Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Owning Our Darkness, A Sermon

Thich Nhat Hanh, a very gentle Buddhist monk can find within himself a mix of both darkness and light as it occurs in the world. In his poem, “Call me by my True Names,” he identifies with such beautiful images of spring but he does not stop there.  He does not decline to see the darkness in himself, he also identifies as a rape victim and a rapist, as both the predator and prey. He knows that darkness is a part of him, as much as light, ugliness as much as beauty, and he acknowledges all of himself with compassion.

Can we look upon our own darkness with that same compassion? Can we find the murderer and rapist within ourselves and still love ourselves?  If not to that extreme, can we own our anger, our violent speech and desires, our moments of dehumanizing others?  Can we find the seed of the horrible things of this world within ourselves?  And can we have compassion for those cold, loveless, aching parts?

Lately I have been angry.  Just filled with anger. No reason for the anger that I can find. Just anger. Someone who I respect very much once said, emotions don’t have to make sense, they don’t need a reason. I don’t need to prove that I have a right to feel this anger. I feel it. That’s it. Anger was something I wasn’t allowing myself to feel for a long time. Anger was something I wasn’t supposed to feel.  I was supposed to be a well of understanding and forgiveness. And so for a long time I buried my anger and loved and forgave and understood until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I am not asking you to only feel a narrow range of emotion, just the opposite, I am asking you to allow yourself to feel everything you feel. Allowing is a form of loving. You don’t need to explain yourself, you don’t need to justify yourself. You don’t need to paint yourself holy. You just need to allow yourself to be you. It’s the only way to be peaceful. Let everything that is there, be there. It won’t hurt you. It won’t overtake you.  You always have a choice about how you want to act in this world, being more honest about how you are feeling or what you are thinking doesn’t take away that choice.

We have imaged that everything we are ashamed of is like a powerful demon that we must always resist, deny, and never say the name of. I will tell you, I have met this demon within myself. I would like to share a somewhat disturbing experience with you. In meditation, I saw a horrific figure, a demonic being, actually eating the remains of a human body.  And I knew that this being was a part of me. Just that, just that alone, horrified me. That my mind held this inside of it. But I would not open my eyes. I stayed with the meditation. And I felt myself as the demon now, I was hiding in a clothing trunk, eating human remains in the dark. I felt my teeth ripping and tearing at the flesh of a severed leg and I felt the dirty shame of eating it. But I was also the person I knew myself to be, standing at a distance, aware of the demon, and trying to have courage, not just to face this terrible thing, but to face the fact that this terrible thing was a part of me. Myself as the demon knew that it had been found and began to panic and opened the trunk and waved a knife at the self I knew, and warned it to stay back, promising violence, promising death. “I’ll kill you, I’ll f-ing kill you.” I screamed to my human self, desperate to be left alone to my shame, in the safe space of my dark box. As the demon, I felt such panic, and such anger. As the human, I gathered my courage and said, “I am not here to hurt you, I just want to get to know you better. I just want to understand what you mean.” And the demon was screaming, “look what you have made me become to survive, look at what I have had to do.” And then the demon became a child, a hurt angry child, now crying and screaming, a child who had to find a way to live without love for so long. I stayed with her a while until she trusted me enough to take my hand and I took her by the seashore and told her that the world doesn’t have to be like the one she had known, I wouldn’t keep her in a dark room in a box anymore.  I wanted her to know the light, I wanted her to see how beautiful the world could be. I told her I was sorry. And she cried the soft cry that comes when you’ve grown weak with crying. And I took her to a room full of windows, with a view of the water, and I tucked her into bed, and told her to rest. I think she is still recovering in some room inside of me.

This was my demon, a hurt unloved child who had to find a way to survive. I believe this demon represented what I created when I did not offer myself self care. When I would give and give to others and pay no attention to myself I became like a cannibal, eating away at myself. I needed to nourish myself somehow. When I was so giving, I was also very manipulative. I had to get my needs met without claiming them, because I was taught that having needs was selfish. So I took when I could in shady ways, to survive, and then felt even more shame. Either I make better choices about how to nourish myself or I go into hiding and get my needs met in any ugly way I could in the dark. When we have the courage to face the most horrible parts of ourselves, we see that it is still ourselves, asking for attention, still in need of kindness.

