The first commandment is:
Love Life with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.
I know what this looks like, and what it feels like. I know how it feels to love life, and to be around people who love life.
It doesn’t have anything to do with their belief systems, or their occupations, or their circumstances, or their activities. It is a saying-yes, open-hearted embrace of everything that’s here. It’s a habit of paying attention to the needs of the moment, of taking the time to care.
There may be many directions on how to live a good life, many different interpretations of what that means. But they shouldn’t even be looked at first.
The first commandment comes from Life itself, not from anyone else’s instructions. So I have resolved to not ask any other source about it first. I might ask second, to hone and clarify my loving of Life. But first I will pay attention to Life, and to keeping the first commandment.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The Hand of Love II
It’s very important to me to feel the dimension in which Love holds everything. Holds it in precise harmony of time and space, moves it in ways which would seem impossible in fewer dimensions - so that everything moves freely and nothing collides. I know that the lines I have always drawn on things - my estimations of where things have been and where they are going, and why, and what should be done about it - are in fewer dimensions than the things exist in. Thus my estimations have always been wrong. They’ve seemed compelling and true, but they’ve led to conclusions short of the ones Love would make. They’ve led me to accept the inevitability of discord, the necessity of clashes over time, resources, and attention. I find great relief in letting Love do the defining.
Love makes room for everything, everyone. Love has time to hear every story. Love knows how to release every thought from the worry that says there is no way out of this one. Love gives us each our custom-made reassurance that we are what we’re supposed to be, and we can always have what we need.
In the dawning of the morning
Rays of light stream like combs through the trees
Freeing each branch from its background
Lifting sight
Inspiring the chorus of the birds
In the dawning of the morning
The fingers of Love reach every dreaming thought
Warming each molecule
Enlivening joy
Tuning the chorus of the Word
Love makes room for everything, everyone. Love has time to hear every story. Love knows how to release every thought from the worry that says there is no way out of this one. Love gives us each our custom-made reassurance that we are what we’re supposed to be, and we can always have what we need.
In the dawning of the morning
Rays of light stream like combs through the trees
Freeing each branch from its background
Lifting sight
Inspiring the chorus of the birds
In the dawning of the morning
The fingers of Love reach every dreaming thought
Warming each molecule
Enlivening joy
Tuning the chorus of the Word
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Musical Waves
Eric and I were sitting at Matthew’s Beach and I said to him, listen to the waves lapping on the beach and against the wall - try to hear what music you can from them. Then I listened myself, and I found that they sounded musical, instead of random, as I laid their sounds on a rhythm that depicted the grid of waves out on the water. It was a 12-8 rhythm - or a pair of six-beat measures.
I’d tried before to hear music in the waves, and was brought up short because the waves didn’t break rhythmically - the pause between the breakings would always be unpredictable. My attempts to find melody would lurch and fall back like the waves, and slap against each other. Now with a rhythmic background underlying them, the waves brought interesting highlights of melody and rhythm - often coming in on the two- or three-count of the beat. And different waves could finish their pattern while others joined in, overlapping - I could imagine setting up an orchestration on Eric’s music composition software, where different instruments would follow the tune of different waves, and others would hold the grid pattern that I could see spreading out across the water.
I noticed again the next time that the fast cycle of threes - two or four three-beat pulses - was a pervasive part of the wave’s rhythm. I wondered if it was just me imposing that on them, so I tried to think of them in 4-4 time. They would accept a four pulse, but within each pulse there was still a three-pulse. I wondered if it was related to waves being made from circles, and circles being associated with the number six.
Riding home, the music stayed with me, and I thought about rhythm as the matrix upon which melody is laid out - matrix being the net upon which ideas can be hung, what stretches out the possible, upon which what is can then develop. I thought about how the word matrix comes from the word that means mother. But mostly I listened to the music, the memory of the wave music mixed with the bicycle’s rhythms.
Today when I rode to Matthew’s beach and sat up on the lifeguard’s seat, I heard the waves singing to me. I didn’t need to construct the music or think about its underlying rhythm - they just sang, and I listened and watched the dance of blues and almost-whites and dark green, the interlacing of transparency and sheen, on the water.
Riding home, accompanied by the music, I thought about resonance - how it feels to vibrate with the music - having it awaken places inside of me and define their chambers, feeling alerted from my core up through the place behind the roof of my mouth, feeling harmonized, aligned. And I thought about Love as the matrix - the rhythmic background that arranges everything in its proper place and time, so it can sing.
I’d tried before to hear music in the waves, and was brought up short because the waves didn’t break rhythmically - the pause between the breakings would always be unpredictable. My attempts to find melody would lurch and fall back like the waves, and slap against each other. Now with a rhythmic background underlying them, the waves brought interesting highlights of melody and rhythm - often coming in on the two- or three-count of the beat. And different waves could finish their pattern while others joined in, overlapping - I could imagine setting up an orchestration on Eric’s music composition software, where different instruments would follow the tune of different waves, and others would hold the grid pattern that I could see spreading out across the water.
I noticed again the next time that the fast cycle of threes - two or four three-beat pulses - was a pervasive part of the wave’s rhythm. I wondered if it was just me imposing that on them, so I tried to think of them in 4-4 time. They would accept a four pulse, but within each pulse there was still a three-pulse. I wondered if it was related to waves being made from circles, and circles being associated with the number six.
Riding home, the music stayed with me, and I thought about rhythm as the matrix upon which melody is laid out - matrix being the net upon which ideas can be hung, what stretches out the possible, upon which what is can then develop. I thought about how the word matrix comes from the word that means mother. But mostly I listened to the music, the memory of the wave music mixed with the bicycle’s rhythms.
Today when I rode to Matthew’s beach and sat up on the lifeguard’s seat, I heard the waves singing to me. I didn’t need to construct the music or think about its underlying rhythm - they just sang, and I listened and watched the dance of blues and almost-whites and dark green, the interlacing of transparency and sheen, on the water.
Riding home, accompanied by the music, I thought about resonance - how it feels to vibrate with the music - having it awaken places inside of me and define their chambers, feeling alerted from my core up through the place behind the roof of my mouth, feeling harmonized, aligned. And I thought about Love as the matrix - the rhythmic background that arranges everything in its proper place and time, so it can sing.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Changing time
We saw an old star trek episode the other day, in which a star-ship fell through a rift in time and thereby altered the timeline of the Enterprise and everyone in it. Instead of having been at peace, they now had been at war for twenty-two years. One of the crew was able, faintly, to perceive that something had changed and was now not right, and based on her urgings, they sent the other star-ship back through the time rift, and things returned to how they had been.
