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Little seed

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Little seed, reach up.
Reach up to the light.
What light, you say? What light?
All I see here is darkness.
I’m surrounded by dirt and dark and worms.
It is wet. It is sad.
I am sad.

Reach up, I say. Feel that tug. Feel the warmth pulling you up.
Feel the pull of the earth pulling you down.
Soon you will burst forth, break from your shell,
break forth with a shoot going up
and roots going down.

Soon your shell will soften
and the old curiosity will grab hold of you
and make you stretch stretch stretch
like a cat, like a yogi
away from where you are
to where you need to be.

Soon you’ll see what all the fuss is about.
Soon you’ll see why I’m cheering you on.

Sunlight! The warmth of the day tickles your tiny
tender shoots.

Rain! The water, like honey, bathes you, feeds you, blesses you.

You are blessed and baptized in this rain, this gift, this beauty.

You never knew the blessing that was sun,
you’d never know the bounty that was rain,
if you’d stayed hidden away in the dirt.
If you’d stayed there, you’d never know
this other life,
this life on the other side
of here
and now.

On prayer – dialing in God.

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I find it heartening that the most popular topics that people are searching for that find my blog are about prayer. How to pray, prayer bracelets, and the power of group prayer are all read weekly. All other the stuff I’ve written sits quietly while these topics keep being looked at. People are also looking up how to recognize the signs of the Holy Spirit.

What is the interest? Why are people searching the internet for information on these things? Why aren’t they finding the answers from their faith community?

Perhaps they are like me. Perhaps they have felt mislead by their faith community and they are searching on their own. Perhaps they are waking up to the idea that we all need to take ownership of our lives, and after-lives. We are all waking up to taking care of ourselves, body mind and spirit. It is as if the “occupy” movement has shaken everything up and made us aware that we need to do things for ourselves. It has spread from being engaged with politics to education to healthcare to nutrition to religion. People are waking up and asking questions, rather than being spoon-fed.

So, prayer. What is it? Why pray?

Prayer is communicating with God. It is communion in the truest sense. It is connection. It is erasing the line between us and God. In reality there is no line, there is no separation. God is always with us. We just don’t know how to listen. We don’t know how to connect. We get distracted.

Learning how to pray is like tuning in a radio. For the longest time we stay on one channel. Then we hear about another channel, one that has useful information. The one we were listening to is full of pop tunes and negative news. We don’t learn anything from it, and we feel a little uneasy all the time.

We are either distracted or dissatisfied listening to that channel.

Then we hear about another channel and we try to dial it in. We’ve forgotten the call numbers. We wander around, spinning the dial. We hear that it has a positive take on things, that it isn’t all about war and violence and heartache. It is about how to live through all that and how to be helpful. The message is one of love, and a love so big that it can’t be written about in a greeting card.

Some people are suspicious about this station. Our society seems to think that people who are happy and who smile all the time just don’t get the big picture. They just don’t understand everything that is going on. They have their heads in the sand, so of course they are happy. They don’t know any better.

But it isn’t that at all. They do know what is going on. But they refuse to fill themselves with poison. It is like the difference between someone who eats well and someone who eats junk food. The person who eats well has vitality and energy, and the person who eats junk food feels lethargic and cranky. But if you tell the junk-food eater that he’ll feel better if he quits drinking soda and quits eating high-fat, high-salt food, he’ll start getting suspicious.

Many people would rather stay miserable, because it is what they know.

I mentioned to one friend that I was looking into other faith traditions, specifically the Baha’i community. He got very concerned and said that he didn’t think that was a good idea. He’d seen a cable access show that was Baha’i and they all seemed “so happy” that he thought something was up.

Yeah. That’s a reason to not check them out. Let’s stick with the miserable people.

Right now, I’m supplementing my need for church with a bunch of different things. I go on retreats. I’m part of a quarterly circle where people share their views on deep topics like forgiveness. I’m part of a group that is dedicated to compassion. I read scriptures daily. I listen to a Jewish podcast.

I don’t feel qualified to tell people how to pray. I think there are as many paths to God through prayer as there are people. I think the biggest thing I can tell you is that God wants to hear from you and wants to connect with you, and that however you do it is good.

Prayer doesn’t have to be about sitting and reciting words from a prayer book. It can be anything that gets you there. God is the destination, and prayer is the vehicle. It doesn’t matter if you take a car or a boat or a plane or you walk – you’ll still get there. Some ways may take longer, and some ways may be easier. It doesn’t matter. Just get going. The going-towards is what matters. God will make up the difference in distance.

