A Course of Love

“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.

Dark-eyed Junco

“Slate-colored” Junco

• Pink bill
• Gray and white body
• White in outer tail feathers
• © maia bird, December 2008
• http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/dark-eyed_junco/id

There’s been a new chattering in the yard, a loud chorus, as if a whole new group of birds moved in when I wasn’t looking. That’s exactly what happened! The dark-eyed Juncos are back. The males are loud enough to be heard from several hundred feet away but I’ve found that Juncos have both a loud and a quiet song. The quiet – a series of whistles, trills, and warbles – only carries about 40 feet. I must have had a bunch of males claiming their territory.

I looked them up after pausing, on my way out to the cabin this afternoon, to see who was making all the racket. It didn’t take long to spot the Juncos. As I walked, they flitted up out of the leaves, their white tail feathers flashing. From the website above, I found that they live on forest floors of the western mountains and Canada but flood North America for winter. I knew they were Juncos right away, but went on-line to see if I could find a site with a recording of their song (this one has it). There were other birds in the yard, and I wanted to know which were doing all the singing. As soon as I heard the recording it was obvious that the Juncos were the source.

When I heard the new birds, I thought right away about the season change. I always figure the birds know more than we do about the coming of weather.  Maybe the newspaper will be reporting cooler temperatures tomorrow.

My dad used to say that if you passed cows lying down in a field, there was a storm coming. I love the kinds of “news” you pick up through observation.

I’m just coming out of one of those periods of feeling “off” and I’m finding that the signals from nature are a lot less complicated than the ones from human beings. With human beings lately, I’ve been second-guessing what I observe, which means, more or less, that I’m second-guessing myself; second-guessing my impressions, my intuition, my way of knowing and being.

Could it be like a seasonal change and nothing to get alarmed about?  The coming of those things, those changes, that will be what they will be but nonetheless effect us, like the weather and the storm do the Juncos and the cows?

With interrelatedness, this confusion is so mortifyingly human.  There are times you don’t know when to lie down and when to sing loudly. Sometimes it’s the pits and makes me wish that I had no mechanism in me through which what is natural could be turned off like water from a spigot.  I wish that, like a bird, or a cow, there was nothing in me other than an indisputable instinct to migrate, or to get my feet under me in a storm.

And then of course, in another day, when the doubting mood has left me, I’m awfully glad to be as I am, doubt and all.

It’s said in the course that all fear is doubt about yourself. I’ve never gotten much of a “charge” out of the word fear and for whatever reason haven’t felt myself to be a fearful person. But doubt carries a real charge and I can see what is meant. When I’m in one of my doubtful moods, even if I don’t feel fearful, I am more or less paralyzed. I don’t feel comfortable enough to be myself and that’s when I fall away from trusting and feel lost in confusion.

Still and all, confusion has been a good friend to me. It causes me to question myself, and I am, if not comfortable with it, accepting of the discomfort  (even when I bitch and whine about it).

Margaret Wheatly spoke of this years ago in her book “Turning to one another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future.”  I remember reading this sentence with surprise at its truth: “As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally – our willingness to be disturbed.” I recall how I thought People no longer want to be disturbed. I didn’t think it applied to me, of course…but it does!

I’ve always thought:

Would change ever come to us without questioning? Would we ever make course corrections without questioning, confusion, doubt?

Now I’m getting psyched at this new idea of separating the dreaded doubt from the challenges of change, and the willingness to be disturbed. It’s such an easy to miss distinction that I haven’t seen it…haven’t seen that I don’t need to doubt myself in order to let in new insights or navigate transitions. What a revelation!

What a season change!

The first hard frost. I can see it this morning. It’s there on the path as I head out to turn on the heater in the cabin and then back in for the feeding of the cats and the coffee and, this morning, for peanut butter. Just now I realize I didn’t put the cat dishes up and that Sam will have at it already – no use running back inside now. That’s one of those mindful things I wish I’d remember.  But I did make it through a whole day yesterday without fully closing the door that sticks and having to climb through the cabin’s window!

The stars are more magnificent than the other day. Just stunning. The moon looks like a new moon but I don’t think it is. It’s there in that crescent shape, surrounded by stars. I mean they’re everywhere this morning. It’s the clearest morning ever.

Angie walked her friend George out to meet me yesterday and we talked about the stars and how he was out evening and me morning just glorying in them. He said the time he spent beneath them made him want to put a message on Facebook that everyone needed to get out and look at them. He’s Angie’s guy “friend” and I hope it lasts. He seemed perceptive. He looked at the cabin as if it held clues and asked me about my painting.

I don’t understand people who don’t do that – don’t look for clues to knowing a person, don’t get elated by discovering some small treasure in another human being, don’t delight in idiosyncrasies. I know my dad taught me that through his own sheer enjoyment of odd characters. Maybe some people were taught reserve and to respect privacy, or maybe it’s just hard to retain our curiosity about people and life as we age.