In a course in miracles, we are told that everything that is done is either an act of love or a call for love.

When parts of us are raging, violent, and ugly, can we answer their call for love?  Can we have compassion for the parts of us that are hurting and now seek to hurt others? I think we need to, if we don’t want their call for love to grow louder and more desperate I think we need to listen, understand the aching, and have some compassion.

It is time to call the homeless parts of ourselves back home.  The parts we are ashamed of, the parts that we are sure need to stay hidden if we want to be loved in this world. There is no way around it, we have got to love it all, every aching ugly part of our complicated spirit.  We have got to allow the space in our mind/bodies for every insistent part. What we resist, persists. Denying it doesn’t change it, pushing it out won’t work, trying to kill it makes it stronger, you have got to learn to love the ugly parts of you.

The thing about wanting to feel whole is that wholeness means everything, everything.  We want unity; we want an undivided self and world. Unity means everything and everyone. It means living with contradictions, it means allowing both sides. Stop frantically rooting out your weeds, weeds and grass will grow in you and will keep growing. You are what you are. Everything you are God/Goddess has enfolded in you. So love your darkness as you would the most lovable part of you. Every part of you needs love. Every part of you needs a place to come to rest. No way around it. And the ugly parts are just hurting and they need even more love and acceptance than the rest.

Every feeling ever felt by anyone, all those murderous, ugly, hateful feelings: you are capable of feeling every one of them. Every horrible act ever done by a human being, you are capable of doing yourself.  You aren’t above or separate from anyone who has ever lived in this world. Every dark thing you see outside of you is inside you as well. Until we face our own darkness, our own angry, seething, destructive instinct, we are going to keep acting it out thoughtlessly. Know what you are, know what you are capable of being, then make your choices.

Awareness of our darkness will empower us to make choices, instead of acting out of subconscious motivation. It seems to me, we can’t authentically shine our light unless we are willing to begin to embrace our darkness. If we don’t own that we are capable of magnificent ugliness, we will go around judging people and pretending ugly isn’t our nature. Everything is our nature. We are capable of so much, don’t sell yourself short in any direction. You can descend as far as you can ascend. As above so below. It is all there within you, but you have a choice about what you want to act out, so make your choices.

That is not to say, it is easy. We may find ourselves screaming at a loved one and feeling shameful.  All a call for love. There is a saying in Italian,

Amami quando lo merito meno,
perché sará quando ne ho piú bisogno."

Translation: "Love me when I deserve it the least,
because that is when I will need it the most.

See if you can offer yourself some understanding, and forgiveness, no matter how many times you do a thing you are ashamed of. No matter what you do, you are deserving of understanding, love, and forgiveness. I was raised Catholic, and I was told that no matter how many times I go to confession for the same issues, I would be forgiven. The Quran speaks about a merciful and forgiving God. Many religions attribute these qualities to God. Friends, every atom of ourselves is made of God. Allow the God of ourselves to forgive the aching God within us. Everything is God. We are creating God as much as God is creating us. Let the God that you are, be merciful and loving and forgiving to the parts that need it the most.  Manifest a kind and gentle God to yourself, to all parts of you that are calling for love in the dark.

We can’t love and accept outside, what we can’t love and accept inside. When I see a homeless person, I feel aversion and fear and I fill my mind with judgments about him, trying to convince myself that somehow he deserved it, and that is if I consider him at all.  I am not proud of it, but there it is. The aversion is me trying to protect myself from what I am, from the reality that I am vulnerable to the same things which put the homeless person in that position.  There isn’t much stopping me from curling up beside him tonight. That scares me. That aversion was me trying to create distance, trying to cut off my connection to that person by arguing that there is something substantially different between him and me, but there isn’t. We are so similar and I am afraid. A part of my shadow is homeless and cold and hungry, and by speaking its name to you I am trying to give it a little warmth, a little food, a little comfort that it has a place to come home to now within me. And when I really welcome that part home, maybe then I can really give some comfort and warmth to someone outside of me. Metaphorically all of my shadow is homeless.

