necessarily command a hearing through credentials; to be willing to join together as equals and see what might happen; to dare to break with the usual system of having a popular speaker attract the attendees and the fees … each of these elements have the potential for impact.

I mean, let’s place this in a larger context!

Another piece of the Charlie Rose interview that really spoke to me was that it’s no longer about leaders but about movements. I’ve called for movements – on the ACOL website and in The Given Self.

I can speak out as eloquently as I’m able while remaining “me,” and feel as if nothing happens. But something is happening. Something is happening now and I feel part of it intrinsically and I know that we – those of us embracing new ways, are part of it. I don’t really need Andrew Harvey or anyone else to confirm that – but I thought I did.

It is so insidious – the way we (or the way “I” anyway) seek validation and inclusion. It’s why I went to the Institute, or one of many reasons.

A secondary one was wanting to be in the presence of another human being whom I know to be imbued with mystic consciousness and at the same time effective in a larger way than me – effective in creating a movement.

I’m aware now that a movement already exists in a pervasive way. I’ve said it so often, but now I feel it, and now it has an outward manifestation in many, many ways and places.  As people of the heart, as people of the new, I see us as part of it. We’re part of the spirit of change, part of some kind of movement to the new…maybe not OWS, maybe not Sacred Activism, maybe not Conscious Evolution, maybe not anything that’s been named, formed, and institutionalized. Maybe we’re part of something that will not be defined.

Still, the OWS movement causes me to feel even more strongly that there is value in gathering. I hope you’ll visit the Event page and consider participating.

I write this as I watch the white squirrel who occasionally visits our yard, cling to the side of a tree, as if hiding, still and attentive to the nearby gray squirrel who, before I could get this typed, caught wind of her anyway and chased her away.

The Tea Party, where people are taking their rage out on the vulnerable, magnifies and distinguishes the OWS movement, where a somewhat similar anger is caused by a different source and so directed in a totally opposite direction. It is our animal instincts that cause us to persecute the different and to fear change. It is a “spirit of compassion that reels at the senselessness of misery and suffering” that is propelling the populace movements.

From the preface to A Course of Love:

The weakening done your ego by whatever learning you have done has left room for strength, a strength that entered as if by a little hole made in your ego’s armor, a strength that grows, and grows impatient with delay.  It is not your ego that grows impatient for change, for your ego is highly invested in things remaining the same.  It is, rather, a spirit of compassion that reels at the senselessness of misery and suffering.  A spirit that seeks to know what to do, a spirit that does not believe in the answers it has been given.  P.24

Our small Gathering in Dialogue could allow us, in the spirit of compassion, to be a part of the change we want to see.  What begins as a structural change – doing something old in a new way – can become much more.  I have such great faith in us and what – with vision, imagination, and desire – we can bring into being.

I can’t believe it’s November. Henry doesn’t want to take down the Halloween decorations. He’s so damn cute.

No stars for the third morning in a row. I read in the paper yesterday that November is the month of clouds and that it makes for the best sunrise and sunsets.  It’s only November 2 but I haven’t noticed this yet – only the lack of stars. It’s weird how the clarity of the October skies gives way so fast to November’s clouds. How can this be? It’s the observation thing again, I suppose…not so much the calendar.

But still. How can the weather follow the calendar so closely? I’m getting a kick out of seeing how everything must start with observation. Someone noticed the cloudy month of November way before there was a science of phenomenology or meteorology. Thousands of years ago the science of astrology started with observation of the stars. Thoreau wrote Walden Pond from observation. One of the observations made about the white lions of Africa is that maybe their color is changing in preparation for a new ice age.

The remaining gold leafs on my Maple tree are trembling this morning and red veined and brown edged. It reminds me of how my mother notices the graying of my hair and Henry the veins in my hands.

I saw this in my reading the other day and thought to post it with no commentary. It really moved me.  (It is slightly edited.)

8.1       What you give you will receive in truth.  What you do not receive is a measure of what you withhold.  Your heart is accustomed to giving in a way that your mind is not.  Your heart…knows of giving and of a return not based on the world of your mind or of physical circumstance.  Despite disappointments most severe, your heart knows that what you give you receive in truth.

8.2       As the awareness of your withholding dawns upon your heart, you will begin to realize what you do not give, and with that realization, what you have to give.

8.4       In order to identify yourself in this world, you have had to withhold a piece of yourself and say of this piece, “This is what makes me uniquely who I am.”  Without this piece of yourself that you have determined to be unique, your existence would seem to serve even less purpose than it does now.  Thus that which is most separate, or that which you have determined separates you the most, is that which you value most highly.

8.5       This one thought constitutes a thought system in and of itself, for it is the primary thought by which you live your life.  Your effort goes into maintaining this illusion that what you are must be protected, and that your protection rests on holding this piece of yourself separate.  Like the love you set aside from this world, this thought too is one that can be used, for it recognizes that you are as apart from this world as love is.  The harsh realities of the world may claim your body and your time, but this one piece of yourself that you have set aside you allow it not to claim.  This piece is held within your heart, and it is this piece with which we now will work.

8.6       This is the piece that screams never to that which would beat you down.  Life is seen as a constant taking away and this, you claim, will never be taken from you.  For those whose lives are threatened, it is called the will to live.  For those whose identity is threatened, it is called the cry of the individual.  For others it is the call to create, and for still others the call to love.  Some will not give up hope to cynicism.  Others label it ethics, morals, values, and say this is the line I will never cross.  It is the cry that says, “I will not sell my soul.”

8.7       Rejoice that there is something in this world that you will not bargain with, something you hold sacrosanct.  This is your Self.  Yet this Self that you hold so dear that you will never let it go is precisely what you must be willing to freely give away.  This is the only Self that holds the light of who you are in truth, the Self that is joined with the Christ in you.

8.8       To this Self is this appeal put forth.  Let it be heard and held within your heart.  Hold it joyously alongside what already occupies your heart — the love you set aside and the piece of yourself that you won’t let go.  As you learn that what you give you will receive in truth, you will see that what abides within your heart is all that is worthy of your giving and all you would receive.