Burn it down

Sometimes life tears us down and destroys us. It consumes us like a fire.

Today is Ash Wednesday. I’ve been trying to connect more to liturgy out of a sense that spirituality is not mainly accessed through thinking, but more through experiencing.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

This is what is said on Ash Wednesday. I’ve always thought about this as being about death and dying. When we die, we will return to dust. But, it’s also about life isn’t it? Sometimes life tears us down and destroys us. It consumes us like a fire. We are dust. Then life breathes back into us and we are resurrected, only to be burned down again in the fire and return to dust and ashes once more.

Over and over.

I used to rage against this reality. I wanted nothing more than to remain on stable footing. I spent a lot (and I really mean A LOT) of energy trying to maintain some kind of homeostasis in my life. I was angry at the chaos and the fire. I wanted nothing more than simply a life of peace and tranquility.

Ironically, it seemed when I finally accepted that whatever reality is happening in my life at this moment; when I finally decided that reality is not something to be judged, or raged against, but something to experience, and something to drink in; when I opened up to it and welcomed it in, I found the peace I’d been trying so hard to capture all those years.

It is reality, it is the “I Am-ness” of life, that is more God than anything else I know.

Make no mistake, sometimes that reality is like a fire. It burns me down and leaves me choking and crying as my own ashes blow into my face. Then, it breathes life back into me and something new is created.

Over and over.

Jesus said, "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"

I read some commentaries on this. Some said this fire was the fire of judgement. Some said it was the fire of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I didn’t find any that said that this was about the fire that deconstructs and destroys us from within; the continual tearing down and remaking of our egos and our very souls. Religion likes to take spiritual things and make them external rather than internal. But I think that the fire that Jesus came to bring is the fire that immerses us and blazes through us and turns us to dust. And not just us, societies, institutions, principalities and powers. It burns them down too in the hopes that something new will be reborn. That baptism by fire, that death, counter-intuitively is the very thing that brings life.

We are ashes,

grey and cold;

choking and dry,

all that is left.

We are ashes,

all that is left,

after all is lost.

We are dust,

then life’s bellows pour breath back into us,

life dancing around in us.

The next match is struck and burns us down,

or we light the fire ourselves,

or truth kindles a fire in us and burns us to the ground,

destroying everything we thought we knew,

upending our tables.

To dust we return.

We are ashes,

blown by the wind,

becoming one with the soil and the sky,

swimming and floating in the water.

Drunk by the deer and the goat,

taken up by the dandelion,

to become life again.

(To comment, click on the header “Burn it down” )

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Out of the mouths of babes

It’s easy to think that the goal is to be happy.

Today in church, there was the kind of prayer moment where the minister asked people to speak their prayer requests aloud. People spoke out prayer requests for sick loved ones, our country, the homeless, prisoners, and the like. Prayers for health, happiness, freedom, justice. Prayers that we will be freed from sadness and suffering and those around us will be freed from sadness and suffering.

And then a young boy asked for this, “I pray that those of us who are happy can have some sadness so that we know how to help those that are sad.”

It’s easy to think that the goal is to be happy. Somehow that boy knew there is an even more profound goal.

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What will I be?

The following is taken from Ram Dass with the pronouns changed:

At some point you learn to have less certainty about what the future holds, of who you’ll be when you grow up, or how it will all come out.

Fifty years old

Because, when I look at my life now, there is nothing - 25 years ago, 30 years ago …. everything I thought about who I was and how it would come out has no similarity at all to the way it is.

Three years old

The who I am now hardly recognizes the who that was … who I am now feels great compassion for who she was then.

Seventeen years old

I doubt if we’d be much of friends. We would have very little business with one another. She would be very judging of me, which would be very poignant.

Me as a young mother 22 years old

So, I have learned, since i have gone through many transformations of who I know myself to be and how it is, that I must assume that those will continue. There is no reason to assume they won’t, although they may not. Because I can’t know that.

Thirty years old

So, I’m not planning to continue to be who I am forever. It will keep changing.

Forty years old

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In the moment

Maybe it’s just semantics, but it seems that when people say they are living for the moment, there may be regrets or a hangover in their future.

It seems to me there’s a difference between IN the moment and FOR the moment.

Living FOR the moment - is just doing whatever the hell you feel like with no regard to the consequences. Probably not conscious.

Living IN the moment - is paying attention to what is going on in this moment. Being present. Conscious.

Maybe it’s just semantics, but it seems that when people say they are living for the moment, there may be regrets or a hangover in their future.

To comment, click on the header of this post “In the Moment”

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Your body is the temple

Is it possible that when the Bible says “your body is the temple of the holy spirit”, it is not saying that we should leave, suppress, and repress the body and find holiness in the mind; but rather go into the body to find god

A temple has historically been a place that cultures have set apart as sacred. A place to go to commune with the Divine. A place to meditate, to rest, to lay down burdens and to worship the source of life, to listen to words of peace and love, a place to heal and to restore the soul.