I found myself thinking about this later. There wasn’t any need, after they returned to the “true” timeline, for them to rehabilitate their thought, to get used to the different way of thinking about things entailed in a peaceful mission. Only the one character, a mystical sort, had any inkling that things had ever been otherwise. I thought, this is often the way it is when healing takes place in human experience. It isn’t just a shift of experience within a timeline to something more favorable. Such a shift might hardly be called healing, since memory of the bad past and fear of its return would be the context of the present. On the other hand, a shift of the whole timeline would remove the bad past, the present flavor of it, and the sense that it is in the realm of proven possibility, and could happen again. I think it’s true that real healing moves not just the bad thing but the whole line of possibility that claimed to justify its presence.
For example, one time when I had an immediate healing of tonsillitis (after quite a time of suffering) it came with the flooding thought: “you can’t be incompetent - you’re a perfect child of Christ!” The healing of the physical condition didn’t involve the diagnosis of the tonsillitis as an outgrowth of feeling incompetent and a regime to try to change that thought and thus relieve the pain. It was much more like a shift in the whole timeline - I couldn’t be incompetent because my source held me in perfection, and I had never been otherwise, either in thought or in body. With that realization the whole condition changed - my body became well and my sense of myself was improved at the same time.
I was recently praying about addiction. I contemplated how all desire belongs to God - that we can’t be made to desire something that’s not good for us, and that our being is perfect, unfallen, innocent. I repudiated the notion of a fallen man, or one whose timeline included, in a past however distant or apocryphal, an ancester tempted to do something that wasn’t good for her. There never was a timeline (or set of conditions) in which anyone could become separated from the pure leadings of what’s good, which are part of our rightful connection with God.
When I woke up the next morning, it felt like the world had shifted a little. The sweet innocence I had perceived in my prayers seemed to have sifted into everything. It was as if, at least a little bit, the timeline had changed. Not that things had become more innocent, but that they were found to have always been so. Even in myself I felt free of the compulsion to grab my computer and check my email first thing. I thought of how the whole notion of addiction, regardless of particular substance, regardless of how pervasive it may seem to be, really didn’t make sense for the possessors of the one Mind.
It occurs to me that many such shifts have happened in my lifetime. I think we parent better - people understand positive discipline more, and the behaviorist, punitive model that I grew up with is not assumed to be the only way of looking at things. I think we work together better - there is an understanding, at least in some places, of the benefits of cooperation and mutual appreciation over competition and jealousy. So I think it’s possible for the world to continue to change in this way - not through revolution but through quiet leavening of thought; not by taking a major turn of behavior but by having the whole timeline - the whole set of assumptions of what always has been - shift underneath us.
I found myself thinking about this later. There wasn’t any need, after they returned to the “true” timeline, for them to rehabilitate their thought, to get used to the different way of thinking about things entailed in a peaceful mission. Only the one character, a mystical sort, had any inkling that things had ever been otherwise. I thought, this is often the way it is when healing takes place in human experience. It isn’t just a shift of experience within a timeline to something more favorable. Such a shift might hardly be called healing, since memory of the bad past and fear of its return would be the context of the present. On the other hand, a shift of the whole timeline would remove the bad past, the present flavor of it, and the sense that it is in the realm of proven possibility, and could happen again. I think it’s true that real healing moves not just the bad thing but the whole line of possibility that claimed to justify its presence.
For example, one time when I had an immediate healing of tonsillitis (after quite a time of suffering) it came with the flooding thought: “you can’t be incompetent - you’re a perfect child of Christ!” The healing of the physical condition didn’t involve the diagnosis of the tonsillitis as an outgrowth of feeling incompetent and a regime to try to change that thought and thus relieve the pain. It was much more like a shift in the whole timeline - I couldn’t be incompetent because my source held me in perfection, and I had never been otherwise, either in thought or in body. With that realization the whole condition changed - my body became well and my sense of myself was improved at the same time.
I was recently praying about addiction. I contemplated how all desire belongs to God - that we can’t be made to desire something that’s not good for us, and that our being is perfect, unfallen, innocent. I repudiated the notion of a fallen man, or one whose timeline included, in a past however distant or apocryphal, an ancester tempted to do something that wasn’t good for her. There never was a timeline (or set of conditions) in which anyone could become separated from the pure leadings of what’s good, which are part of our rightful connection with God.
When I woke up the next morning, it felt like the world had shifted a little. The sweet innocence I had perceived in my prayers seemed to have sifted into everything. It was as if, at least a little bit, the timeline had changed. Not that things had become more innocent, but that they were found to have always been so. Even in myself I felt free of the compulsion to grab my computer and check my email first thing. I thought of how the whole notion of addiction, regardless of particular substance, regardless of how pervasive it may seem to be, really didn’t make sense for the possessors of the one Mind.
It occurs to me that many such shifts have happened in my lifetime. I think we parent better - people understand positive discipline more, and the behaviorist, punitive model that I grew up with is not assumed to be the only way of looking at things. I think we work together better - there is an understanding, at least in some places, of the benefits of cooperation and mutual appreciation over competition and jealousy. So I think it’s possible for the world to continue to change in this way - not through revolution but through quiet leavening of thought; not by taking a major turn of behavior but by having the whole timeline - the whole set of assumptions of what always has been - shift underneath us.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Cast Party
As I was riding my bike yesterday, I noticed a change in feeling towards people I encountered, especially people who might be around my age. I noticed that I feel towards them as I might feel towards fellow members of the cast after a show was over, when we were relaxing in some festive room, celebrating. Whatever role we each had had to play, we had taken off our costumes now, and were simply together, in the commonality of our collective effort and abiding humanity.
So I no longer cared if this was a high powered executive, or a humble worker, or someone with a successful family, or someone who felt all alone in the world. Whatever things had gone on in each of our lives, I sensed that we had had high points and falls, deep loves and deep lessons, things we cared a lot about and things we had let slip. Probably none of us felt totally content with our performances, but now we were beginning to glimpse that it didn’t matter anyway. We could celebrate life, accept each other in the room of those who had finished playing the game.
Not to say we weren’t still living, not to say the intensity and beauty of our lives were passed, or that we were coasting rapidly towards a finish. It’s not life, but the game, that’s over - the game of trying to measure up, to be good enough, to have a plausible story that we could tell. We now knew that no one was worse, and no one was better, that it was good to help each other, and to strive for honesty in all things. That we didn’t need a story as much as a willingness to listen, and we didn’t need things or accomplishments to define who we were.
As I said, all of this was just a feeling in my mind as I rode by and looked at the other people on the trail. But I found it made me feel easier among them, just as I’ve felt easier, lately, in other venues. And I thought, I can invite anyone into this room of celebration. They don’t even have to be old enough. If they are young, or their career is, maybe there’s something that I, or someone else in the room, can give them to help them on their way. And if they need to be celebrated, they will have come to the right place.
