SILENCE AND SOLITUDE

Ahhhh, what a beautiful morning. Cool, crisp, windows open, birds singing, my "bliss station", and beautiful, golden silence.

You know, hospitals just aren't silent. And there's no such thing as solitude. Over the years, I've learned the value of silence and solitude, and I "require" that space in order to function as a human. That still, somewhere in the shadow of my psyche, sounds selfish, but it's not. It's fact. And I am reminded often just how much I require it in order to function well.

My dear precious mother has been recuping from knee replacement in our local hospital. She's had a couple of setbacks, so I was been there with her for 6 days. She's precious and I love her, but there just wasn't any silence or solitude. Her doctor sent her to the rehab floor yesterday afternoon, and I was told, "Go home." This morning, I was was in my "bliss station", listening to golden sounds of silence, and feeling the sweet honey of stillness wash over my soul.

Then I opened my Bible to begin my "Engaging Scripture" study, and there, on a little piece of paper, tucked into oblivion was this little dittie that Andy shared with us one evening as preparation for centering prayer. It was just the "permission" I needed to relax into my silent moment and breathe.

SOLITUDE
(from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

The most simple spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. To be with our own thoughts and feelings, to stop the addictive prayer wheels and just feel what we're really feeling, think what we're really thinking, is probably the most courageous act most of us will ever do.

There's probably no way out of our addictive society--and our addictive, dysfunctional families--apart from some significant and chosen degree of silence and solitude.

I go to agrarian societies, places in Africa or the Philippines, and there I see non-addicted people. I see people who lead quiet, simple lives, under stimulated, with a few basic truths that they hold onto all their life. Think of how many things stimulate us daily: radio, television, billboards, conversations. We've go to slow down the chatter, the stimulation; we've got to feel many feelings which have been pent up and denied for decades. We've become overloaded, which is why we're afraid to do it.

We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place of the soul without a great love, without the light and love of the Lord. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique.

I encourage you, find yourself a "bliss station" (mine's a certain chair in my living room), and just be still--just for 10 minutes, be still and simply breathe. Make some room in your life for purposed silence and solitude. Listen to the quiet and the sound of your own breath. Make it a daily practice. Get to know yourself, and the Holy.

Namaste.

FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

Following the Star
September 18, 2010


Do you see it?

There!

Right there!

High in the sky…
there it is!

the Star!

My –

I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
It’s so bright,
so beautiful,
so compelling…

I find myself filled with longing to follow that Star?

What? You say I’m crazy?

May be…maybe –
But,
But what if,
But what if following that Star just might lead me home?
What if following that star just might lead me
to the place of peace I so long for?

My heart, and my mind, are filled with the desperate “what ifs” that make staying here,
In this place,

Next to impossible.

So, here I am,
Like a crazy fool,
Packing my bags
And loading this camel
And heading out, over this desert,
Into this broad expanse of wasteland –

I have to go
I’m compelled to follow

The Star is calling me home.
(TAEHS, Matthew 2.1-12)

SABBATICAL, SEVEN YEARS, THE GREAT MOTHER (MY OWN), AND ME

I sat with Jim last night and discussed me taking a “sabbatical” the last two weeks of the year. He “high-5’d” it. Isn’t that the coolest?

Sabbatical – bringing a period of rest to the end of a cycle.

Seven, one of THE prime numbers in every tradition. In my own tradition, the Hebrews considered the number 7 to be the most sacred, the sum total of the most perfect world number (4) and the most perfect spiritual number (3). The number 7 marked “completion”.

My mother moved down here 7 years ago in May. Little did we know how HUGE her move down here was, especially for the 2 of us. Moving Mother here, into my space, has been a welcoming of the Feminine.

Father God (my Daddy) was “out there”, different from me, beyond me, always a “mystery” that in my femaleness I would never be able to measure up to. There is no doubt in my mind that my Daddy loved me, absolutely, but that love was from a distance, the way Father God did—from out there, above and beyond me, a Mystery I would never be able to penetrate, a God I could never pretend to be like. Father of my Spirit.

Mother, on the other hand…my Mother.

Mother God, (my Mother) is God IN me, God in my shape, in my form, speaking with my voice, God revealing my Self to me, God loving me from INSIDE of me. She is Mother of my Soul.

When we asked Mother to come live here with us, little did I comprehend that I would be inviting the Feminine, yes, the Goddess, the Mother of my soul into my psyche. As a new Catholic, I had just met Mary, and I knew I loved her—immensely. And Christmas, 2003, was huge for me. I received what I believe to have been a supernatural gift, the gift of mandalas, for nearly 3 months, pictures and words from deep inside of me, marking me and preparing me for what I know now to be a huge paradigm shift, and I knew even then that those mandalas were a gift to me, not from the Father, but from the Mother.

All that happened 7 years ago, and the changes in our lives have been cataclysmic—perhaps not so much from the outside, although even those are big, but on the inside, as well.