I’ve written previously about various different ways to pray, so I’m not going to replicate that here. I’m trying not to duplicate myself, but that it hard sometimes. Sometimes I have a topic so big I try to open it from a bunch of different angles. I write a lot about Communion, and how church should be open to everybody.

Perhaps what I’m trying to do here is exactly the same thing. Prayer is for everybody, and there is no one right way to do it. But why pray? What is the point?

This is hard for me to explain. To me, this is like a fish trying to tell you the value of swimming. Prayer is essential for me. The more I do it, the more balanced and connected I feel. And I don’t mean just connected with God, but connected with everything and everyone.

Because God is everything. Everything came from God, and everything is part of God. No – I don’t worship God as a rock or a tree or a mountain. That is a whole different religion.

Prayer can be as simple and as essential as stopping for a moment, as often as possible, to “check in” with God. It is an inward look, a pause. It is taking a breath in and turning away from the everyday minutia of life and reflecting on the eternal.

Tuning in that radio channel isn’t easy. There is a lot of static. But the more you try, the better you’ll get. And just like in the story of the prodigal son, when you start walking towards God, God will start running towards you.

I don’t think I’ve told you anything about why or how to pray in this post. Sometimes blog posts are like prayer. They don’t seem like they stayed on topic. They don’t seem like they got anywhere. But prayer and writing and physical exercise are all the same. It is the effort that matters. We won’t be perfect every time. We won’t get it right. Sometimes we do it in fits and starts. But keep on. Keep on trying and stretching and growing. That is what matters.

Keep on reaching towards the light, little seed, and eventually you’ll see the light.

Talking to myself.

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Oh my God. I still have another 3 and a half hours until supper. Then two more hours until we leave. So maybe less than 5 hours of having to be by myself.

How will I stand retirement? How will I stand my vacation coming up? At least half of that I will be alone. How will I stand being a widow, if that is to be?

I’m not really by myself, but I am. We can’t talk. There are others here, but the convent is big enough with enough areas that we can wander around and have space to ourselves. There are porches, and swings, and trees, and libraries, and snack areas that we can go to. Or we can stay in our rooms. But we can’t talk. So it feels like I’m alone.

Perhaps I don’t like being alone and silent because I’ve just not done it before. The day here is broken up with meals. We see each other then, but we still don’t talk. I write. Boy, have I written. I’ve wandered around outside. I took some pictures. I read two “elf-help” books. I did scrapbooking for the first time.

And I listened.

And God listened with me.

I’m waking up to the voice. I’m hearing the echo. Rumi says “Who is speaking with my mouth?” and it makes sense.

I’m afraid to say that the voice is me, and I am the voice. It sounds vain, petty, selfish. It sounds crazy. Yet if “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine”, it makes sense.

If we are a way for the universe to know itself, then this praying to God is self-reflective. God is within all of us. God created us, and gave us life. When we slow down the noise of our lives we hear God’s voice. It is inside us, as close as our breath, as essential as our heartbeats.

We aren’t God. But we are part of God. And God dwells within us, every one of us. God is within all things. It all came from God.

There is no division between living and not, animate and not. Everything has value. Everything has a purpose. It does not matter if it benefits humans in general or you in particular. God made it for a reason.

(Written 9-14-13, at 2 pm. Three quarters of the way through a silent retreat.)

Retreat! A trip of a different sort.

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Going on retreat is like going on a trip. In some ways it is like going on a trip like the kind you would need a suitcase for. But this time I mean like one where the only place you go is in your mind.

When I was in college, I went to the mountains with some friends. We rented a cabin and we “tripped”. We took our candles and our snacks and some acid. Nothing was how we expected it to be. But that was the point. We were used to things as they were. We wanted something different. Or really, we wanted to see what was there all along for a change.

I knew a guy who listened to his favorite album when stoned. He heard parts to that album he’d never heard before. He thought it was the pot that brought it out. It wasn’t. He was simply in a state of mind where he was open to new experiences. He was looking for something to happen. Those notes were always there. He was just too distracted to notice. With pot, because he was expecting something different, he noticed what he’d been missing. Pot didn’t do it. His expectation did.

Don Juan, in Carlos Castaneda’s books drugged Carlos for the first few years. He wanted him to see what the reality that was beside our reality was. After a while, Carlos got to the point that he could see unusual things all the time, sober. When he asked Don Juan about this, he said that those things were there all the time. Carlos was just too pig headed to see them. Don Juan drugged him up so he would stop paying attention to the expected, and start seeing things for a change.