So I no longer cared if this was a high powered executive, or a humble worker, or someone with a successful family, or someone who felt all alone in the world. Whatever things had gone on in each of our lives, I sensed that we had had high points and falls, deep loves and deep lessons, things we cared a lot about and things we had let slip. Probably none of us felt totally content with our performances, but now we were beginning to glimpse that it didn’t matter anyway. We could celebrate life, accept each other in the room of those who had finished playing the game.
Not to say we weren’t still living, not to say the intensity and beauty of our lives were passed, or that we were coasting rapidly towards a finish. It’s not life, but the game, that’s over - the game of trying to measure up, to be good enough, to have a plausible story that we could tell. We now knew that no one was worse, and no one was better, that it was good to help each other, and to strive for honesty in all things. That we didn’t need a story as much as a willingness to listen, and we didn’t need things or accomplishments to define who we were.
As I said, all of this was just a feeling in my mind as I rode by and looked at the other people on the trail. But I found it made me feel easier among them, just as I’ve felt easier, lately, in other venues. And I thought, I can invite anyone into this room of celebration. They don’t even have to be old enough. If they are young, or their career is, maybe there’s something that I, or someone else in the room, can give them to help them on their way. And if they need to be celebrated, they will have come to the right place.
Serenity Dog
Sometimes when I see signs from too far away to quite read them, interesting suggestions come to mind. The other day as I walking home from the bus stop I saw a sign on someone’s gate and it said (as my mind suggested to me) “Serenity Dog.” It was only two steps before I could tell that it actually said “Security Dog,” but in those moments I got an image that I liked enough to keep thinking about it as I walked home.
A serenity dog would make sure that everyone who set foot on the property was at peace. It would guard the state of peace with a kingly authority, an unassailable dignity. People who walked in would find their anxieties melting away, and people who lived there would find their lives unfolding in a delightful, unhurried order.
I told my husband about this thought, and he said it was sort of like a few places in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, like the home of Tom Bombadil or the place of Beorn, or even the elves’ kingdom, where the travelers would feel, at least for a time, that their troubles were left on the outside, and they were safe within.
It is a quality that every home should have, and a being that could ensure it would be much more valuable than a security dog. Come to think of it, serenity could be ensured by a dog about as well as security could.
Which reminds me of something that happened today. My daughter is traveling in a foreign country, and early this morning went, with two other girls - her cousin and friend - to a very remote area, renowned for its beauty and biological diversity. Last night I started to get a niggling concern about their plans, in terms of three girls traveling on their own to a place where there would be little, if any, cell phone contact, etc. Though I told myself that for certain my worry was unfounded, I still felt the need to pray. It occurred to me that safety could not be based on location, and that if I had the fear that any place or any person could be unsafe, this needed my prayers.
So I thought about the fact that there was no place that, by virtue of being where it was, could guarantee anyone feeling safe. If I had demons in my mind, even a place as benign as my suburban back yard could be terrifying. From this I concluded that the one place of safety is Mind - that Mind proclaims safety in every place. Then, since Mind is the center at every place, safety in every place is as certain as it is here, and I can be free of fear for myself and for my daughter at the same time.
I kept thinking about this to strengthen my conviction of the safety of my daughter and of every one of God’s ideas. I considered that the power of good is always unfolding, and there is no contrary power that can stand up against it. I considered that God wouldn’t make any of Her ideas vulnerable, but would supply each one with everything needed to be safe.
We eventually got an email from my daughter saying that all is perfect. But I continue to hold to my new insight about the safety of everyone, provided by Mind, Love, the maker of all of us. So maybe I don’t need a serenity dog. Maybe instead I will contemplate the non-location-based imperative for serenity everywhere (and security, too, for that matter), based on the fact that Mind, Love, is the center in every place.
A serenity dog would make sure that everyone who set foot on the property was at peace. It would guard the state of peace with a kingly authority, an unassailable dignity. People who walked in would find their anxieties melting away, and people who lived there would find their lives unfolding in a delightful, unhurried order.
I told my husband about this thought, and he said it was sort of like a few places in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, like the home of Tom Bombadil or the place of Beorn, or even the elves’ kingdom, where the travelers would feel, at least for a time, that their troubles were left on the outside, and they were safe within.
It is a quality that every home should have, and a being that could ensure it would be much more valuable than a security dog. Come to think of it, serenity could be ensured by a dog about as well as security could.
Which reminds me of something that happened today. My daughter is traveling in a foreign country, and early this morning went, with two other girls - her cousin and friend - to a very remote area, renowned for its beauty and biological diversity. Last night I started to get a niggling concern about their plans, in terms of three girls traveling on their own to a place where there would be little, if any, cell phone contact, etc. Though I told myself that for certain my worry was unfounded, I still felt the need to pray. It occurred to me that safety could not be based on location, and that if I had the fear that any place or any person could be unsafe, this needed my prayers.
So I thought about the fact that there was no place that, by virtue of being where it was, could guarantee anyone feeling safe. If I had demons in my mind, even a place as benign as my suburban back yard could be terrifying. From this I concluded that the one place of safety is Mind - that Mind proclaims safety in every place. Then, since Mind is the center at every place, safety in every place is as certain as it is here, and I can be free of fear for myself and for my daughter at the same time.
I kept thinking about this to strengthen my conviction of the safety of my daughter and of every one of God’s ideas. I considered that the power of good is always unfolding, and there is no contrary power that can stand up against it. I considered that God wouldn’t make any of Her ideas vulnerable, but would supply each one with everything needed to be safe.
We eventually got an email from my daughter saying that all is perfect. But I continue to hold to my new insight about the safety of everyone, provided by Mind, Love, the maker of all of us. So maybe I don’t need a serenity dog. Maybe instead I will contemplate the non-location-based imperative for serenity everywhere (and security, too, for that matter), based on the fact that Mind, Love, is the center in every place.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Why I am a Christian Scientist
I’m a Christian Scientist, not because it’s a beautiful theory. There are lots of beautiful theories, but life doesn’t take place in that ethereal ground.
I’m a Christian Scientist, not because it’s gotten me the good things in life. My life has had its good things and its struggles, like anyone’s.
I’m a Christian Scientist because, as I have come to see, the pure fulfillment and joy found in the presence of God, and in our relationship to God, is the only thing I ever want, the only thing that satisfies me.
God has infinite ways of making good known. God fills our days with joy in ways we can understand. The beauty of nature, of friendship, of strength, grace and health, are all expressions of the presence of God. If viewed materially, all these things can fail, but they are kept perfect by the knowledge that God is the law that holds them.