I just heard from one of the young women from the Institute.  She’s a fellow writer and I was taken by her right away. We didn’t have a single big conversation or anything like that, but she was called to read a bit of her writing and it let me in. I guess that’s what I’m talking about…the ways people let us in even when they might not know it. How people can speak to us in all kinds of ways if we’re paying attention, or are curious.

I was so appreciative of being let in by this young writer that on the last day I gave her a copy of The Given Self. She wrote to tell me that it was just what she needed, that in her spiritual inquiry she’d felt subtly discouraged from what was unique in her. She said I had given her permission to be herself.  She is such a beautiful young woman that it is hard to conceive of anyone believing that God or the world would want anything else from her; that she’d think something else was required. But I understand how this happens. I think we all do. We can probably all remember the wonder of taking in that stunning message in A Course of Love, the permission giving, that invitation to be who we are and share who we are.

I’m writing this as I work my way up to responding to her without gushing. Reading what she wrote I had one of those moments…a moment akin to when I read Elliott Robertson’s poetry and felt that if I’d truly encouraged him toward it, as he said I did, I could die happy. Sometimes in the incredible gift of such a moment, it all feels too good to be true. And I get reminded that what is true for this person whom I have somehow had the grace to encourage is true for me too. And that I can’t forget, for a moment, the bravery it often takes to “be who you are.”

I think this necessary courage (which we all must have until we no longer need it) may be the reason why, when we meet a “real” person, someone who lets us in, or someone who invites us to let them in, we feel humbled.

It’s the earliest I’ve been out in a while, 6:16 as I write this after crawling in through the window, (the door’s been sticking) before that feeding the animals, and today keeping Sam with me so that she won’t lap up the leftover cat food while I’m out. She has a definite strategy to do that, thinking, in her dog way, perhaps all day, about the opportunity to snarf food from their dish. A pastime she gives herself over to with abandon, it even trumps her enjoyment of this time of year, which you can see in her, as if by being bred for hunting, she luxuriates in the fall. There does seem a time, at the end of the day, when the cat food is gone, when she becomes calm in the luxury of the cool air and the damp leafs and the dark and lays like a queen outside the back door with the yard light on, nose to the wind.

The gooseneck lamp with the irritable knob that won’t quite stick at “on”, held this morning as I fiddled with it, needing just enough light so I could see where to plug in the heater. Having stayed on, I kind of hate to turn it back off, but it changes things. I see my reflection in the window when it’s on, and I see less of the outdoors, vague touches of gold on the ground and floating in the air, leafs more visible than trunks and limbs.

The whole thing about light is that it’s hard to get away from. It’s hard to sit in the dark in the city by the freeway with its giraffe-necked lamps hanging over your fence, even if they’re down the way. But somehow it looks darker out there when it’s light in here, and so I’m going to leave it for a while and look into the depths of it and the spiral at the back of my conch shell too, the one Henry noticed for the first time yesterday. The shell is art in the light of the goosenecked lamp with the dark behind it and the shadows it casts on the desk.

How like to Sam I am, I think as I sit in the near dark with the conch shell and the gold leafs and the sandwich bag of leftover sliced apples Donny cut for Henry last night.  Even in my element, in the season I feel I was bred for (if the time before sunrise can be given its own season) I can be fixated on my version of the cat food. The glory of it is that I can also not be.

The October 2011 Sacred Institute Group

This was such a great group of people. I think we all felt ready to be of love and give service to the new.

In my hours of driving to and from the Institute for Sacred Activism, I thought a lot of my dad, who was a truck driver by occupation. My dad thought that good driving was a great skill and I felt so complimented that he thought I was a good driver. One of the things he taught me as I was learning to drive, was to never brake on the freeway.  What he was saying was to anticipate. Always be aware of what’s happening around you. By paying attention, he advised, you could always slow down, (or conversely speed up gradually) in the way the situation called for.

Other than during rush hour traffic, or the freeways of the most busy cities (at least in the U.S.), I feel that it is still possible to, for the most part, be aware, anticipate, and act accordingly.

His wisdom helped me gain perspective:

The urgency of the times doesn’t call us to either throw on the brakes or hurtle along at light-speed.

Now, with a few more days of down time, I am content with what I received at the Institute, and what I will be sitting with as I drive at my own speed with all my skills of anticipation.

And so, I’ll not write more on the institute. If anyone is really interested, just ask and I’ll tell you all you could want to hear. I was thinking particularly that some might be interested in the prophecy, the predictions of the collapse, but they were for the most part general, only a time-frame of the next 2-3 years might be more specific than what you’ve heard.

The main reason I’m not writing more is that I have a lot of feelings about what was shared that I haven’t sat with long enough yet.  What I could report with some accuracy is “what was said” rather than on the meaning I’ve found in what was said, and I guess if you want Andrew Harvey’s view of things, you’ll visit his website, not mine.

Since getting home I was reminded of something Jean Houston says. It’s that people aren’t finding their purpose because they haven’t woken up, or are only partially aware, of “our situation as a human race.” My feeling is much like Jean’s in that my own waking up, and understanding of my place in “our moment” was a major cause of my strong impetus to go. With that understanding, I’ll more fully and creatively bring my own unique self and contribution to this moment in the world.