It’s time to put the porch light on in our hearts and say, “come back, it’s safe now, you have a home here,” to every part of us we thought couldn’t be loved.  “Get out of the shadows and come warm yourself by the fire.”  Let’s say that to ourselves first, and maybe in some distant time, we can show that kindness to someone outside of ourselves, without looking down on the person, without a feeling of difference. Just another part of the whole that needs some love.

For many of us even our light is a part of our shadow.  We have learned to be ashamed of our goodness, our innocence, our loving, our brilliance, all of the gifts that we were given in order to make a difference in this life.  Anything we were taught to be ashamed of is in the darkness, not just our dark seething desires, but also our magnificence, our beauty, our power. When we were young, maybe we said something that was a little too wise for our time, maybe we offered the answer to a question a little quicker than we should have, maybe we loved someone we were supposed to be disgusted by, and we were “corrected.” We were corrected for shining too brightly in a world that convinced itself that being a little dim always is the only way to survive.

We were meant to do more than just survive. We need to wiggle the lamp shades off of our spirit. We need to come alive.  Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Coming alive means allowing every part of yourself to receive blood, to be nourished. And when you give yourself permission to be everything you are, you give that permission to others, you allow others to be less afraid of themselves, less ashamed, you allow others to come home to themselves. Everything in you is acceptable and understandable and lovable.

Let us pray:

Mother,

Please guide and protect us as we seek reconciliation with all of the parts of ourselves. A part of us yearns for the experience of wholeness. Remind us that wholeness means everything. It means viewing everything inside of us as acceptable and loveable.

Please give us grace to forgive ourselves when we fall short of what we think is acceptable and remind us that we are just calling out for love. Give us the grace to love what we have learned is unlovable. We know everything is of one substance, and everything is divine, even the darkness in us and in our world. Remind us to consider loving when the call for love is made in any form and to forgive ourselves when we cannot answer the call.

Please help us to accept and heal our divided self so that we may be empowered in time to help heal our divided world.

Let it be. Amen.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

On Weightloss and Being Human- A road map

As many of you know, I've lost 70+ lbs in about 7 months. When asked how I did it, I could simply say that I used this fabulous free website, www.sparkpeople.com , and that would be true but not the whole truth.  Weight loss is about more than counting calories, and working out consistently, it is about having the courage to feel.  Feel the emotions you've actively avoided with food and feel the dimensions of your body as it is. And it takes faith, faith that a change is happening that may still remain unseen, faith that this seemingly impossible vision can be a possibility for you.

The thing about weight loss is that losing weight isn't enough to keep you at it.  Frequently there are stretches of time during which no weight is lost, so what kept me there? I fell in love with the energy of activity. I fell in love with the movement, with the internal stirring of life that comes from exercise, and the feeling of self love which comes from doing the thing that is good for you, and the pride and sense of accomplishment that comes from doing a difficult thing, and most wonderful, the freedom and openness that comes from doing the thing you thought wasn't meant for you, that was impossible for you to do.

But friend, there are days when none of that is enough, I call them eatin' days.  These are days when these wonderful feelings, even all the weight I lost is simply not what I want. Some days I need to rest in the quiet comfortable place of old patterns.. and I overeat to the point of pain, like the old days.  And sister, brother, it is good!  It is good to allow that slack.  A friend and teacher once said, the God of Compassion is a God of Slack. I want to be a God of compassion for myself. And I allow myself the old choice, but this time I feel it differently.  I experience the crazy feeling of eating until you are in pain and all the enjoyment is lost, I experience the feeling of sleepiness and not wanting to move, and the shame of a food addiction, and the highs when food is brought to the table and the lows when the food is gone, and the moment is gone and I've done it again. But glory to the old choice. Because immediately, I remember what made me make a different choice. I feel the old feelings, I remember that the pain of overeating was my reality, and I get re-affirmed in the choice to not have that be my reality again, but maybe only a passing reminder of how far I have come.