The material view is that these things - nature, friendship, strength, grace and health - are made up of complex balancings of forces - each of which is essentially mindless and self serving, but which somehow come together in a rare harmony. In this view, any shift in balance - in number or in circumstance, in mass, timing or force - can throw the whole thing off. So then great care must be taken to make sure everything is balanced, and the expectation is that perfection will only be glimpsed as a possibility, will never come fully forth. Also, when holding this view, I find it easy to end up at the place where I’m not even sure what the point of it all is.
Christian Science teaches me the spiritual view. It focuses my sight so that, as I practice, I can learn to perceive the law of God. I can feel myself and my world held in loving, all powerful arms, guided along vectors of harmony, danced together in perfect order and grace. I can experience the law of goodness in all aspects of my life - my health, my family, my occupation, my world.
I also find that Christian Science gives me a way to understand Christ. All of Christ’s teachings make sense and harmonize the Bible. Christ’s presence is a real thing that I can lean on. Why am I a Christian Scientist? What else could I be? Or, as Peter said to Jesus when he asked if they also would go away, ” Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
I’m a Christian Scientist, not because it’s gotten me the good things in life. My life has had its good things and its struggles, like anyone’s.
I’m a Christian Scientist because, as I have come to see, the pure fulfillment and joy found in the presence of God, and in our relationship to God, is the only thing I ever want, the only thing that satisfies me.
God has infinite ways of making good known. God fills our days with joy in ways we can understand. The beauty of nature, of friendship, of strength, grace and health, are all expressions of the presence of God. If viewed materially, all these things can fail, but they are kept perfect by the knowledge that God is the law that holds them.
The material view is that these things - nature, friendship, strength, grace and health - are made up of complex balancings of forces - each of which is essentially mindless and self serving, but which somehow come together in a rare harmony. In this view, any shift in balance - in number or in circumstance, in mass, timing or force - can throw the whole thing off. So then great care must be taken to make sure everything is balanced, and the expectation is that perfection will only be glimpsed as a possibility, will never come fully forth. Also, when holding this view, I find it easy to end up at the place where I’m not even sure what the point of it all is.
Christian Science teaches me the spiritual view. It focuses my sight so that, as I practice, I can learn to perceive the law of God. I can feel myself and my world held in loving, all powerful arms, guided along vectors of harmony, danced together in perfect order and grace. I can experience the law of goodness in all aspects of my life - my health, my family, my occupation, my world.
I also find that Christian Science gives me a way to understand Christ. All of Christ’s teachings make sense and harmonize the Bible. Christ’s presence is a real thing that I can lean on. Why am I a Christian Scientist? What else could I be? Or, as Peter said to Jesus when he asked if they also would go away, ” Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Prayer beyond words
It’s clearer to me these days that prayer is not words - that if I am trying to find words, or asserting words, even ones I know have truth in them - I’m not getting anywhere. I need to stop. I need to let the whole field of words clear out.
Sometimes I ask a question, like, “what does God know about this?” and then let myself be quiet and still, listening for the answer instead of trying to construct it from my own theory base. Theory is useless. It is the actual fact of the presence of Truth that can tell me what I need to understand.
I build on my experience of what Truth feels like - the fresh, open-air invigoration, the solid and calm reassurance, the unmovable strength of fact. I enter into the wide chamber of light, and let the light burn away all the dust on the edges. I know I’m really praying if I feel the “peace, be still” of Love, dissolving the anxious shoulder-set of feared inadequacy, gathering and bundling me, and whoever I’m thinking of, in the resolution of acceptance and approbation.
At our last spiritual formation gathering, Joyce led us in a reflection on the Lord’s Prayer. After having us listen to it sung, and sharing with us some prayers others had written following its structure, she gave us a piece of paper with each phrase of the prayer on a separate line, and space next to it for us to write our reflections. First I turned the paper over and wrote: no words. I wanted to avoid the much-trodden territory of intellectual thought on the prayer. I wanted anything I wrote to be the result of listening.
Then I turned the paper over and started in the middle, proceeding down and up, just when I heard something. She ended the exercise before I was done, but I still felt what I had was worth sharing. It went like this:
Perfect One
Determiner of everything
- really everything -
You are the Mind, the pattern, the One
And you choose to be - and make everything be - Love
In this warm chamber of light where all things move and love,
Your will is done.
Heaven over earth. Heaven gets to decide what is. Earth must reflect heaven.
You’re the one that knows everything, and You establish it.
You know what I need. You amply supply it. Let me not be so tied up in what I think I need that I can’t move forward. Let me listen and hear what You provide.
You know who I am. You have always known. Let me not presume to assert anything about myself. Let me let You do the talking. Let You speak for me.
Let me offer to each heart a forgiveness bigger than I have a right to give alone, but which I can give because it is Your truth. You love them. You always have. That’s all that matters. This comfort is Yours to give each of them. Let me just reflect this to them, whenever I can.
It’s not a prayer to say the words, but the words that came up expressed my prayer. Still, I need to be sure to insist upon the real thing. Words can be so seductive, especially when they’re pretty. Words can invoke an attractive drama, one in which I get to play the emotional role they assign - whether it is one of foundness or lostness, triumph or despair. Any emotion is a false floor. Communion lies deep beneath emotion, where the circuit connects silently, with unarguable brightness and authority.
Sometimes I ask a question, like, “what does God know about this?” and then let myself be quiet and still, listening for the answer instead of trying to construct it from my own theory base. Theory is useless. It is the actual fact of the presence of Truth that can tell me what I need to understand.
I build on my experience of what Truth feels like - the fresh, open-air invigoration, the solid and calm reassurance, the unmovable strength of fact. I enter into the wide chamber of light, and let the light burn away all the dust on the edges. I know I’m really praying if I feel the “peace, be still” of Love, dissolving the anxious shoulder-set of feared inadequacy, gathering and bundling me, and whoever I’m thinking of, in the resolution of acceptance and approbation.
At our last spiritual formation gathering, Joyce led us in a reflection on the Lord’s Prayer. After having us listen to it sung, and sharing with us some prayers others had written following its structure, she gave us a piece of paper with each phrase of the prayer on a separate line, and space next to it for us to write our reflections. First I turned the paper over and wrote: no words. I wanted to avoid the much-trodden territory of intellectual thought on the prayer. I wanted anything I wrote to be the result of listening.
Then I turned the paper over and started in the middle, proceeding down and up, just when I heard something. She ended the exercise before I was done, but I still felt what I had was worth sharing. It went like this:
Perfect One
Determiner of everything
- really everything -
You are the Mind, the pattern, the One
And you choose to be - and make everything be - Love
In this warm chamber of light where all things move and love,
Your will is done.
Heaven over earth. Heaven gets to decide what is. Earth must reflect heaven.
