Seeding the Earth

I’m struggling these days, lost in a vortex of fear and doubt. God all of a sudden seems gone from my life, the constructs I’ve carried exposed as false. I’ve swung in the pendulum of faith and doubt many times. This is different. This doesn’t feel like a pendulum swing, with its concomitant swing back. This feels like a swing right off the edge of the map. I’m channeling the shock our forbears experienced when they traded an earth-based universe for one that revolves around the sun. All of a sudden my place in the center of things doesn’t seem so assured anymore. I don’t know that there’s a greater power interested in relationship with me.

I advise people to ask, to reach out to that beyond themselves and ask if it exists. Are you real, God? Is there anything there beyond my own imaginings? My therapist talks about One Mind, the collective unconscious to which we all have access. What am I accessing in this time of doubt? Where is awareness of the unified field of being I call God? Is there such a field, or is there only this, this material universe and our brief time in it?

I had a powerful dream a couple of nights after my mother died. She came walking out of the purple hills singing, sprinkling seeds across the earth. I recognized the image right away: the Corn Maiden of Southwest Indian lore, seeding the earth from a basket she carries in her arms. There was also an echo of the Narnia stories I loved as a child, where Aslan sings the world into existence. The meaning, to me, was clear. She was telling me about life, that this is what life is, that we create it from our own intentions, that we seed it with our dreams.

That’s a powerful responsibility. And amazingly freeing at the same time. The notion that we’re in charge — that we somehow partner in creating these rich, painful, beautiful lives — changes things. Yes, I’m using the word partner, because the prayer I expressed above has born fruit. I’ve connected again with a sense of Presence beyond anything we can ever put into words, a presence far beyond the fevered manipulations of our minds. It’s there, and we are part of it, and we are called to seed the earth with our collective love.

We are the final authority we seek, the meaning we are searching for. We create that meaning in our caring for one another, in the way we treat the planet and all its creatures, in our art. That which is God sings through us into creation. What are we going to create?

Closer Than You Think

I spent time recently with a group of younger women as they gathered for a monthly spirituality circle hosted at a vintage clothing boutique. I was struck by their eagerness for this kind of community, their willingness to share their hopes and fears, their generous support of one another in kind words and encouragement. There was so much positive affirmation going on that I wondered if each woman wasn’t projecting her strength and beauty onto the others, while holding her insecurities close to her breast.

One woman with a radiant smile and soft, sweet demeanor told me about the harsh self-judgment she dishes out on an ongoing basis. She yearns for an inner tranquility that eludes her, she said. She’s had tantalizing glimpses of such peace but it seems far beyond her reach. She despairs of ever crossing the gulf that separates her from what she seeks. At best, it is years and years of hard work away, she believes.

“You’re closer than you think!” I wanted to say to her, and to every woman in that group. The yearning alone means you’re on the journey. You’ve identified something you want, or something that is missing, in your everyday life. The mistake is thinking that it’s to be found outside of everyday life. We all yearn to be lifted out of our routine reality and transported to some other realm, some sphere of otherworldly perfection. The truth is that what we seek is already here. It’s inside us, available for the asking. We have to ask, though, and then we have to listen. We have to be willing to receive.

The hard work my new friend spoke of is the work of dismantling the belief systems that keep us from knowing our inner light. And it is hard work, for most of us, because we let go of those beliefs so reluctantly. “But this is who I am!” we cry. “And this is what I’m not… not good enough … not strong enough …. not worthy enough …” You fill in the blank. We fight against ourselves, refusing to accept and integrate our own strength and beauty.

Keep going! Keep questioning and seeking and expressing your desires, frustrated though they may seem. The very act of asking those questions means you have turned the key and opened the door. The fact that you are seeking means you have stepped through it. There is a very long path that lies ahead and there isn’t, at the same time. We are all on this journey together and will be as long as we live. And yet that which we seek is already here, fully present whether we know it or not.

Dare to believe that. Dare to embody the strength and beauty you long to find. Dare to take that next step, no matter how small, toward embracing your own inner wisdom and peace. You are closer than you think.

Where Mom Is

My Mom died a year ago today. I’m posting the newspaper column I wrote a few weeks later. It ran in the Religion pages of the Northwest Arkansas Media dailies on April 13, 2013.

I stood by my mother’s ashes at the front of the church, paying my respects before the service began. My aunt’s boyfriend came to stand beside me. “Where is your mother?” he asked. I proceeded to show him, lifting the cover of the stained-glass box to reveal the bag of gray ashes. I told him of the letters my sisters and I had written as we sat with her ashes that morning, love letters we had tucked into the box with her and would bury in the Catholic cemetery at noon.