We are all like this. We practice closure. We see what we expect to see. We look over what doesn’t fit unless it is glaring. We race through our days, unaware, unawake.

Retreats take things away from us, so we have to look. We have to take time off. We have to slow down. We have to be, alone, quiet.

We sit waiting for something to happen. Our senses are wide open. Will Jesus talk to us? Will we see hear smell touch taste differently? How will we be after? What will happen?

We sanctify this time. We set it aside, expectant, hopeful.

What if we did this all the time?

God is constantly present. God is constantly communicating with us. We just have to slow down and listen.

Wait with me. Watch with me.

(Written 9-13-13. 11 pm, on retreat at the Sisters of Mercy Convent.)

The escape artist.

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It was a very hard time when my Mom was sick. There were a lot of very difficult things that needed to be done, and only me to do them. I was in my early twenties and my family and friends had bailed on me.

I wasn’t prepared for any of this. My Mom wasn’t supposed to die at 53. I didn’t know how to deal with chest tubes or administering medicine every four hours for months at at a time. Just because I’m a daughter doesn’t mean I’m a competent caregiver.

So I separated myself. I believe it is called dissociation. I was there, sort of. I did all the stuff that had to be done, but I didn’t think about it. My mind wasn’t there. It was too hard to deal with but I couldn’t run away from it like my brother and father did. So I ran away in my mind. It was kind of being like an escape artist, like Houdini. I smoked a little pot to take the edge off. Years later when I had the time I went a little crazy because I’d not had the ability or time to grieve. There is nothing like learning how to deal with grief like being in a mental hospital.

There isn’t any training for this. It is hard enough to watch your mother die. It is hard to be a caregiver for someone who is dying. It is impossible when the dying person is your Mom.

It is very intimate caring for someone who is dying. It is very intimate to be with them in the middle of the night when they start freaking out about all the things they haven’t done, or about the afterlife. It is very intimate dealing with bodily fluids and pain.

In a way it was my gift to her. She gave birth to me. I helped her die. There is a strange balance here.

She didn’t die well. She had spent most of her life avoiding thinking about the future or anything really important. She didn’t plan ahead. She had no retirement fund. She didn’t take care of her health. She never got any education past high school. As for her soul, she ended up getting her religious education from me.

It is very weird being your mother’s teacher. I had read quite a bit about religious matters in the previous years, and had returned to church at 20. It was the same church where she was married, but hadn’t gone to since. The minister I found for her was from the Episcopal student ministry I was part of. He didn’t know much about how to prepare someone for death, so I got to do it. Something was better than nothing. At one point I gave her a copy of Stephen Mitchell’s “The Gospel According to Jesus.” The priest thought it was watered down. He didn’t approve of that translation. He wanted her to read the Bible. I pointed out that she didn’t have time to read the original. Sometimes you aren’t able to eat big meals, and all you can handle is baby food. This was the Gospel in a distilled version, just the words of Jesus. Easy to digest. Baby food. It got the point across in a way she could handle.

But there was nobody there to train me. There was nobody around to tell me how to deal with the heaviness of my Mom dying and the heaviness of dealing with the strangeness of dealing with the very real and very gross nature of dealing with someone who is terminally ill. I prayed a lot. God helped.

One “friend” wrote to me to tell me how sad she was that my mother was dying. Her advice to me was to “let Jesus into my heart”. I can’t stand Christians sometimes, and I am Christian. I was really angry when I read that letter. She didn’t know that I’d gotten confirmed years earlier. She didn’t know that I went to church every week on my own. She didn’t know that I’d helped create the Episcopal student ministry. She didn’t know because she didn’t ask. She’d been a friend in high school but we’d grown apart. She assumed that the answer to my problem was Jesus, not knowing that I was already a Christian. She would have taught me more about Jesus if she had shown up and helped. “Letting Jesus into my heart” didn’t get the laundry done or the groceries bought. “Letting Jesus into my heart” didn’t help when my Mom needed more pain medicine or a Valium at four in the morning.

Houdini died from being punched in the stomach. He had a trick that he did where you could punch him in the stomach as hard as you wanted and he wouldn’t be hurt. The deal was that he had to prepare for it first. He had to know it was coming. The person who punched him the last time didn’t know about that and just hit him.

We are like this. We need time to prepare for heavy things. We can handle quite a bit if we have some warning and training. But when we get blindsided, we can get really hurt.

This experience didn’t kill me, but it did teach me a lot. It taught me about my own strength. It taught me that there were a lot of people I couldn’t depend on. It made me grow up fast, a little faster than I was ready for.

On my knees.