You’re the one that knows everything, and You establish it.
You know what I need. You amply supply it. Let me not be so tied up in what I think I need that I can’t move forward. Let me listen and hear what You provide.
You know who I am. You have always known. Let me not presume to assert anything about myself. Let me let You do the talking. Let You speak for me.
Let me offer to each heart a forgiveness bigger than I have a right to give alone, but which I can give because it is Your truth. You love them. You always have. That’s all that matters. This comfort is Yours to give each of them. Let me just reflect this to them, whenever I can.
It’s not a prayer to say the words, but the words that came up expressed my prayer. Still, I need to be sure to insist upon the real thing. Words can be so seductive, especially when they’re pretty. Words can invoke an attractive drama, one in which I get to play the emotional role they assign - whether it is one of foundness or lostness, triumph or despair. Any emotion is a false floor. Communion lies deep beneath emotion, where the circuit connects silently, with unarguable brightness and authority.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Quiet thought
I’m learning to spend less time in the paper-surface layer of thought, where all the words are, and the reasons and justifications, the weavings of stories as to why people do this and that, and what they should do, and my opinion about things going on, and why I am right, and what this has to do with Universal Truth. I’m learning that there’s little to communicate to others from this layer - little that can help them, little that will lift us to communion with each other or the universe. Humor can be good from here, but that’s about it. Nothing serious.
Underneath that layer is the place of slow moving liquid, like magma, where bolts of bright light emerge from the heat of hope and desire for goodness. When that warmth can come up through my thoughts, it gives me genuine sustenance. It changes things, forming channels of conviction and strength, creating new structures, a place for the development of new soil which supports tender green growth.
If this warmth expresses itself in words, the words have weight and the power to solidly support. If these words bubble with mirth, the humor is sweet and unifying. If the words seek to comfort, the comfort is felt. And the words are for the here and now of their expressing - they can’t be cut and pasted into other uses and retain their power. If I want to be effective, if I want to be myself, I must let myself go back down to the magma layer, to be reheated and, once again, moved.
My friend Laurie and I connected on that level. We called it twii (initially from That Which Is Important, but later relying on the bright explosion of sound in the word twii itself). It was our practice to still ourselves and take the time, and allow the twii to emerge. We would look for the glow of the deep warmth in each other, and through its recognition, bring it out. We found that later, this work - the making of this connection - demanded of us deeper integrity in the way we thought about everything, and in the way we saw everyone.
More and more I’m finding that this is the only place to know anything, and that all petty and tragic discords are solved on this level. When I was first doing this work with Laurie, I wrote: not by will, but by willingness; not by figuring out, but by faith; not by expertise, but by grace. I’m still learning what this means. Right now I’m thinking: willingness takes me down to the magma, faith lets me dwell there, grace brings it up where it can heal the present moment. The word’s aren’t important. These ones work for me, right now. The meaning is in the deep layer underneath the words, where the inexorable light and heat of what we really are stills all cacophony and smoothes thought into shining peace.
Underneath that layer is the place of slow moving liquid, like magma, where bolts of bright light emerge from the heat of hope and desire for goodness. When that warmth can come up through my thoughts, it gives me genuine sustenance. It changes things, forming channels of conviction and strength, creating new structures, a place for the development of new soil which supports tender green growth.
If this warmth expresses itself in words, the words have weight and the power to solidly support. If these words bubble with mirth, the humor is sweet and unifying. If the words seek to comfort, the comfort is felt. And the words are for the here and now of their expressing - they can’t be cut and pasted into other uses and retain their power. If I want to be effective, if I want to be myself, I must let myself go back down to the magma layer, to be reheated and, once again, moved.
My friend Laurie and I connected on that level. We called it twii (initially from That Which Is Important, but later relying on the bright explosion of sound in the word twii itself). It was our practice to still ourselves and take the time, and allow the twii to emerge. We would look for the glow of the deep warmth in each other, and through its recognition, bring it out. We found that later, this work - the making of this connection - demanded of us deeper integrity in the way we thought about everything, and in the way we saw everyone.
More and more I’m finding that this is the only place to know anything, and that all petty and tragic discords are solved on this level. When I was first doing this work with Laurie, I wrote: not by will, but by willingness; not by figuring out, but by faith; not by expertise, but by grace. I’m still learning what this means. Right now I’m thinking: willingness takes me down to the magma, faith lets me dwell there, grace brings it up where it can heal the present moment. The word’s aren’t important. These ones work for me, right now. The meaning is in the deep layer underneath the words, where the inexorable light and heat of what we really are stills all cacophony and smoothes thought into shining peace.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Taking thought
I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. Jesus’ query in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:27) “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?”
A cubit is about a foot, so the answer to this would be obvious: of course I can’t decide to make myself a foot taller. The implied conclusion is startling. If I can’t make myself taller by thinking about it, why should I think I have the responsibility for doing anything else about myself? Why would I think I would be created - out of the whole cloth of thought, an expression of the infinite Mind, and then be left with the responsibility of finishing myself? If Mind could make me with this much intricacy, why leave it up to me to determine how strong, how fit, how beautiful I am? Why would Mind make me weak in the midsection, tight in the hamstrings, stiff in movement, or awkward in social situations? Why should there be a battery of things I need to work on in myself to make myself better?
It was a concept that was hard for me to give up - that my life was a daily challenge to improve myself - mentally, socially, physically. I found myself confronted with the concern of what would happen if I didn’t mind these things: I would become a slob, less and less able to move as I wanted to. I would be uninteresting, unattractive. My life would be empty. I confronted the same concern in raising my kids: if I didn’t keep on them to eat well, exercise well, and learn new things all the time, I would be consigning them to inferior lives.
I’ve been trying on a new approach. It is to find the centered stillness that opens up to the vastness of being, to dwell in “the secret place” - the consciousness of the One, and how it controls everything through love. I let myself feel the central order, and the lovely dance that unfolds in all living things - each in itself and intertwining with all others. I realize that God (good) governs the whole thing, giving us each our movement and our power to move, our grace and our graciousness. I let go of thinking I can do anything to orchestrate events, and instead give myself over to the movement of Spirit in me.
Spirit is not inert, so reflecting Spirit, I will be active. Love is not isolated, so reflecting Love, I will be in warm and dynamic interaction. Soul is not ungainly, so reflecting Soul, I will be enough, in my being. I don’t need to take thought for myself. And I don’t need to take thought for my kids, or train them to take thought for themselves. I can let go and notice how Mind is gently putting us all in our perfect place.
I’m seeing good results from this approach. My family is more harmonious, our lives together happier and more graceful. I find myself able to move with a new ease - in walking, in dancing, in interacting with people. And I’ve found a fountain of energy - relaxed, powerful, and full of joy - in surrender to the action of Life.