Questions along the same theme were asked by Diane Berke during the shadow work at the institute, and I share them with you as good questions to ponder (but hopefully not to make into causes of anxiety!):

How would you show up in the world if you lived in alignment with your deepest truth? What price have you paid and what price has the world paid for your refusal to develop that?

From the God in me to the God in you~ (closing out on my Sacred Institute reporting)

Mari

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Just got up and turned off the table lamp that sits in the front window of the cabin. It’s 6:20 and still dark and my first day out in the dark since I’ve gotten back from the Institute for Sacred Activism. I feel like I’ve got a cold or allergies or sinus, who knows, and have slept in the last few days, but today I thought, “I can always go back to bed later.” I just had such a yen to be here in the dark. My yearning was rekindled by William Stafford, who I took to bed last night, in the form of his book on writing. And the dear, he describes writing as discovery well, and I felt I hadn’t practiced it much of late and remembered this morning, in my sneezing stupor, that getting out here in the dark is sometimes more important than sleep.

Walking out the door, the full moon setting low on the horizon to my right; the visible stars in the opposite direction of the moon’s luminosity, so high and tiny…little sand specks in a black clear sky, calling me to crane my neck, and so heartening to see.

It is true. A dark night for the planet is inconceivable.

Ever since I’ve been home, I’ve gotten message after message, basically about new ideas.  The first news piece I saw, the first editorial I read, the book I needed to re-read, and last night a Parker Palmer live tele-cast on the Heart of Democracy.

The first thing that caught my eye as I picked up the local newspaper from my kitchen table, was about a conference called, “My letter to the World: Narrating Human Rights.” My old teacher Trish Hampl organized it and said, “Most atrocities are not comprehensible until they are described by memoir or nonfiction prose – think Anne Frank or Adam Hochschild.” The editorial was David Brooks talking about the “Stagnation of innovation” and quoting Einstein saying that you can’t solve new problems with old answers.The tele-cast was a bit dull but Parker spoke, if only for a moment, of the value of contemplation and reflection and quoted a man giving this advice to West Pointers and telling them they couldn’t make the right decisions based on the buzz of information in their heads.

If nothing else, these messages have reinforced that story and ideas are forms of action and that my way is my way.  And now I have to get back to it.

The blessing of The Institute of Sacred Activism is that it did not propose a specific form of action to take up, but encouraged each to follow their passion. The downside was that Andrew didn’t see his own writing as his sacred activism, and instead spoke of his activism as his work to save the white lions of Africa. “The Mystery of the White Lions” was part of our required reading and I can definitely understand the pull, it’s only that I felt writing and ideas were subtly negated as action…even though they are so often exactly what move people to action.

I am being drawn to be more “active” in the world, but not yet to a specific action other than being more present and having a voice within it.

Being one of the voices for A Course of Love I have felt that as soon as anyone reads a bit of it they’ll “get it”…they’ll understand what my own devotion is about, they’ll understand that it is “real.”  But my message since coming home is clear, even though once again I feel I may not be stating it well. It would go something like this: “Knowing someone, getting a sense for their sincerity or integrity” is the greatest determiner in what calls me to action. Knowing Andrew, even if only through his writing, led me to the Institute. Knowing Parker Palmer through his writing led me to listen to his tele-cast last night. I read the same editorialists whenever I see them, because over time, I have come to trust in their insight.  And so, I am being returned to the field of “being who I am” and seeing as clearly as I can the truth of my fellows, with great gratitude for the grace of this message. It is what keeps me true to my heart.  It keeps me from handing myself over to “initiation” and makes some say that their reading of ACOL does not make them “a course person.” When we are true to our hearts we don’t want to be indoctrinated but can still remain open to community and to feelings and events that call forth our heart connection and create a palpable energy that extends and encompasses.

I said that today I would write on gratitude, and the best way to do that, now that I’ve given a little context, seems to be to share my discovery as I journaled during my Institute attendance. Tomorrow, I’ll share a bit of the content of the Institute, and then I’ll let its spirit carry on in my own field.

As I think of all of this, I love the brilliance of A Course of Love all the more. That whole beginning invitation to let go of our minds, to not study, to not apply effort. The wholly wonderful mode of receptivity, of getting out of the way and allowing what is to come in a way that speaks directly to our hearts, our circumstances, our longing, and our gifts. The whole suggestion of “coming to know” as a new way of knowing – not of the mind, not of the heart – but of their union…and not of an “other” but of union and relationship.

I love the later books for their introduction, despite the more “traditional” beginning, of the idea of embodiment, and of elevating “the self of form.”

In The Given Self, I let out, and in my way let go, of my resistance to ways of interpretation of ACOL that do not see this radical call to embodiment. And I see clearly from my reaction to Andrew that when told “this is the way it is” all I respond with is resistance and defense.