“Where is your mother?” John asked again. I realized he meant something very different than the bag of charred bones on the altar. I had no conscious answer to give, but as I stood there, searching, a knowingness formed in my mind. “Everywhere,” I said. It wasn’t what I expected, but I knew it was true. “She’s in these flowers,” I elaborated, touching the white roses beside the stained glass box. “She’s in the candle light.” I gestured toward John’s chest. “She’s in you. She’s in me.”

It was time to take our seats and we did. The oddly intimate moment passed. But the gift of understanding John had opened up for me continues to reverberate. I’d struggled with my faith in the weeks before Mom’s death. What’s really there on the other side of dying? We build our mental constructs and believe we believe them, but face to face with death, we’re not nearly so sure. Was Jesus sure, as he endured his passion, that the resurrection would follow?

It’s hard now, just a few weeks after Mom’s death, to recall the sense of desolation I felt. (That’s the resurrection experience at work, I am sure.) An entry I made in my journal three days before she died gives a hint. “Have I said this is the hardest thing? It is. Why, Lord, why? Why death and sadness and suffering? There are no answers, are there? It’s just how it is.”

Father Bo talked to Mom about the afterlife in the weeks before her death. The visions of streets paved with gold and angels with harps might not literally be true, he told her. But they point us in the right direction. Heaven is so much more than we can imagine, he said. It’s the best place. I thought his explanation was sound, conjuring up a state of being as much as a tangible place. But in the last days before her death his imagery became more concrete. I imagine he was trying to comfort her with visions of things she had loved in life – swimming laps, taking walks, reading books.

They didn’t ring true to me. Those things are too much in our own image. They are what we need to leave behind. The truth, whatever it is, is far beyond what we can conceptualize. Yet there is something more. I have felt it so strongly on this side of the grave. I have to believe it’s on the other, too.

In the weeks since Mom’s death, I’ve sensed a new gentleness loose in the world. A softness, a spaciousness. It seems to me this is the essence of who she was. That her essence continues, one of the infinite shades of love. This is a new thought for me. I’ve been applying it to others who have died – my dad and his essence of freedom, my mother-in-law and her essence of welcome and hospitality. I’ve never really felt Jan’s presence since she died, but when I think of it this way, I’ve felt her plenty. I’ve channeled that energy many times. Her welcome and hospitality, poured out to me, allowed me to internalize it, to accept myself as fully as she did and offer that same welcome to others.

It’s the same with my dad’s unremitting urge toward freedom. My mom’s gentle wisdom. They live in me now. And through me — through each person whose life they touched — into the world. Outward and into the world forever. My answer to John comes back to me. Where is my mother? Everywhere.

Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Amen.

Joyful Participation

“Joyful participation in the sorrows of life.”

This Buddhist teaching is a powerful antidote to the spiritual desolation that has plagued me of late. So much in my life is up for review. I’m approaching the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death (my father died two years ago), when I left my job as a journalist to pursue seminary study. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve loved the learning, but I can’t say it’s brought me closer to God. On the contrary, I feel alienated from my faith. The attempt to grasp the nature of God through reason alone is bound to fail, despite our long Western history of striving. The spiritual practices that have kept me grounded in a more intuitive approach have more or less fallen by the wayside. I could force myself to pick them back up but that feels artificial to me at this time. I’m wandering in a land of not knowing and I sense the need to allow myself to be there: Real faith, if it comes again, will come through letting go of what I’ve known before.

This brings me back to joyful participation in the sorrows of life, the Buddha’s prescription for meaningful living. I need a prescription to follow right now. The sorrows of life are all around us, there is no denying. In my current experience, there is this: A hospice patient dying in a nursing home, a friend facing a debilitating disease, a three-year-old nephew diagnosed with brain cancer, a teenage friend attempting suicide. All these particulars clamor for attention against the backdrop of global suffering caused by war, famine, poverty, environmental disaster, and disease.

And there is this: The flash of a red cardinal against the lingering patches of snow. My dog’s wagging excitement as I take her for a walk. Breath moving in and out of my body. The warmth of the late winter sun on my face. And this: The sweetness of the dying hospice patient’s smile. The strength with which my friend faces the diagnosis of her disease. Extended family rallying to support my nephew’s surgery. Friends and family coming together to help my teenage friend heal.

Some of the most tender moments I’ve experienced were at my Mom’s bedside during those last hard months. The dreams I had right after she died were suffused with joy. There’s something that makes life worth living, whether we know what it is or not. Sometimes it’s glimpsed the most deeply in the midst of our pain. Other times, it’s here for the taking, it we will only see.