A cubit is about a foot, so the answer to this would be obvious: of course I can’t decide to make myself a foot taller. The implied conclusion is startling. If I can’t make myself taller by thinking about it, why should I think I have the responsibility for doing anything else about myself? Why would I think I would be created - out of the whole cloth of thought, an expression of the infinite Mind, and then be left with the responsibility of finishing myself? If Mind could make me with this much intricacy, why leave it up to me to determine how strong, how fit, how beautiful I am? Why would Mind make me weak in the midsection, tight in the hamstrings, stiff in movement, or awkward in social situations? Why should there be a battery of things I need to work on in myself to make myself better?
It was a concept that was hard for me to give up - that my life was a daily challenge to improve myself - mentally, socially, physically. I found myself confronted with the concern of what would happen if I didn’t mind these things: I would become a slob, less and less able to move as I wanted to. I would be uninteresting, unattractive. My life would be empty. I confronted the same concern in raising my kids: if I didn’t keep on them to eat well, exercise well, and learn new things all the time, I would be consigning them to inferior lives.
I’ve been trying on a new approach. It is to find the centered stillness that opens up to the vastness of being, to dwell in “the secret place” - the consciousness of the One, and how it controls everything through love. I let myself feel the central order, and the lovely dance that unfolds in all living things - each in itself and intertwining with all others. I realize that God (good) governs the whole thing, giving us each our movement and our power to move, our grace and our graciousness. I let go of thinking I can do anything to orchestrate events, and instead give myself over to the movement of Spirit in me.
Spirit is not inert, so reflecting Spirit, I will be active. Love is not isolated, so reflecting Love, I will be in warm and dynamic interaction. Soul is not ungainly, so reflecting Soul, I will be enough, in my being. I don’t need to take thought for myself. And I don’t need to take thought for my kids, or train them to take thought for themselves. I can let go and notice how Mind is gently putting us all in our perfect place.
I’m seeing good results from this approach. My family is more harmonious, our lives together happier and more graceful. I find myself able to move with a new ease - in walking, in dancing, in interacting with people. And I’ve found a fountain of energy - relaxed, powerful, and full of joy - in surrender to the action of Life.
Monday, February 9, 2009
In the last two days I felt the Christ leading me.
I.
I started off on my bike ride, feeling a little unsettled at the aborted get together I was now not going to have with my friend. My erstwhile friend, I thought. She had reserved the right to cancel if she got too busy, but she hadn’t called me, and I hadn’t been able to reach her. So I decided to just take a bike ride, and was happy about that, because it was a good day for it. I came back just after I’d started because I’d forgotten my cell phone, and decided to check my email one more time. There was the message from her, saying, sorry, I just can’t. Maybe things will slow down next quarter. I hope all is well. Take care.
As I rode off, I contemplated my response. Delete. Just delete - no response. I tried to reestablish connection, but it’s simply not a priority for her. Let it go. And I thought of responding: Whatever. Just that. Then she would know I was hurt, which would be incomprehensible to her, and stupid of me. Bridge burning. Then I collected myself, I reminded myself that I’m willing to be led by the Christ, willing to let go of my own interpretation and see things in whatever way made sense. And the word came to me - I am in charge of your life. I am the source of all that you need. I arrange all relationships, and you don’t have to worry about it.
As I thought further, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the right time for that get together. Not because of dates or schedules, but because my thought wasn’t right for it. The day before I had walked with another friend, who had asked me about this relationship. I had accounted some of the things that I had learned from it, some of the way I had let myself be hurt by it, and the time it had taken me to get over it. I realized that, though I may have had a clear thought when I tried to arrange the get together, I was now at a different place, a kind of a tentative, vulnerable but guarded state, hoping for acceptance.
So I let my thought be lifted. I let myself feel the enveloping care of Spirit, wrapping me up, giving me power and light. I let myself feel the gentle infusing of the Christ, like soft, sweet rain, aligning all relationships. Showing that love is the only thing that ever makes sense, and that in love, there’s no tally about whose turn it is to give, or what an outside observer would see as just. In every case, there’s one opportunity for me, and that’s to bring forth whatever Love creates in this moment. Sometimes it will seem miraculous; sometimes it will just seem like the right touch. Always it will make me feel impossibly blessed, awed and grateful, alive in a way I hadn’t thought could be.
Then I knew the right response to the email: OK. Maybe we’ll reconnect at some point when the time is right. love, Wendy. No need for me to outline how that connection would be established, or if it would. Just to let it be, with everything else, under the sweet alignment of that which gives us all everything we need.
II.
My daughter was running late. She had been up late the night before, making preparations for the student literary evening at her school - practicing her piece, making cookies. Now she was trying to get it all together. I was taking up some of the slack, making her sandwich, making a snack for her to eat after school while they prepared. My son came down a little early and flopped in the chair. It was my daughter’s day to put the rabbit out, and I thought it would be really helpful if he would do it for her that once. He wouldn’t.
I reminded myself what I was learning, that there are always two sides to human opinions but neither of them can provide what the people yearn for. So I didn’t press my son about the rabbit, and I encouraged my daughter not to do so either. But I didn’t quite reach the place of understanding - I found myself feeling a bit annoyed with my son, and even speaking to him a little shortly when he asked me to do a last thing for him in the moments when I was trying to get everyone out the door. After they left I remembered.
The only thing anyone ever wants is love. They may learn that the way to reap the greatest feeling of love is to do kind things for others. But there are some times when we all just want to be loved. If my son wasn’t feeling compelled to be kind to his sister, the remedy was for him to feel more loved. There wasn’t any need for me to go down the path about whether I was neglecting his training not to try to make him be kind. It’s impossible to make someone be kind, anyway. The only thing he could learn from was my example, and shrill demands that he be nicer were at the least hypocritical. I saw how, once again, the Christ comes down between all human opinions and stances, neutralizing them, diffusing them, and giving that which everyone really wants but no one, without that touch of unjudging love, knows how to get.
III.
I was praying about the Middle East, Israel and Palestine particularly. There is so much screaming about who is wrong and what the other side needs to do so that things can move forward. I may have my strong human opinions about it, but human opinions are useless. The Christ is the only thing that can solve the problem. The Christ, defined as “the true idea voicing good, . . . speaking to the human consciousness,”* is an impulse to individual thought which takes the quantum leap beyond all the human prerequisites for peace (things the other party needs to change) and shows each person, right where they are, how to love. The result may be an act of miraculous courage or wisdom. It may be a very simple step. It may come from one person, or another. It may be a quiet uprising that sees a way through that no-one ever thought of. It won’t be because one person is better than another, and the ones who make the difference won’t hold themselves up as virtuous. No one will be asked to pay for the good that comes. It will simply be what makes sense. When human opinions are set aside and the Christ is allowed to speak, the result is peace.
*Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332.
I.
I started off on my bike ride, feeling a little unsettled at the aborted get together I was now not going to have with my friend. My erstwhile friend, I thought. She had reserved the right to cancel if she got too busy, but she hadn’t called me, and I hadn’t been able to reach her. So I decided to just take a bike ride, and was happy about that, because it was a good day for it. I came back just after I’d started because I’d forgotten my cell phone, and decided to check my email one more time. There was the message from her, saying, sorry, I just can’t. Maybe things will slow down next quarter. I hope all is well. Take care.
As I rode off, I contemplated my response. Delete. Just delete - no response. I tried to reestablish connection, but it’s simply not a priority for her. Let it go. And I thought of responding: Whatever. Just that. Then she would know I was hurt, which would be incomprehensible to her, and stupid of me. Bridge burning. Then I collected myself, I reminded myself that I’m willing to be led by the Christ, willing to let go of my own interpretation and see things in whatever way made sense. And the word came to me - I am in charge of your life. I am the source of all that you need. I arrange all relationships, and you don’t have to worry about it.
As I thought further, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the right time for that get together. Not because of dates or schedules, but because my thought wasn’t right for it. The day before I had walked with another friend, who had asked me about this relationship. I had accounted some of the things that I had learned from it, some of the way I had let myself be hurt by it, and the time it had taken me to get over it. I realized that, though I may have had a clear thought when I tried to arrange the get together, I was now at a different place, a kind of a tentative, vulnerable but guarded state, hoping for acceptance.
So I let my thought be lifted. I let myself feel the enveloping care of Spirit, wrapping me up, giving me power and light. I let myself feel the gentle infusing of the Christ, like soft, sweet rain, aligning all relationships. Showing that love is the only thing that ever makes sense, and that in love, there’s no tally about whose turn it is to give, or what an outside observer would see as just. In every case, there’s one opportunity for me, and that’s to bring forth whatever Love creates in this moment. Sometimes it will seem miraculous; sometimes it will just seem like the right touch. Always it will make me feel impossibly blessed, awed and grateful, alive in a way I hadn’t thought could be.
Then I knew the right response to the email: OK. Maybe we’ll reconnect at some point when the time is right. love, Wendy. No need for me to outline how that connection would be established, or if it would. Just to let it be, with everything else, under the sweet alignment of that which gives us all everything we need.
II.
My daughter was running late. She had been up late the night before, making preparations for the student literary evening at her school - practicing her piece, making cookies. Now she was trying to get it all together. I was taking up some of the slack, making her sandwich, making a snack for her to eat after school while they prepared. My son came down a little early and flopped in the chair. It was my daughter’s day to put the rabbit out, and I thought it would be really helpful if he would do it for her that once. He wouldn’t.
I reminded myself what I was learning, that there are always two sides to human opinions but neither of them can provide what the people yearn for. So I didn’t press my son about the rabbit, and I encouraged my daughter not to do so either. But I didn’t quite reach the place of understanding - I found myself feeling a bit annoyed with my son, and even speaking to him a little shortly when he asked me to do a last thing for him in the moments when I was trying to get everyone out the door. After they left I remembered.
The only thing anyone ever wants is love. They may learn that the way to reap the greatest feeling of love is to do kind things for others. But there are some times when we all just want to be loved. If my son wasn’t feeling compelled to be kind to his sister, the remedy was for him to feel more loved. There wasn’t any need for me to go down the path about whether I was neglecting his training not to try to make him be kind. It’s impossible to make someone be kind, anyway. The only thing he could learn from was my example, and shrill demands that he be nicer were at the least hypocritical. I saw how, once again, the Christ comes down between all human opinions and stances, neutralizing them, diffusing them, and giving that which everyone really wants but no one, without that touch of unjudging love, knows how to get.
III.
I was praying about the Middle East, Israel and Palestine particularly. There is so much screaming about who is wrong and what the other side needs to do so that things can move forward. I may have my strong human opinions about it, but human opinions are useless. The Christ is the only thing that can solve the problem. The Christ, defined as “the true idea voicing good, . . . speaking to the human consciousness,”* is an impulse to individual thought which takes the quantum leap beyond all the human prerequisites for peace (things the other party needs to change) and shows each person, right where they are, how to love. The result may be an act of miraculous courage or wisdom. It may be a very simple step. It may come from one person, or another. It may be a quiet uprising that sees a way through that no-one ever thought of. It won’t be because one person is better than another, and the ones who make the difference won’t hold themselves up as virtuous. No one will be asked to pay for the good that comes. It will simply be what makes sense. When human opinions are set aside and the Christ is allowed to speak, the result is peace.
*Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 332.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Lesson on Love
There’s a man I visit in jail each Monday. I go and read the Christian Science Bible Lesson* to him. We usually have very little small talk, and he doesn’t tend to have anything he wants to discuss with me. I just come in and read the lesson, and he listens.
This Monday when I read the lesson, feeling how it might feel to him, it seemed, to me, the most tender message I could possibly deliver. It is a lesson that makes it very clear that we can be forgiven, and spells out how it happens, and how comprehensive a forgiveness it can be.
It’s not a thing I’ve thought about that often, not having committed a heinous crime - the tremendous hope that comes with the prospect of forgiveness, the tremendous lifting and redemption it can bring. But I thought of it this time as something that made all the difference - to me, to everyone I know and love, and to everyone I don’t yet know. Imagine being forgiven! - the slate wiped clean from all the things that niggle as regrets - times I’ve said something stupid, times I’ve failed to understand someone else, acts of arrogance. Also from all suspicions of being unworthy - clumsy, weird, ungainly, ungraceful, uncool, unlovable. Being totally forgiven would mean that any of the things I’ve ever done or been that I have regretted, and also any things I was unaware of but which other people held against me - would have no more weight - no ability to pull me down, no ability to determine anything about who I am and how I will act. Being forgiven means being able to define myself anew, as the beloved of God.
I then thought about what it means to be able to forgive others the same way. It means to let go of anything I’ve held against them - all my annoyance, impatience, indignation, all my feeling that I need to find some way to change them, any hindrance to my simply loving them purely. What a freedom for me! No obligation to judge or hold back my affection to “encourage” better behavior. No need to decide how I’m going to feel about them. The fact that they are forgiven lets me merely love them - so easy! - and see what God has given me to see in the moment of our interaction.
When I was reading the lesson in the jail, the man I was visiting would often be looking down, so I couldn’t see his face. But sometimes he would look up, and sometimes I saw moisture in his eyes. Whether that was from deep feeling or sleepiness, I can’t say. But I had the deep feeling, and still do. I feel deeply loved from the reading of this lesson, miraculously forgiven, and greatly uplifted from the forgiveness of others.