In listening to the sincere, passionate, wonder of those who have found “their way” at this institute, I realized how much I have already found my way – and how much I came to extend it and join it with sacred activism – but not in anyone else’s way but my own.

I wonder about this with my Gathering in Dialogue and how strongly I may need to say that what will be offered is dialogue. I imagine someone coming looking for “teachings” on A Course of Love and being as disappointed as I was with “teachings” when I thought there would be more dialogue.

But I am more committed to this gathering than before. This is the wonder that’s coming from all of this for me.

I love this cheery shadow of the lamp shade

Yesterday I visited the site I’ve chosen for The Gathering in Dialogue and am now only waiting to hear back on confirmation of the space and date. The date I’ve selected is the first weekend in May, May 4-6.

Today I started to clean my car in preparation for my trip to Illinois and the Institute for Sacred Activism.

I found two of my church’s hymnals in the trunk.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked out of church with the hymnal in my hand.  I didn’t realize these were still in my possession until I started this “cleaning out the car” project, but I have corrected my ways. Now, if I find myself unlocking my car door with the book under my arm, I take it right back inside. This is not some little collection of papers but a real book, and the two of them in my trunk gave me pause. If I bring them in the house will I ever get them back to church? And if I don’t bring them in the house, do I want them traveling to Illinois with me?

This was a pleasant little pause on a fine and sunny fall day. I’ve had others as I ready myself to go, and since I just responded to a friend who asked me why I was going, I thought it might be a good time to follow up on my post about Creation of the New with the story of how it relates to my desire to attend the Institute.

To set the scene of the writing of Creation of the New, I have to tell you that it came at the end of my period of solitude. That period began in late 2003 when I first felt myself drawn to its orientation if not the full-out practice of solitude. This happened pretty much through recognizing, as I read a Thomas Merton essay on the subject, that I was indeed being called, and had been for a while. This was a great relief, and I took it very seriously, in large part because I figured nothing else was going to sustain that feeling of relief.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2006 that I actually experienced prolonged periods of solitude though.  That was the summer that my husband completed the building of my cabin in the woods behind our yard, and the first summer that our coffee shop was fully out of business.  I was able to quit doing just about everything other than taking my mom to church on Saturday night, and I sometimes would describe my solitude by saying I rarely got in my car more than once a week.

About midway through this lovely summer, as I was doing a private retreat based on the 40 Days of The Dialogues, I had one of those amazing experiences that don’t sound like much when you tell about it, but that feel nearly miraculous as they happen.

I was journaling, as is my way, about my retreat feelings. What I often did, and still do, is address Jesus as I journal. I call him friend or brother and write “to” him, and every once in a while I would feel a response well up.  I’d call these my “conversations with Jesus.” But this time, the message that arose felt like it would be the end to these conversations. Perhaps I was reading that day in The Dialogues that asks if we are beginning to hear the many voices of the dialogue.  My message, at any rate, was clear. It was time to hear the voice of Christ everywhere and in everything, and to hear the Christ voice within myself as well.

Shortly afterwards I began to write Creation of the New, in a way that felt almost as “receptive” as had A Course of Love, even though it was not the same at all. The voice, for one thing, was not the voice of Jesus, but my own. The feeling of receptivity was more about the flow of the writing and the content, as if they were of one piece. I didn’t stop and “think” about what I was writing, I didn’t have a clue of where it was going, had no intention of starting a book – nothing like that. It was more as if there was a vision that needed to come through me…and was coming.  It was most peculiar, both in method and content.

The vision felt, at first, very cataclysmic…so much so that on the first day of writing…as the initial pages drew to a close, I ran in the house to turn on the television and see if something was going on.  That was the way it made me feel – as if something was happening – as if at any moment the air raid sirens would go off and there’d be some “end of the world” announcement as of a nuclear attack. And strangely enough, when I turned on the TV, which had last been on the History channel, there was a program on about the apocalypse. I was flabbergasted and shaken. It was just one of those documentary type deals, but merely the fact that it was on in that moment felt eerie.

The rest of the writing of Creation went on much unchanged although the feeling of imminent catastrophe began to leave me.

I was about halfway through with Creation when Andrew Harvey comes in, and it wasn’t “in person” or anything like that, it’s just that the day after sharing Creation of the New with my friend Mary, she brought over her copy of “Spirituality and Health” because an article in it, about his vision, sounded just like mine. We sat on the floor of my cabin and she read out loud to me. His language, but even more than that the feel of what he was saying, corresponded so precisely that we both had goose-bumps. I’ve wanted to meet him ever since.

This summer, almost exactly five years later, I began to feel compelled to publish Creation of the New. Then, as I began working on it, I happened to see that I could tune into an interview Andrew Harvey was giving. As I listened to him, I felt absolutely certain that it was time that we meet, as well as more certain than ever that it’s time to share Creation of the New.

Creation of the new is spoken of a lot within A Course of Love.  The urgent need for our return to who we truly are is mentioned more than once. We’re charged with elevating the self of form, and told we are to be forerunners of the new. If Creation of the New had come in the voice of Jesus as the fourth volume of the series, I wouldn’t have been surprised, and I would have published it much sooner.  That it came as it did was a big surprise. It took some time for me to work up the nerve to publish it.