I frequently have eatin' days when the reality of my success becomes clear.  When I started this process, I weighed 237 lbs, and I set a goal of 160 lbs.  As of yesterday I weighed 161 lbs, and shortly after stepping off the scale I felt the fear of success and yesterday became an eatin' day.  I cannot describe to you the fear that comes when your vision becomes reality, when the feeling of your body is different from the body you have known most of your life, when your concept of yourself meets fewer limits and more becomes possible to you than you allowed to be possible before.  I got scared because the walls which felt like my shelter from the world fell away, and all I had was open air and space to grow, and I needed to feel the walls again. I needed to know myself in an old way again. I needed the old comfort of a familiar thing, even if it hurt. And I ate until it hurt yesterday, to hold back the reality that I could be anything I want to be and life can be more than I have know.

It is a process, mixed with resistance and excitement and fear of failure and success.  It is a negotiation of feeling and unwillingness to feel.  And it is good.  It is not about being perfect, being the model of wellness. I do not get it "right" all the time.  And no one needs to.  First, it is just about being conscious that you have a choice and you are making one, and seeing if you can be compassionate with your choice, no matter what you choose to do.  See if you can see what the choice feels like, what are you feeling as you play out that choice. If it doesn't feel good, consider that there is a different choice, and that is where www.sparkpeople.com comes in.  You need information and support. Check it out. Just learn what is also an option. And just keep making your choices, meal by meal, day by day. And allow the old choice with compassion if you are able.  This process involves a lot of fear, and sometimes you just need the old security blanket, and it is ok. You are still lovable.

You don't have to get it perfect to lose weight, you just have to make the new choice more often than the old one. More frequently than you have made it before. And see if you can enjoy the process.  See if you can feel your energy changing.  Your energy feels different almost immediately, it's the new energy that shapes the body.  Notice it. Notice if you feel different to yourself. And allow the fear that comes, it's ok, and allow the excitement that comes, it is wonderful. And slowly, the body changes. And you see muscles and bones you've never seen before, and your clothes start to sag around your hips, and you live in between for a time, you live between a past and future experience of your body, not fully landing anywhere, just moving through. Just keep riding the new energy you make with the new choice, with the exercise, with the food choices.  Focus on your experience in the moment, and have compassion.

On exercise:
- The wonderful thing about it is that at best, it is exciting and energizing and you feel your energy changing in the moment, at worst, it is only horrible for as long as it lasts. The rest of the day will feel so good, physically and spiritually and emotionally. Set little goals and take great pride in them.

-No extremes, don't be a one hour warrior who wears herself out so much that she cannot/ will not work out again for a week.  Try 5 min first.  It is a success.

-See if you can really feel what you are feeling through the work out.  Go into the discomfort of it, instead of pushing it aside and zoning out, or zone out.. it's all ok.

-The hardest part is starting, just stepping onto the treadmill is a success.


Yesterday I came too close to success and I needed to stop, so I stopped. I needed a break, and I took a break.  And today I get to make a choice. Every day I get to make a choice anew.  And I get to love myself through it, whatever I choose. I get to love myself anyway. Whatever my body looks like, whatever experience I have, I am lovable.

I was afraid of losing myself with the weight.  I was afraid of loss.  I can tell you, I did not lose any part of me.  I became clearer.  The ME of me became less muddled and bulky. I am here. Clearer and more defined. I am not lost. I am here and I have more energy and more willingness and less fear of life. I know the weight was a barrier to life, I was afraid of the world, and I felt that I needed a buffer.  When I committed to making boundaries, expressing my needs and my limits and honoring them, I felt safer to let my physical boundary go.  I showed up as an adult for myself, with more willingness to be clear about my needs and more willingness to feel knowing that feelings are just feelings and cannot hurt. The point is, we need to feel safe in the world, and anything we can do to support ourselves in feeling safe will help us to let go of our physical guard of excess weight. It is safe to feel and you have the right to boundaries, speak up, and tell people when things aren't ok, you will still be loved if you do.