*to read this week’s lesson on the subject of Love, visit a Christian Science Reading Room or see the ebiblelesson at spirituality.com.
This Monday when I read the lesson, feeling how it might feel to him, it seemed, to me, the most tender message I could possibly deliver. It is a lesson that makes it very clear that we can be forgiven, and spells out how it happens, and how comprehensive a forgiveness it can be.
It’s not a thing I’ve thought about that often, not having committed a heinous crime - the tremendous hope that comes with the prospect of forgiveness, the tremendous lifting and redemption it can bring. But I thought of it this time as something that made all the difference - to me, to everyone I know and love, and to everyone I don’t yet know. Imagine being forgiven! - the slate wiped clean from all the things that niggle as regrets - times I’ve said something stupid, times I’ve failed to understand someone else, acts of arrogance. Also from all suspicions of being unworthy - clumsy, weird, ungainly, ungraceful, uncool, unlovable. Being totally forgiven would mean that any of the things I’ve ever done or been that I have regretted, and also any things I was unaware of but which other people held against me - would have no more weight - no ability to pull me down, no ability to determine anything about who I am and how I will act. Being forgiven means being able to define myself anew, as the beloved of God.
I then thought about what it means to be able to forgive others the same way. It means to let go of anything I’ve held against them - all my annoyance, impatience, indignation, all my feeling that I need to find some way to change them, any hindrance to my simply loving them purely. What a freedom for me! No obligation to judge or hold back my affection to “encourage” better behavior. No need to decide how I’m going to feel about them. The fact that they are forgiven lets me merely love them - so easy! - and see what God has given me to see in the moment of our interaction.
When I was reading the lesson in the jail, the man I was visiting would often be looking down, so I couldn’t see his face. But sometimes he would look up, and sometimes I saw moisture in his eyes. Whether that was from deep feeling or sleepiness, I can’t say. But I had the deep feeling, and still do. I feel deeply loved from the reading of this lesson, miraculously forgiven, and greatly uplifted from the forgiveness of others.
*to read this week’s lesson on the subject of Love, visit a Christian Science Reading Room or see the ebiblelesson at spirituality.com.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Waves
I saw a squirrel running through the back yard a few weeks back. I noticed that it moved in a wave - its tail undulated with the same movement its body made while leaping from front feet to back feet, curling and springing. It was as if it were moving through an invisible standing wave that extended forward and back from its track.
I started thinking about other things that move in waves - herds of animals I’ve seen in videos, snakes (though their wave is sideways), wondering what law of grace it is that makes them move that way, and wondering if humans, with our cross-lateral gait, also move in waves.
Some time later I was swing dancing. I had the opportunity to dance with many different partners, and several of them were quite good dancers. It pleased me that I was able to hang with them, that my skill as a follow was such that I was able to move as one with them, though (in most cases) we had never danced together before. It occurred to me later that it was a kind of a wave function - being enough in tune with the music and the particular way my partner had of holding me and moving, that it was natural to follow in the instant grace with which a wave moves.
Today I saw, on another blog, a video of Stacy Westfall riding her horse with no bridle or saddle. The blog writer, Sandi Justad, http://newcloth.blogspot.com/ talked about how it illustrated oneness of horse and rider, and how this could reflect our oneness with God. I agree with her, and I also saw the action of waves.
My experiences on horseback are few, and for the most part, unsatisfying. I remember my tendency to bounce as soon as the horse started to move any faster than a walk. I’ve found it mystifying how people could stay seated firmly in the saddle. Here, this woman, without even a saddle, was able to move as if she and the horse were one. And I could see the ripple of movement, from the horse’s gait up through her body. that embodied the grace of moving in waves. I felt an echo of love from the time I heard of how the Native Americans rode their horses, not with domination but with mutual understanding and joy. I felt that this young woman was claiming back for us something that we should never have lost.
When I find grace in my interactions with people, it’s when I’ve tuned into the same wavelength with them, so that the smiles and movements flow together as one. I think I get on the same wavelength by loving them - by approaching them with an accepting openness and no particular desire to push an agenda of my own. The wave pattern of their internal atomic clock - well, of their rock-solid identity that reverberates with the harmony of the universe - harmonizes with mine. I find that we really are one. Our love is one, our primal motivating impulse is one, regardless of all the trappings of societal labels or personal lifestyle choices. We are of God. Our being moves in the wave that God impels. Our grace together is not of two separate beings trying to coordinate externally, but it is the harmonic humming of the one tone of being, sending out its infinite waves.
I started thinking about other things that move in waves - herds of animals I’ve seen in videos, snakes (though their wave is sideways), wondering what law of grace it is that makes them move that way, and wondering if humans, with our cross-lateral gait, also move in waves.
Some time later I was swing dancing. I had the opportunity to dance with many different partners, and several of them were quite good dancers. It pleased me that I was able to hang with them, that my skill as a follow was such that I was able to move as one with them, though (in most cases) we had never danced together before. It occurred to me later that it was a kind of a wave function - being enough in tune with the music and the particular way my partner had of holding me and moving, that it was natural to follow in the instant grace with which a wave moves.
Today I saw, on another blog, a video of Stacy Westfall riding her horse with no bridle or saddle. The blog writer, Sandi Justad, http://newcloth.blogspot.com/ talked about how it illustrated oneness of horse and rider, and how this could reflect our oneness with God. I agree with her, and I also saw the action of waves.
My experiences on horseback are few, and for the most part, unsatisfying. I remember my tendency to bounce as soon as the horse started to move any faster than a walk. I’ve found it mystifying how people could stay seated firmly in the saddle. Here, this woman, without even a saddle, was able to move as if she and the horse were one. And I could see the ripple of movement, from the horse’s gait up through her body. that embodied the grace of moving in waves. I felt an echo of love from the time I heard of how the Native Americans rode their horses, not with domination but with mutual understanding and joy. I felt that this young woman was claiming back for us something that we should never have lost.
When I find grace in my interactions with people, it’s when I’ve tuned into the same wavelength with them, so that the smiles and movements flow together as one. I think I get on the same wavelength by loving them - by approaching them with an accepting openness and no particular desire to push an agenda of my own. The wave pattern of their internal atomic clock - well, of their rock-solid identity that reverberates with the harmony of the universe - harmonizes with mine. I find that we really are one. Our love is one, our primal motivating impulse is one, regardless of all the trappings of societal labels or personal lifestyle choices. We are of God. Our being moves in the wave that God impels. Our grace together is not of two separate beings trying to coordinate externally, but it is the harmonic humming of the one tone of being, sending out its infinite waves.
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