Still…it makes some sense to me. If we are to be the voices of the new…well…I guess we have to start to listen to each other.

I’m excited to be going off to listen as well as to share.

Creation of the New will soon be available for purchase.

I didn’t get the formatting right on my first try with Creation of the New. (My friend Terry’s cover was perfect the first time!) I won’t tell you the details of the frustration this additional round of formatting became, only that I got it done and I sent it off. The second proof was to arrive today and I checked outside my front door more than once as I’d ordered it via special delivery, then left to pick Henry up at school.

It was at the door when we came back. We’d gone on an after-school trek to the library and were later than usual and hungry. I started supper and then, believe it or not, put on a rubber glove.  I’ve got the kind of hands that leave smudges on everything anyway, and I’d been making dinner. I just wanted to crack it open and see if, at a glance, the formatting looked okay.  I could only find one glove so I handled the book with the gloved hand and used a towel to hold it.

I think I got it right this time. Tomorrow I’ll go through it page by page.

A new book feels like it deserves a sacred ritual. I could recount stories of all my first sightings of books, but I won’t, at least not tonight. I will tell you that none of them were any better than tonight’s look-see, and that is only because what you’ve got to do, soon after the first glance, is sit by yourself and hold your book lovingly, and pat it, and not wear gloves. You have to sit in a chair and read every word. That’s the sacred ritual.  It’s not too unlike a new mother counting fingers and toes once she’s out of the delivery room and has her first moment alone with her new baby.

But it’s a little different each time, and the self-publishing takes away some of the anticipation. Each of my traditionally published books were a surprise. The covers were done with someone else’s creative talents. The interior was set-up by another person’s craft.  The books arrived in a box the size of a crate – author copies they are called.

This one came as a lone book and has the word PROOF stamped on the last page.

There’s something about working with words.  My friend Mary was over today, taking a break from the longest video she’s ever been commissioned to create and with as much frustration as I was feeling in the midst of my formatting issues. Her music wasn’t working and she didn’t know what to do to solve the problem.  These “technical” things are not so different creative project to creative project, but what is different with a book is the journey that it always is.  No matter what the subject matter, and no matter if it’s self-published or traditionally published, there’s a story behind why it was written and there’s another story about the process by which it became manifest and another one that’s totally about the “inside job” it is on your psyche.

At least for me it’s all story, story, story and I’m way too close to that story to stand back and evaluate anything other than formatting. I hold my breath fearing typos and it seems all about the literal written word, which might as well be the alphabet at that point. This is why you have to just read…as soon as you can…and see if it carries you anywhere, because that’s the real test. If you can be reading critically, checking for errors, and still get swept away so that you don’t notice or forget that you’re checking, then you can breath a sigh of relief.

I have no doubt this will happen to me with Creation of the New because the whole thing seems to be intended to sweep you away.  It’s that kind of language. It’ll grip you or it won’t. You’ll be stirred up or you won’t. I don’t think there’s any middle ground, and I feel that’s been the way with most everything I’ve written. People really like my writing or they don’t like it at all. It’s easy to forget with a book that it has a quality that is like music, and no matter the content, some people won’t like the “sound.” Our listening, whether it is to the words of a book we’re reading or to a piece of music, is subjective.

I know I’m talking about this stuff that can’t possibly be interesting to very many people because I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I can tell you about Creation of the New without talking about the last five years of my life, and the state of the world, and of spirituality and of our souls. I call it a “vision” because it felt more like a vision than a book, and the words were simply about expressing the vision. It’s that kind of book. The kind of book a friend of mine suggested that I might now, as I join with others, begin to understand….

I’ll be joining with others at the Institute for Sacred Activism in less than two weeks. I wanted Creation done before I go so I can bring it with me.  I know it “fits.” It’s part of the literature for this new time. I may not find the right time or place to bring it up, but I don’t need to talk about it specifically to be in the milieu where my understanding may be enhanced.

But the way it “fits” is why this publication is tied to my decision to attend the Sacred Institute and my desire to hand this book to Andrew Harvey.  I want to join with others and understand what it is that I created; what this work says…sort of apart from me.  Again, like a child that you someday have to separate from and see for him- or her-self, as she or he is, not as your creation. Not even as your love child. Definitely not as an extension of yourself. And yet at the same time, with no disclaiming. It’s a fine line.  I’m still straddling it with A Course of Love.  I still find it a fascinating thing to ponder, the kind of thing that’s at the root of so much that’s going haywire today.

This is about our ability (or lack of it) to understand and honor and be with what we’ve created, each and every child of our womb or spirit, and at the same time to stand back with enough perspective to find that transpersonal spot, the place a musician finds when the music takes over and is simply coming through to him the way it is to each person in the room, and hanging in the air, and somehow filling him up so that he is it even while it has its own life.