When Mother moved down here, I wanted to be open and honest with this sheltered woman. So I told her the biggest and baddest things about me and my family that I could come up with. “Mother, Jim and I occasionally drink, and I find myself saying bad words pretty often, and Robin’s belly button is pierced.” That was it. I had now come clean.

Good heavens—it’s almost comical now.

In the past seven years, Mother and I have been introduced to all kinds of new things, new words, new thoughts; i.e., alternative life styles, bi-sexuality, polyamory, Burning Man, the Wisdom of Hoboses…my family itself, so beautifully intact in 2003, has crumbled. Two of my sons have gone through psyche shattering divorces. Another son has decided that we’re too much to deal with, so he stays away. I’ve lost two of the very best friends I ever had in my two daughters-in-law. I’ve watched my grandchildren lose their innocence. I’ve seen alcoholism rare its ugly head in the lives of friends and family. Divorce has once again not only ripped my family apart, but it's ripped apart the families of very dear friends. And even now, I'm reminded again how short life can be, and how everything can change in a moment.

That’s outside. Inside? I lost God for two years. I couldn’t figure out what to do with Jesus. I lost my faith. My body froze in fybromalgic pain in November, 2004, and it’s still frozen. I live with it all the time. And, god forbid, I’m on anti-depression medication, they tell me for the pain, but I also know it’s also for the depression.

What has my mother done during all this? She’s done what God does—she’s loved. She’s watched. She’s been there. She’s seen it all and heard it all, and she loves us still. She watched especially close as my image of God was shattered. Father, Son, and Bridegroom no longer work as well as Mother, Daughter, or better yet, Ground of All, Source of Everything, River Beneath the River, etc. God is not so much “out there” speaking from outside, as IN me, speaking to me in my own voice. And from my own creative experiences (also in the last 7 years), God didn’t so much just speak creation into being as birth Creation. Neither did God “finish” in 6 days; She’s still giving birth to an ever-expanding Universe all around us.

Mother (God? Or Millie?) has walked me through the Great Shift in my soul—from evangelical Christian to catholic (universal) Christian. She has watched as my religion, politics and heart has changed. She’s watched as what was very neatly boxed and defined broke into billions pieces—and like Leonard Cohen sings, “That’s how the light gets in.” How has Mother responded? With blessing. Yes, blessing. Mother Millie hasn’t exactly understood (nor have I) or embraced (nor have I) all the changes, but she’s blessed it all. Mother God on the other hand?

Well, that’s what the Feminine does. She takes your hand and circles you round and round, down and down, until you come into the Abyss of your own soul. And she sits with you in the depths of hell until you die—and She stays with you until time for your resurrection.

Then, She says, as a Good Mother does, “Rest Sheila. It’s time to rest your soul and your body. Take a Sabbatical.”

So I will—not so much a “silent retreat” as I first thought, even though The Great Silence sounds delicious and I expect to enter it often, but a Sabbatical, a time of rest after a cycle of energy being spent. I highly recommend it. And I’ll let you know how it goes. I suspect to come home after the first of the year refreshed, healed in mind and spirit (maybe even in body), and ready to tackle the next 7 years of growth.

Selah!

BTW, I'm still a Christian. I still love God the Father, I adore Jesus, both God and man, and I believe in resurrection. It's just all bigger and far more glorious that I first imagined.

The Marriage of Elan and the Mermaid

I've been chompin' at the bit to get into my studio and do some active imagination work. So, I got up early this morning, put on a new CD, grabbed a few pastels, took a deep breath, and began working. Almost a couple of hours later, I realized I had been invited to a wedding...

A few weeks back I discovered a new word...ELAN (with one of those little '-marks over the "e"). I wish I remembered where I saw the word--one of the problems of being an avid reader. I can never remember where I saw "it", nor can I ever find "it" again. But I fell in love with this word. The author definded it as a bursting forth of energy--you know the kind--that "bursting forth" that causes a bird to break forth into song, that "bursting forth" that causes a seemingly dead seed or bulb to break open and shoot roots into the ground, that "bursting forth" that raises new life out of ashes--THAT "bursting forth"! It's called LIFE!

I've been smiling on the inside as I've read two of my sons Facebook posts this weekend. No. 1 son has fallen in love with mountains and rocks and has become an avid climber. Hewent rock climbing (again) during the Labor Day weekend, this time to take an "anchors" course, so he can take his sons and "anchor" them as they climb up and over steep grades of rocks--yeah, I can just see it now. Actually, I have my eyes covered.

No. 2 son took two his two boys to New Orleans this weekend, "hoboin'". They're playing their guitars and harmonicas on the streets with strangers (yes, that's right, strangers)! Improvisional jazz or something like that on the streets of New Orleans, eating beignets and sharing their meals with "hobo dogs". What's a grandmother to do?

But you know, that's what Elan is--it's LIFE! It's that great rush of drama that comes running at you, full steam ahead, with fire breathing out it's nostrils. It's that thing that rises up out of the underworld, morphing from free, easy and beautiful, to huge, vile, and ugly. It's LIFE, in all it's glory, as well as all it's gore.