In the New Testament book of Corinthians, embedded in a paragraph about sexual immorality is this:

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

When I was growing up in church, that verse was always used to shame me into right behavior. Don’t do bad things with your body or you will pollute the temple of God.

Blah, blah.

When I did a google search for a picture or a meme for this post, I typed in “your body is a temple”, almost all of the results that came up were about purity, or taking care of the body:

“your body is a temple, not a visitor’s center”

“your body is a temple, keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in”

“your body is a temple, take good care of it”

“your body is a temple, honor it”

Maybe there’s something more interesting here than just the enforcement of purity or the promotion of clean living.

Maybe there are things that are in sacred writings that are profound in ways that the author had little idea of. Not just the author, but people in general. It’s easy for religion to get so caught up in the business of fear, control or self improvement that they don’t dig any deeper.

Religion communicated to me that the mind and soul were the way to god and were separate from the body. The body would get me (and others) into trouble if it were not tamed, suppressed and silenced.

But what if the body as the temple of god is about understanding that our BODIES are the very place where we will find truth, healing and connection with the Divine.

What if we thought of our BODIES as:

Sacred.

A place to go to commune with God.

A place to meditate.

A place to lay down burdens and to worship the source of life.

A place to listen for words of peace and love.

A place to heal and to restore the soul.

For me, the focus was on using the mind to commune with the sacred. Thinking the right way and believing the right things. Prayer was about talking to God and thinking about God. Worship was about thinking about the majesty of God. Meditation was about thinking about scripture, or some other sacred thought. There was bible study, and reading the right books, and having the right beliefs. Church was about good songs and good sermons and the right theology and the correct practices.

I’ve used my body as a tool and a workhorse to accomplish things. I have pushed it hard. I have tried forcing it into a box that society has created for it. I’ve ignored it when it wanted to sleep. I have punished it when it ate too much. I have ignored its voice when it said “no” because I lacked the courage to speak on its behalf and use my voice to say “no”. I have said hateful things to it because it wasn’t as lean or as beautiful as I wanted it to be. I have hidden it away as it has gotten older and lumpier. I have used it as an object of consumption, commerce, and production.

I was taught to control the body but not how to connect to god through my body.

I’ve not used my body as a temple or a sacred space.

Is it possible that in the story about Jesus clearing the temple, there is a lesson about not using the body as a means of production and consumption and commerce? Is it possible to imagine that clearing the temple can teach us to reclaim our bodies as places of spirit rather than simply machines for the making of money and the building of empires? Or even worse, as objects to be feared, subdued and shamed?

I’ve been renewing my meditation practice these past couple of years. I don’t find rest in my mind or thoughts, on the contrary, I find rest through the body. Through the breath, the senses, the feel of the cushion beneath me, or the hum of the fan in the room.

Is it possible that when the Bible says “your body is the temple of the holy spirit”, it is not saying that we should leave, suppress, and repress the body and find holiness in the mind; but rather go INTO the body to find god. Walk into the temple and sit awhile. Rest with your beating heart, your breath going in and out and feel of your pulse.

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Life is the dancer

it is quite spectacularly beautiful.

In his book "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle says that life is the dancer and we are the dance.

Life, god, the ground of being goes on and on, bubbling up in various forms.  It has done so for millenia and will continue to do so long after I am gone.  I am just one of the little bubblings.

When my husband and I were in Iceland we walked along a beach that had little bubbling geothermal pockets here and there.  That heat, that energy, that life was underneath all along and everywhere and just burst forth unexpectedly here and there.  The Icelandic people made the best of it; hot pools to soak in, energy to heat their homes, we even saw them bake bread in the ground using the geothermal "bubblings" as ovens.

A lot of the time, I get it backward and start thinking that I am the dancer and life is the dance.  I am the poet and life is the poem.  I am the writer and my life is the story.  It's a lot of pressure to write the script of my life.

Turns out I write tragedy.

But life is the dancer.  It's dancing through me for a little while and dancing through you in a different form.  Life is the playwright playing out a scene in my life and a different one in yours.  Life is the poet writing a poem through me and another through you.

And life, love, God, the universe  - whatever you name it - writes a much more beautiful story than I do.  Overall, it's a story of life, diversity, beauty, and wonder.  Have you ever just looked at nature and thought how amazing it all is?  The colors?  The weirdness?  The wonder of it all?   Oh, sure, it has its moments of tragedy, pain and death, but over the course of the entire show, it is quite spectacularly beautiful.

For we are God’s masterpiece, his work of art, her dance, his story, her poem. God has written us anew through using the word that was there from the beginning, so we can be the dance he planned to dance through us long ago.  Ephesians 2:10  (Paraphrase mine) 

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All philosophical

My heart rises in my throat and I think I might just choke on the sadness of it.

These past months I’ve waxed philosophical about death and how it’s bound up in life.

I’ve thought about evil and how it’s bound up in good.

I’ve stood with my arms firmly planted on my hips in the face of suffering and declared that it’s often just a story I am telling myself and I could tell a different one.