Art is like that to me, and so are spiritual writings. They’re Art with a capital A. Sweeping you away Art. The kind of Art that makes you wonder what hit you, and to scratch your head or rub your chin or gaze off into space and not understand … but feel. You can understand later.

That’s where I’m at with this Creation of the New…just approaching the gate of understanding.

http://creationofthenew.com

I’ve been feeling the link between gratitude and joy lately.

It started with this moment of gratitude I felt in my kitchen. I was alone in the house, making myself leftover frozen lasagna to eat while I read. I was so overcome by how much I loved doing what I was doing. I felt as if I heard my truest self, or my soul, almost like a bystander, saying, “I just love this.” And I realized in a way I never did before (an almost embarrassing admission) that gratitude is joy.

You know how books and practices recommend gratitude – like Start your day with gratitude – Count your blessings…that kind of thing. That never moved me. Never. But when I realized that the joy I was feeling was gratitude, or the gratitude actually joy, I was bowled over.

And then this morning, walking out to the cabin in the early morning dark, with a light rain falling – the first in weeks – and that fresh smell!…I felt again the gratitude joy. And likewise this evening on the same walk as the smell had suddenly turned to the fall smell and yellow leafs were falling all around me. There it was. The feeling again.  Oh God, I love it so.

I’ve felt joy before, but I never quite got that it is always, always, steeped in gratitude, like a cup of tea that wouldn’t be tea without the steeping. And I never saw so clearly that the gratitude is all about love.

Katherine Lanpher, a former St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist (the first woman to ever have a column printed on the front page of the Metro section) was back in the Twin Cities recently. Her presence garnered an update on what’s she doing and it interested me. Lanpher is now a senior seminar leader for the national OpEd Project where she trains women and others with under-represented voices to write and present themselves well in opinion pieces, talk shows and before Congress.

In the article she says, “It’s exciting to help women and people of color learn to speak out. Most commentary you see these days is from white men, most of whom come from a distinct social strata. Our point is that if you get more voices out there, we have a better world.”

Another thing she works on is “Upstairs at the Square,” a series at Barnes and Noble (NY) “that pairs writers, musicians and other artists for conversations and performance.”

One of the most moving events I ever attended was one that paired photographer Alec Soth with a poet (whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten for the moment).  It was more thrilling to me than any spiritual seminar I’d ever been to. While it’s hard to say why, I’ve always thought it had something to do with the artists not having “a message” and yet how in sharing themselves, their passion and process, they delivered a message directly to my soul. I remember knowing that they’d shown me something of “the way” that “sharing who we are” extends to others and can be felt as a spiritual or guiding force that can draw us and our companions into being more fully present as who we are.

I’ve signed up to attend Andrew Harvey’s Sacred Institute in October with a feeling that it will provide something similar but much more intense.  I don’t often reach junctures where I feel I need to give myself an extra push in the direction of expressing myself, but I find that I’m at one now. I’m wondering if anyone else feels this way – that you have to take a risk – or really challenge yourselves to do something new if you’re going to find a greater wholeness.

There’s something that feels incredibly important about finding and expanding our way, and I know my own (as well as Jesus’) call for dialogue is about bringing diverse voices into our collective hearing range in this expansive way.

My friend Tone from Norway has just written an article for her very secular Norwegian country people suggesting that in this time following terrorism, love (and A Course of Love) provide an alternative to fear.  (I’ll post it once she’s translated it for me.)

Knowing that people are doing this important work encourages me.  It encourages me in my work to share meaningful dialogue, it inspires me to keep trying, and it thrills and relieves me to know I’m not alone. No matter in what area, the call to dialogue always seems to be a dual draw…it’s personal and political or personal and spiritual or personal and artistic, or personal and social justice oriented. It’s personal for coming out of one person’s experience or passion or talent or conscience or integrity…as a need to express something from the self and for the self that is also for the whole. While it is an acknowledgment that each voice matters, it’s also a recognition of diversity in a way that says, “Don’t leave it up to others. Expand your reach. Take this seriously. Train if you have to. Share your art if that’s your way. But do it. It can’t be done without.”

“If you get more voices out there you have a better world.”

If you’re willing to take a small risk and engage in the challenge of dialogue, one way is to go to the Fostering Dialogue page of this site and join in the dialogue begun there.  It could be one small step on our way to expanding our reach and our personal and collective wholeness.

St. Paul Pioneer Press. “Catching up with Katherine Lanpher,” by Mary Ann Grossmann, 8-13-2011, C1.

Back in 2003, I wrote a little booklet called “Movement within the Course of Love Series.”  I have a certain casual attitude to anything I wrote that many years ago, a feeling that I have moved beyond what I might have seen back then. Yet it’s been on my mind lately. That notion of movement was a true one and I was writing of it because I was feeling it so keenly.

When my spiritual path opened up to me, one of the most amazing feelings of it was one of movement, or of “real” change. I felt, after a mere year or so, that I’d changed so much that I was hardly the same person. I saw that I’d been pretty much the same person my whole life. Until I began to see and experience in a new way, there had been no “real” change or movement.  Lots of things happened. There were periods of considerable growth, but it didn’t really matter. It was as if all of those things, those physical changes, those growth periods, had only been like painting a house. I kept improving on the same old self and, at the time, those changes felt almost as meaningless as weight gain and loss.