Seems two of my sons have decided to risk experiencing life from INSIDE, instead of OUTSIDE, looking on. And they seem determined to teach their sons the same thing.

Most of us would rather be safe. Except that LIFE teaches us that nothing is safe. Not the good ole USA, not NYC, not 401K's, not marriage, not religion, certainly not God--none of it's safe.

I'm one of those who lived the first 40 years of my life trying to do the "right" thing, and playing it "safe". I expected marriage(s) to last. I expected that if I went to church, read my Bible and loved God, I'd be a "good Christian". I did the "right thing" that a good Christian woman was supposed to do--got married and raised my kids, went to church, and played by the rules.

Then I turned 40 and the adventure began. I decided to make a bold move on the part of my scared little East Texas heart; I decided to began to really follow it and listen to it. And I have discovered LIFE.

And I've sprouted fish fins from swimming in the deep of the psyche. I've learned about "breathing under water". I've seen the beast--shoot, I've discovered I AM the beast. :) And I am also Beauty. The Dragon and I are ONE. The enemy is me, myself, and I.

And yet, and yet...wow, the experiences. Some of them measured by today's standards as not so good, but still memorable. And the longer I live, the less I demand safety. The more I want to experience LIFE from INSIDE.

So, as I painted this morning, and smeared, and worked and reworked, not having a clue what I was doing or where it was leading me, I found the mermaid and her bouquet aproaching the sea dragon--Beauty about to marry the Beast.

The Marriage of Elan and the Mermaid

Here he comes…
Rising up from the deep waters
Coming toward her from the darkest night…

Friend
Or Foe?
Kind and gentle
Or cruel as death itself?
Morphing from moment to moment
Changing from innocent sea creature
To fire-breathing dragon
Always changing
Not quite certain who or what he (or it) is…

He carries something in his hand
Something extended to She who waits

Might it be his heart?

And She,
Half human, half water beast herself
Rises from the deep to meet him
Dressed as Bride
Holding herself out to greet him

She waits.
He approaches.
They wed.

Can I Just Skip Christmas and all It's Hub-bub This Year?

I've known for a while that I'm exhausted--mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. A few weeks ago, something happened, and I began to think about skipping Christmas this year. That's a huge move for me--one not taken lightly. Christmas has been an issue for me for many years, probably since my children were little. It's time for family, and two divorces in my early years kind of wrecked that simple idea and complicated Christmas, along with all the other holidays. But Christmas was the one that hurt the most. I think it must be the high expectations of the season.

Then my kids grew up and had families of their own. Jim and I married, and Christmas (even with it's hangups) managed to be ok. But over the last 5 years, it's gotten complicated again. Now divorce has touched my children's lives, and--well, damn it, it just hurts too darn much.

And I'm tired. I'm tired of pretending it's a wonderful season. I'm tired of working so damned hard to make sure everyone has a wonderful time--and never being really sure. I'm just tired.

And now, added to it this year, we're trying to get Mother scheduled for two knee replacements before January 1. Just thinking about it all wears me out. So, a neighbor said, "Skip it. Leave. Go somewhere." It sounds so simple, but all the voices go round and round in my head telling me I can't do that--but, you know what? I think I'm going to try.

It's been a hard 5 years--and I'm just tired. I've been reading Clarrisa Pinolka Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves again. It is food for the soul--the woman's soul. Tonight I read a little tale called "The Three Hairs"--a very short story. It's basically about the woman's animus losing focus and energy, and becoming exhausted. Then animus, you know, that "male" part of us women that's able to take charge and take care of it all, well darn it all, it just gives out. Estes writes that women are usually surprised when it does, but it always does. And the only answer to that is rest. Estes writes, "Her animus is worn out and in need of being rocked by La Que Sabe. The woman whos idea or energy has waned, whithered or ceased altogether needs to know the way to this old woman healer, and must carry the tired animus there for renewal."

La Que Sabe is the 2-million-year-old woman, the one who knows. "To be held in her arms before her fire is restorative, reparative. It is to this fire and to her arms that the old man drags himself [or is dragged]"...and her job is simply to hold him and to rock him until he's refreshed.

My animus is exhausted--trying to hold a crumbling family together, taking care of my mom (yes, I love her dearly, but it's a lot of work), and trying to hold everything together and make it all work.

So, I think I'm gonna take "him" to Arizona--to a little one-person cabin in the woods--just me and "him" for Christmas. I'm even considering driving--I'm just ready for a good space of time away from everything and everyone. No phones. No computer. No doctors appointments. No grocery shoping. Not even any "girls' days out". No Jeopardy. No moment's notice and everything has to change. Just me and my old worn-out animus going on a road trip and sitting in the mountains of Arizona for a whole week. Leaving BEFORE Christmas and not coming home until AFTER New Years. God, that sounds delicious. I think I really want to do this--that is if we can get all the timing to work out. I'm gonna try. I think I really must before I crater.

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

~ Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

VISION BOARD - THE WELL

It's been a wonderful quiet day. Spent time in my studio making a vision board for The Well. I love the idea of "visionating" something into birth.

It was a gift to me from the Muse for my birthday.