I’ve tried to be all zen about the mess of life, and the tragedy of watching my parents pass away in front of my eyes, little by little, bit by bit.

Most of the time, I’ve been dry-eyed.

All cerebral and philosophical.

And then I read a story about a mother dolphin in New Zealand who is grieving over her stillborn baby and is carrying the body of a her dead calf on her back through the waters  for days and days unable to let it go.

And my heart rises in my throat and I think I might just choke on the sadness of it. That mother dolphin. Who can’t get all philosophical about her suffering. All she can do is experience it. And she carries it for days and days.

I’m haunted by her and I can’t breathe. So I push her away because I’m not as courageous as she is. I can’t hold on to it like she can. I have to let it slip into the depths so that I don’t.

https://people.com/pets/mourning-mother-dolphin-carries-dead-baby-for-days/

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The feast of death

There is no feast without death and destruction.

Behind every feast is a great deal of violence. Things are killed, pulled and plucked, sliced and smashed. Heat is applied.

If you were the potato as it sat in the oven, you would not celebrate the feast that is about to occur.

It’s a simplistic parallel, but life is the same. There is no feast without death and destruction. Sometimes we’re the soil, sometimes the potato and sometimes we are the feaster.

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REST

The body is our most reliable prophet

I can’t believe it’s been over two months since I posted anything! I intended to take a break for the holidays and it turned into something more.

My son fell ill over the holidays and sitting with him in the ER over New Years Eve, I gave him a little talk about how the body is our most reliable prophet. It will tell us to rest when our minds tell us that hard work is the answer. It will say “no” when we can’t bring our mouths to say it. It will tell us to sit when we have been standing too long or to stand when we’ve been chained to our desk. It will tell us to quit eating or drinking, or to eat or drink more.

If we listen.

Most of us have told our bodies to shut up. Most of us plug our ears and turn away.

The body may scream even louder

STOP!

BREATHE!

REST!

The talk I gave my son was as much for me as for him. It’s easy for me to drive myself. Work, produce, work even more. The opportunities are always there. Career, taking care of my parents, taking care of my kids, home improvement projects, self improvement projects. Blogging.

So, for a change, I listened to my body and rested instead of writing.

Now I’m back.

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Girl Talk Part 7 - Damaged Goods

When we make people “goods” it’s much easier to make them damaged goods.

Warning:  This one gets a little preachy. 

For the series “girl talk” I asked women about the toxic messages they were given as advice.  I got tons of responses on the topic of damaged goods. 

• One woman told a story about being at a retreat where the leader gave out oreo cookies to everyone.  Then he took one from one of the girls, opened it and licked out the cream filling and gave it back to her.  He proceeded to tell everyone to enjoy their cookie.  The point he then went on to make is that of course the girl didn’t want her cookie, because he had already enjoyed it.  This is how men will see her if she gives herself away sexually before marriage.  No one will want her because she is damaged goods. 

• Another told about the same kind of message she was given but using a chewed gum metaphor. 

• Another was told:  “Your virginitiy is like a flower, if you give away petals you will have nothing left for your husband”

• My mom told me when I was growing up that no one would want to buy the cow if the milk was for free. 

This purity culture messages is saying that a woman’s worth is in her purity.   It teaches women it is a good strategy to withhold sex from a man in order to get him to marry her.   So, in essence, we are setting up a system in which men marry women to get in their pants.  But what about afterwards?  What happens after that desire is satisfied?  What is the attraction at that point?  

I hate the cow analogy, but honestly, how will we ever know whether someone loves us for our personhood rather than our maidenhood unless we give the milk away for free?  Do I want my relationship to be based upon sexual coercion?

To be in a relationship with a woman, you are in a relationship with a person, not a cow, or gum or flowers or oreo cookies.  Quite obviously, a woman who has had sex is not damaged goods any more than a boy who has had sex is damaged goods. Their worth is not bound up in their purity, or honestly in any other singular aspect of their body.  Girls and boys alike must be taught that what makes a person attractive is not simply the body, virginal or not.   This kind of objectification leads to using rather than loving.   Girls and boys alike must be taught to value character, intelligence, humor and depth in the other.  These are the traits that will contribute to solid relationships of mutual respect and equality. 

There are a million ways to hurt and damage another person.  Sex can be one of them if it is undertaken without consent or respect.  But you know what else damages a person?  Reducing them to an object that is only desirable under certain conditions.   I’m sure an awful lot of kids have been damaged by the oreo cookie talk, the chewing gum analogy and the cow advice.   I have a lot more baggage from the cow advice than from sex outside of marriage. 

To be sure, it’s not just women that are hurt by messages of objectification.  When any person is objectified, it is easier for us to use, abuse and neglect them.  It is easier for us to reject them and toss them out if we don’t see them as human beings. Whether we say a woman is only desirable if she’s a virgin, or if she’s thin enough, or that a man is only desirable based on his ability to earn money and be successful.   Either way, the person is reduced to an object.  When we make people “goods” it’s much easier to make them damaged goods.   

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