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I’ve discovered it is pretty easy to pray while I’m working. My job really only requires part of my attention when I’m off the desk. I can pray or meditate or be receptive to what the Spirit wants me to receive. This is where and when and how I get most of my ideas for this blog.

Today I was out in the stacks pulling paging slips. We are part of a large library system and we get requests for books to be sent to other branches. Sometimes I’m the one who goes and pulls them from the shelves. I was back in the biography section and was praying about my calling. I want to be on the right path, but I also want to know how close I am to seeing it fulfilled.

Yeah, I’m trying to make that tadpole into a frog again.

The Spirit said that it was already happening, that it has already started. The Spirit has said this before. I’m having a hard time believing this because I don’t see it yet, but I’m feeling more content about this.

Then I felt compelled to go to my knees. Right there. In thanks.

This is really weird. But I’m pulling these books and I think it wouldn’t look out of place for me to kneel down in front of this shelf as if I’m looking for a book. I kneel, feeling obedient but silly and a little self conscious. I give thanks.

It was a small moment. When I looked up, I noticed a book was facing me. It was titled “Nowhere But Up”. I took it as a further affirmation.

I wouldn’t have noticed this little bit of encouragement if I’d remained standing.

Sometimes we have to get on our knees to know we are on the right path.

On giving thanks for food

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You don’t pray before eating to bless the food. You pray to give thanks. You pray to keep yourself in check. You pray to remain mindful.

How many people were involved in getting that food to you? The farmer who owns the land. The worker who harvested it. The trucker who transported it to the store. The stocker and the clerk at the store. Or perhaps you go to the farmers market? There are many people involved no matter where you buy your food.

That food doesn’t just happen. It didn’t magically appear in front of you.

If you eat in a restaurant, there’s the manager, the chef, and the server.

Many many people are responsible for this food that you are enjoying. Be mindful of them. Give thanks for them. Send them a blessing.

Then there are others. The bees who pollinated the flowers that grew into the fruit you eat. The worms and ants who loosen the soil so the roots can get water. The sun. The rain. Even if you grow your own food, you aren’t the only one involved.

We are just a tiny part of this, and it is through collective effort that we are able to enjoy the life that we have.

It is good to stop and be mindful of this. It is good to not take anything for granted. It is good to be in a constant state of thankfulness.

Dear God,
Bless this food that it may heal me, and through me, I may heal the world. Amen.

Praying for.

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I have several people I pray for on a regular basis. They have chronic health conditions or very serious life events that are going on. These are people who do not pray. Either they were raised Christian and felt betrayed by their church, or they were never part of any faith tradition.

Either way, I pray. I pray for their healing, for their wholeness. I never pray that they get converted, because there are so many people in the Christian community who that is all they pray for. There’s something about this kind of prayer that creeps me out. There are way too many things that the Christian community does that creep me out, in fact, but I’ve already written about that.

While I don’t feel they should convert to Christianity, I do wish that they would get a hint of the power of praying to God. I wish that they would feel the comfort from knowing that God is real, that God loves them, and that they are important. I wish that they would know that the Creator made them for a reason. I wish that they would know the feeling that comes from knowing that they aren’t alone, that there is a plan, and that they are part of it.

There is something about prayer that transforms a situation from feeing hopeless to something hopeful. It is the ultimate “phone a friend.” You can stop right where you are and always pray.

It might feel like there is a busy signal. It might feel like the connection is scratchy. Be assured, God is on the other end, right there, as close as your heartbeat, as close as your breath. Be assured that God is overjoyed that you called. I’m reminded of the story of the Prodigal Son. The father saw his son returning to him from far away. The moment he saw him return, he went running to meet him. God is the same way. God doesn’t meet us half way. God makes up the difference in distance the moment we turn our hearts and minds back.

In fact, God never leaves. God is always with us. God never gives up on us.

I don’t want people to become Christian, necessarily. But I would like them to seek God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or YHWH, or whatever they call the Creator. I think there is a lot of power in this. I think there is a lot of comfort too. Why try to do it all yourself when there is something so much bigger that is calling you daily, moment by moment, to let you know that you are loved?

Thankfulness or Blessing – what comes first?

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What comes first, the thankfulness or the blessing? We give thanks for our food before we eat it. It is sitting right in front of us. But we normally give thanks for our blessings after we receive them, if we remember to give thanks at all. Often we are so caught up in the fact that we finally have what we want that we forget to be thankful.

But what if we are thankful before we get what we want? What if we pray our prayer of thankfulness even before we can see what we are going to get? What if we are thankful even before we know what we are going to get?