So I imagine that what I was finding so remarkable back in 2003, was a movement that kept happening and that kept revealing a truer “me” and greater truths about life, love, and the work of A Course of Love. I do remember that by the time I finished putting the booklet together, I was entering a descent that had maybe already begun when I started it, but I’m no longer sure.

What I was seeing was the “honeymoon” that A Course of Love originally swept me up into.  The maturing of the relationship that was like a marriage – where the blossom of first love fades and you see yourself and your marriage partner in a more whole fashion – in all the various moods and circumstances and where, in a sense, the “work” begins of “union and relationship.” Then I saw the next stage as a maturing, of having “the work” behind you a little bit, and of enjoying the more organic wisdom of the elder.

I also used the metaphor of undergraduate, graduate school, and entering a profession. In the undergraduate years you can think you know a lot more than you do and you’re really still following in the way of your teachers – not yet having come into your own. In graduate school this “coming into your own” is required. You have to choose your path and commit to it and bring fresh ideas – your own – to it. And finally I saw a parallel between The Dialogues and the time of entering a profession. You become one of the people “on the ground” living the profession you’ve chosen, and perhaps through professional associations, sharing in equality with your peers the wisdom you and they have gained through experience in the field.

It was easier to write this in 2003 than it is now when I can look back and see more of a cyclical pattern, a continual stream of these phases, a revisiting of being in love and beloved, a revisiting of the “hard work” times, and a fading in and out of wisdom or of calls to profess. Sometimes I feel as if the more I think I know the more I don’t know and I’ve come to welcome times of utter confusion even if they still make me uncomfortable.

At the end of 2003, after completing that booklet, I had one of my many “turning point” moments when I felt a call to solitude.

“Doing” still seems to take me out of the zone of contemplation a little too far. Before long, when I start doing, I feel as if I get mired in the details. I begin to long for a return to a different rhythm, one that’s like the difference between cleaning the house like a mad woman, and puttering about. I’m at my best when I’m in puttering mode, going at my own pace.

After some busyness, it takes me a while to shed the hyper-drive, to wipe myself clean of the details, and to begin again with a fresh slate (or state of mind and heart).

Transition times seem as if they’re about the same thing, but with greater longevity. You stand in the in between longer, neither here nor there, not quite able to disengage or to get your rhythm back. The music of the dance is changing, you can feel it, but you don’t yet know the beat. You feel awkward and totally lacking in poise. You want to move, but you can’t quite catch the swing of it. You might want to partner up, but can’t find the partner who’ll make it a smooth glide across the dance floor. The longer the transition time lasts, the more you feel you have let things slide and ought to be doing something other than what you’re doing. As much as change is longed for, it’s hard to hang out with the transitions that bring them into being.

I send these musings out into the internet stratosphere, in one sense as warning, in another as a hopeful if cautionary tale, an encouragement to hang out where you are, to appreciate transition if you can, to honor gestation, and to be aware of the cycle.

The grape vines that have been making their return this summer have just reached the trellis that separates yard from woods…and so have the Japanese Beetles. They glow iridescent as I walk through the passageway. How long have they been there? Last week they were still in hiding from me as I watched the progress of the vines. Now the telltale lacy leafs seem as if they couldn’t have gotten that way in only a week.  Was I blind in my zeal to see the vines once again cover the trellis, or was there a change so sudden that I could not have observed it sooner?

I feel, once again, that the vines reflect my life.  It’s always so disconcerting to suddenly see what I didn’t before.  Then I wonder if I was blind and what it was that might have blinded me, or if it is simply impossible to see … until suddenly I do…which often as not leaves me wondering what else I’m not seeing!

I don’t mean to be obscure with this metaphor but what I’m saying is obscure. It seems the nature of revelations to reveal precisely those things that were obscured.  At times it seems to happen slowly. The blindness gives way to the obscurity, which is like a hint at something beyond what can be seen. At other times, there isn’t even the knowing that anything is obscured until suddenly it appears and then the feeling of having been blind comes, and the wondering at why, and at what else is hidden.

This isn’t a big conundrum or anything like that, just something that came to mind today as I saw the beetles and the “sorting out” of various blind spots (both known and unknown to me) in one picture frame.

Yesterday, my grandson told me he wanted to be with me all the time – even when I go to work.  As a grandmother, my heart just about burst for reasons of delight and also for reason of a sort of apprehension. An hour later, when I asked if he wanted to go do something, he said, “No, I want to stay here with you.” I then asked if he wouldn’t like it if the two of us went to his cousin’s house to play, and he was eager to go. Still later he didn’t mind at all when I left him there on his own for a while.

I use this example because of the sorting I’m doing in that one area of my life where I’m only just beginning to see my clinging to the way things were even as I attempt to move on to a new way. I’ve sought to create an environment where Henry wants to be with me, and I’ve sought to let go of the imbalance of being together so much that other heart tugs are left in the dust.