The process of losing weight happens long before the first pound is lost.  It is a negotiation with trust in yourself and in the world. Be gentle with yourself. It can be done and the reality of that statement is a scary and wonderful thing.  Have courage and have faith in yourself and your process and have compassion and self love. You are lovable no matter what.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

On the Judgment Day, A Poem


Despite everything,
I believe that in the end,
when we show god what we made,
she will accept it like a gift and put it on the refrigerator.

And she will tell us to stand tall
and she will mark our growth on the door frame
and pretend not to notice when we stand on our toes.
Because she knows that by inches we ascend.

Mother, I wear your pencil marks
like crowns I am forever outgrowing and growing into.

And if one day I reach your height,
I’ll watch over my brothers and sisters while you rest
and at your bedside I will kiss your forehead
and hold your hand and pray
“world without end, world without end, world without end…”
 Amen.

Unrefined

It feels like a long time since I had written last. How can I tell you about the in between times in a succinct way?  Life is full of in between times. Long successions of moments about which you don't have much to say.  Which isn't to say they aren't rich in meaning, or eventful, just that you haven't found the words to talk about those moments yet.

They are still resting in a nebulous glob of experience, unprocessed, unrefined into coherent thoughts.  Sometimes things are better appreciated when left unrefined. Sometimes moments feels dishonored by the words they get reduced down to. Sometimes silence is just right.  But it doesn't translate well into a blog.

I suppose it reads like apathy or abandonment or what ever silence signifies to an anonymous reader who takes some pleasure (i hope) in reading. I wonder who is reading.  Often this just feels like I am skipping stones over a vast lake. Frequently the stones don't feel like they skip very far, and they don't make very much of an impact on anything. And even more frequently I'd have you know, the stones never leave my hand.  In this span of time I have written and deleted so many posts.  It has been a study in what I want the world to know about me.  How willing I am to be vulnerable, or less than brilliant.  As it turns out, I am not very willing to be either, at least not in this medium. One never knows who is reading. And as a human being in the world, not a minister or a woman or whatever else, but just as a human, I am still experimenting with the idea of trust. As I write, I feel the gentle hope that where ever my words land, they will find a soft place to rest.

So what can I tell you about the space between those words and these. The last post and this one.  I can tell you about those moments when you feel like you are riding something bigger than you, like something big is leading, and your willingness and lightness allows you to just float with it. I can tell you about the scary and beautiful places that willingness takes you. I can tell you how it always seems to take you back into yourself, into your own yearnings and fears, and that I just lately discovered the amazing division between what life is and what I experience it as, and I am just starting to learn about the life outside of my experience. The life so big that it accommodates all experience.  And I am just starting to get in a choosing way about my experience of life. Like a lucid dream. I get to choose.  I have learned the power of intentions and how just being clear with myself about the experience I hope to have will help me to have it. I have learned how amazing my work is. I have learned that frequently my work takes place at moments outside of time and space, at thresholds, and my work is to build the doorway and offer people the opportunity to walk through. And when they choose to, it is enough to bring me to my knees with joy, with excitement. When a couple really shows up on their wedding day, looks into each others eyes and says "I do" it is a moment outside of time. It is a moment during which something unquestionable has changed and everyone in the room is different for having experienced it.  And by the end, we have all walked through together, and we are somewhere else now. I help make doorways, but I can't make anyone walk through. And many times, people aren't ready to walk through. The door stays closed.