Jesus tells us to pray as if we already have received. In Mark 11:22-24 “22 Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God. 23 I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, all the things you pray and ask for—believe that you have received them, and you will have them.” (HCSB)

Then you may think, but I don’t have that much strength in my prayer. I can’t pray that well. I have doubt. It is hard to believe. In Matthew 17: 20 we learn from Jesus that not much faith is required. “For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (HCSB) Just pray for it, and know that God will do the rest. A tiny bit of faith is a lot in God’s hands.

Does God need us to pray before we get our blessing because it is already on the way? Might it be that we need to be prepared to receive our blessing?

I have noticed that when I pray before anything, I’m the one to change first. I start looking for God. I start looking to see where God is going to pop up and surprise me. I pray before helping patrons at work. I pray before leaving my house. I pray before meeting with friends. I am trying to be in a constant state of prayer. I’m not very good at it, but I’m trying.

I remember when I used to smoke pot. I’d smoke, and I’d wait to see what happened. Food would taste better. I could hear parts of an album that I’d never noticed before. In reality, all of that was already there. I just put myself in a position where I was looking for it. I expected to experience life in a different way. I think prayer is the same way. I think prayer opens us up to receiving God. We open the door and God steps in.

I think that God was going to send us that blessing anyway, but we just wouldn’t have noticed it. How often do we take things for granted? How often do we think that what we have is just OK and not that much?

I heard once that praying before meals proves that we are not animals. One goal in Judaism is to be a mensch, a real person. We need to become human, to win over our animal nature. The goal of true alchemy is to transform the lead of our animal nature into the gold of our human nature.

Praying makes us human. Praying makes us better.

So what should we pray for? A new car? Extra money to pay off our mortgage? The get-rich-quick pastors of the megachurches would tell you that. Their message is the “prosperity gospel”. The fact that it has to have an extra word to describe it should be a clue that it isn’t the Gospel of Jesus.

Pray for big stuff. Pray for things not for yourself. God is big. God wants to hear from you. That is part of why God made you.

Pray for nuclear disarmament. Pray for peace and understanding among the nations. Pray for an end to war and greed. Pray for people to wake up to their true nature. Pray for us all to take care of ourselves and our planet.

Don’t be hesitant. Pray hard. Pray without ceasing. Pray as if we already have it. And remember that God always answers prayers. Sometimes it isn’t what we want it to be – but it is always what is needed. Pray for the grace to be able to accept God’s answer. But most importantly, pray.

Insomnia

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I am starting to see insomnia as a good thing. Instead of fighting it, I’m seeing it as a chance to pray and get closer to God.

When I was at the Cursillo retreat last October I was awake at night a lot more than I’d wanted. The entire experience is a little overwhelming for the average person, and it is mind blowing for someone like me who has a mental health diagnosis.

When I’ve been in a manic phase in the past, I have experienced God directly in ways that mystic writers describe perfectly. This is part of why I’m so concerned that I never confuse whether I’m experiencing God or a facet of my diagnosis. I’m starting to realize that it is also important to not dismiss an experience just because of my diagnosis. Just because a person is bipolar doesn’t mean that God isn’t talking to them.

I’ve already written in part about the first night that I was unable to sleep and went to the small chapel. When the second night of wakefulness happened, I was a little miffed. I had come to trust that it was God waking me up by this point, but I also know that if I don’t get enough sleep then I’m not really that intact for the next few days.

So I started arguing with God. “Really? God? Are you kidding? You know how I get when I don’t sleep.” And I heard back the same kind of reply that Moses heard when he complained that he was not fit to go plead to Pharaoh for the release of the Jews from slavery. God said he made me, so he knows what I am capable of and what I can handle. And then he followed it up with “You said you wanted to spend more time with me”. I laughed. He had a point there. So I lay awake, praying. Praying to me isn’t about saying certain words over and over. It is about being comfortable in the presence of God. It is about relaxing with an old friend who knows me better than I know myself. Remember, God knew you as you were being knit together in your mother’s womb. (Psalm 139:13)

So these nights when I wake up for no obvious reason, I am starting to use it as a reminder to pray, to get closer to God. I pray for the well being of all people, especially those involved in any recent tragedy. I feel out if there are any topics I need to write about. But mostly I try to relax and rest in the comfort of knowing that God is everything and is in control.

I’ve learned that the more I pay attention to how much sleep I didn’t get, the more wiped out I feel. But if I relax and don’t judge it to be bad, then I always feel fine. I may not get the amount of sleep I think I need, but I always get the amount I actually do need.