Almost everything in my life feels like it’s in this same stage of one “love” tugging against another “love” and I guess that while I’ve wanted each situation to fall in one direction or another, what I’m being shown is to hold both loves in balance.

I feel that bliss must be when you don’t know you don’t know and when you don’t know you do know.

The in between wondering could be the “between and amongst” of those relationships that have an uncanny ability to present us with, and to at times give us the grace to hold, the creative tension of change.  Change’s fluidity keeps showing us our blind spots and bringing, at the same time, (or soon after) greater clarity, and that bit of wondering…

What else is it I’m not seeing?

I don’t propose this as an active state of wondering, but I’ve seen that as soon as I’m convinced that I understand something in just the perfect light, I have the side of my head whacked – kind of like when you’re a kid and think you know better than your parent. “Don’t get so sure of yourself,” is what that internal whacking seems to say…don’t be so sure you understand…don’t be so sure you know the way to go…don’t be afraid to change course mid-stream. It’s not at all about doubting myself. It’s about being present and listening and seeing as truly as I can at the time. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t it?

Like all of us, I’ve got some good friends who don’t really understand the kind of experiences I’ve had, where they’ve led me, or how they’ve changed me. I don’t know about you, but every once in a while there is an occasion that causes me to try to share something from the spiritual dimension of my life with such a friend, and I do so with varying degrees of success.

When A Course of Love was being published, I didn’t know how I would explain it to my more practical friends, and when one of my first opportunities came to do so, it was revealing.

I owned a coffee shop at the time. We called it a gift café for the spirit and sold good books, stones, jewelry, and incense as well as coffee, pastries and sandwiches.  The shop sat on a corner in the central corridor linking St. Paul and Minneapolis, in an area of old industrial warehouses that had been converted to artist lofts and political offices.  The clientele from the near buildings was fantastic.

The shop was near enough to the University of Minnesota campuses that it was frequented by a few students, by old friends I had worked with there, and one seriously old friend – a man who’d been a good friend of my first husband and who had remained my friend since my teens.

He came in one day just after A Course of Love’s publication and we sat down for a minute. I wanted to tell him about it, but didn’t want to weird him out as he was a real logical, earth-bound kind of guy. So I started explaining it to him as being about a way to move from head to heart. I said, “You know, I really needed that movement.”

He said, “You?” with a look of disbelief on his face. “When were you ever in your head?”

All kinds of things flashed through my mind in that moment – like a review of our whole history from being “want-to-be-hippies” who gathered in my future husband’s Portland Avenue apartment like groupies around his fantastic musical talent, to the subsequent melt-down experienced after our marriage and the reality of a baby and responsibilities hit us, to all of the non-logical, “not good for me” decisions I made in the years that followed.

I felt kind of embarrassed and challenged and didn’t know how to explain myself. To my old friend, the “head” was the mind and the mind was logical. The mind caused you to make good decisions, to take care of business, to navigate the practical world with success. At all of those things, especially during the time we were closest, I had been a failure. I also could see that he thought being “of the heart” was the way I’d always been and was the cause of my many poor decisions and the floundering I did in my early twenties. To him, being of the heart was being led and undone by emotions.

I can’t remember now where the conversation went from there; only that it was short! But it was kind of a good conversation to have had in those early days. It got me wondering about what I actually meant and how to convey it.

I’ve achieved no eloquence in this regard and I remain baffled on the finer points, but the aim of wholeheartedness helps a lot. Not too many people confuse wholeheartedness with being emotionally driven.  It’s a distinction that’s hard to describe but being wholehearted might conjure up notions of maturity and emotions honed by the wisdom of the heart, or even simple realness as opposed to posing or melodrama.

Jesus said, “Love gives reason its foundation,” and I like that. The reason of the practical mind devoid of love’s foundation is what I’d say has caused many of the problems we’re facing in the world today.

But it wasn’t my practical mind that A Course of Love came to release me from.  I probably was led by emotions that fed my mind a bunch of material to use against me.  When my friend made that comment, I could see he didn’t know how much my mind had tortured me as I’d gone about life, not so much even making decisions, but simply falling from one circumstance to the next and then being full of recriminations and those “figuring it out” thoughts that get you nowhere, especially after the fact.

I felt most often like a very loving person who gave and didn’t receive, which in looking back showed me my deficiency came from not letting myself be known.  Relationships were my downfall because I didn’t face my own needs and desires within them and so didn’t really share of myself in a way that allowed the intimacy I longed for.

Relationships still test me, which is why existence in union and relationship, as well as the practice of dialogue feel so essential.  For me, as for many of us, bringing the expansiveness gained from spiritual experience – which is so often a solitary and inward movement – outward into relationship, is where attention needs to be given.

What “moving from head to heart” means and feels like is probably different for each of us and I could, as usual, go on and on.  I was simply remembering this story today and thought I’d share it and invite your sharing.