But reader I wish you were there the moment that a little baby, during her baby blessing finds the doorway I have made for her and slips right in.  She may not know how to walk but children know how to navigate passages. They know how to chase the light until they see still brighter light. They haven't learned to be afraid of growing or feeling or living, and with such ease they move right through, into a deeper experience of life, into the blessing someone has made, into the crescent arms of whoever is nurturing and near. They know trust like I can't remember having.

I know how to make doorways, and I know how to hold the roofbeams high enough to support them and make the room wide enough and the time slow enough to let you walk through in your time. But I know well, from experience, it isn't always your time. There are many doorways I have passed by myself. Not ready and not willing is its own gift and its own blessing, especially when you just allow yourself to be that.

But lately, I have been more willing than I remember. And for a while I felt like my whole life felt like a series of doors opening to more doors never leading me to any room. Now I have found a room and from here I write to you to tell you where I have been, and unfortunately I only have these vague words to tell you.

I can tell you I have faced so many little fears, and come through to find the leash I have made for myself has become a little longer than before,  I have allowed myself to experience more of the world, farther away from the range I have known.

Do you remember the last time you were in the ocean? Do you remember feeling like you were at the mercy of it, like by its grace you lived or died? Did you feel reverence for it, and did you feel blessed when you felt the waves move gently over you, knowing they could just as easily knock you over?  Did you ever feel like the whole ocean was watching out for you, like the whole universe was making a way for you, like there was something like love in the little grains of sand that chose to stick to your legs and feet and then hide in your rolled pant legs just so they could take the ride back home with you? Did you ever feel in relationship with the world? With a pigeon as it crosses before you as you stop for its crossing, with the rain when it comes at the moment when your spirit just needs the rain to come and make everything outside moist and quiet? The whole sky makes rain for the grass to drink. The sky makes rain for my spirit to feel safe, for the sound it makes that makes me feel at home, for the gratitude I feel for being warm and dry when so much is wet and cold. Cared for by the world. What an experience. And maybe not everything is cared for, and that feels complicated and dreadful, but I know well enough to appreciate when I feel cared for and to take it in the way the roots do rain.

What else can I tell you? I can tell you how hard it is to write after not writing. I can tell you how hard it is to keep writing when I don't feel like I am saying much at all. I wonder if I have said anything that gives you pleasure. I am thinking of you now reader, reading this at the hour and minute that you are reading it, I am thinking of you and considering you and considering what we might have in common.  If I had told you these experiences? Could you have told me similar ones? I wonder, are we aligned in some way? Do I make sense to you? What do we share between us? What is at the core, what is the skeleton of our spirit that we can agree upon and then continue on to shape our meat around? What can be said that no one can deny? What unites us? Does anything reader? Tell me, where can I reach out from my self and find you reaching out from yourself?

Maybe through these simple rambling insecure notes. Maybe you have written ones like these and left them out for someone else to read and makes sense of. What is the meaning of all of this? What does it mean to seek for meaning? What is it your hoping to define? In my teenage years I had the urge to title everything I wrote "untitled" like "damn the man!, I won't have your descriptions." But I am older now and my descriptions feed and clothe and shelter me. What am I if I am not a minister? I am unemployed, and some of my biggest commitments and passions have no outlet and I am lost. I am blissfully defined. But self defined. And maybe that was what I intended from the beginning, what all my angsty poems tended toward, self definition. With me at the center of my experience, as an authority on myself. Brilliant. To think that all that angst held a deep lesson in it... the value of self creation, definition, and ultimately self acceptance.

So now I am being asked to accept my muddled self expression here, in this blog. I've no idea what I have been going on about and maybe I am ok with not knowing. Maybe I am ok with being incoherent. Maybe I am still acceptable and good, even when I can't offer precise words on a clear topic. Maybe I am still worth reading and hearing and maybe I am still valuable and worthy as I am. And if I am, then you must be too. Let's have that in common. Allow me to accept my ramblings and lay them out like dirty raw gold and I'll let you love yours, and present them to me in their jagged dirty fashion. And we can just be that unrefined thing together. A thing just fresh out of silence. Still searching for the meaning and purpose of words. Looking for a way to connect.