May “enough” of us have “enough” courage today to bring our raw brokenness into the sanctuary of our inner life and come into the grand find of the ever-present chiasm where poetry and prose cross, where our deeds and prayers are strong enough to support awareness of the divine geometry supporting Life, supporting our Humanness. So much life in the deeps, waiting patiently for our return, the awakening that transforms everything into Beauty to behold and mission is no longer optional or up to interpretation.
Musings
This Little Light of Mine
What does it take for me to let “this little light of mine” shine?! She let’s it shine, she let’s it shine, she let’s it shine. Do we get in our own way??? Maybe.
There is a Survivor’s Guilt few of us talk about and even fewer realize. When we “survive” a spiritual battle, unsure if we should have, the “rightness” of being in this world remains under serious questioning, perpetual probation. This is a form of survivors guilt, a form of self-imposed ostracism. We are not quite….through.
Maimonides (1138–1204) related the rules of ostracism, self imposed or otherwise, usually 30 days, a full cycle of the moon, a cycle of mourning. Strikingly, if one dies before the ostracism is lifted (by self, the courts, or three others on the request of the ostracized), the ostracized is denied a eulogy and a stone is placed on the casket representing the stoning of ostracism. How many of us would have the stone on our casket if we died today? How many of us are unsure of how to let the light shine or are still in the fire of Hashem?
May those in that fire today feel the living hope that lies in the flames, knowing all is well, knowing that good is everlasting and wickedness dies, in body and memory. Good always prevails. Life is eternal. This news can be found in a sunrise, a mountain, a tree, a bird song, a rose. It can be found everywhere and anywhere, especially in the flames consuming us.
Are You Surrounded By A Living Hedge?
On the labyrinth there is one way in and one way out.
As we recite the Pirket Avot I imagine myself looking up from the feet of the ancient sages, the feet of Jesus Himself, hearing Him ask me, “Are you surrounded by My living hedge?” There was a time when I would have received this as a passive question invoking a positive but sentimental answer, inflated by a lack of experience or naivete. Fortunately that naivete broke and opened me to the deeper meaning. Now, I hear this question actively asking me if I am awake in continuous prayer to timeless truth, am I awake in service to timeless truth, am I awake in the study of timeless truth that has been painstakingly written down and lived for me? My answer is yes but, of course, I can do better. May I strive to be more like the ant who carries six times its own weight back to the communal nest.
This question can inspire great pride, great shame, rebellious and sometimes dangerous resistance, or deep humility. It reveals where we are in our readiness for the truth of our life and for our return home from wherever our reveries have broken us open or continue to break us open. It probes the heart where the cracks live, where our innocence is lost and our suffering and mortality is found, where idealism and sentimentality give way to realism, where words without experience have no power, where compassion and the hope of eternality beam light into the heart. This is precisely where the birth canal to the soul opens and requires constant compassionate midwifing to birth our souls slowly into the world and plant. When one is truly seated in humility with one’s regrets, remorse, and atoning heart, the words of the sages are a living hedge around the soul, gentle revelatory lights on the path that keep us moving forward into Mystery, into life, into love, into justice.
Garden of Truth
This summer I was called to learn how to play the harp. My lessons began at an old charming farm house on a hill overlooking a valley, surrounded by wildflowers, perennials and annuals waving in the sun. Upon entry into my teacher’s home one is immediately enveloped by a warm greeting and a vision of a community of harps amidst aqua stones.
On day one my teacher gave me a choice of three beginner harps. Unlearned as I am in the ways of the harp, she taught me the differences between them and the journey each uniquely offers. She gave me time to sit with and play with each as they rested upon my right shoulder. The one that I had fallen for had not been played in a while and was only recently returned to her. While she freshly tuned it the day before in preparation for our meeting, it needed more during our lesson and even more when I took it home. “This is a magnificent harp. It just needs time to settle in,” she explained, “we must be patient and keep tuning until it is ready to hold its’ unique sound.” Each string tends to drift into the sound to the left or the right, borrowing from the sound of its’ neighbors and thus out of place, even repetitious at times. She introduced me to the tuner as my new friend, with its’ own container on the harp so it will never be lost.
The human heart is like the harp. It is extraordinary and needs constant tuning, oftentimes losing its’ place in this dynamic and complex world we live, hidden behind the sounds of others, the harmonics all wrong. And what is the tuner? The sages point to the daily study of wisdom texts, practice of prayer and meditation, and acts of kindness and forgiveness; these slowly release our core essence which is so easily hidden behind the sounds of our neighbor or the many faces of anguish, leaving us with a feeling that something essential is missing, lost, unbearable, forbidden. Naturally, we hide or put the harp away, unable to play amidst adversity. Intentionally, however, we can tune and practice until the harmonics of our heart are restored. This is the beginning of realizing the gift of choice to return (or not) to the Garden of Truth.
See Far Woman Sarah, the Woman Who Smells of Time
Awakening
By Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Shekinah gazed upon the sleeping form of HeShe.
“I shall divide this being
So HeShe can find loving companionship
Like the other creatures in the garden.”
HeShe lay asleep in the grass
Curled up like a snake in the warm sun
Dreaming of angels.
Shekinah thought,
“Which part of the body
Shall I take to form the woman?
Perhaps from the mouth
So she can tell stories like Serach,
The woman who smells of time.
Perhaps the eyes
So she sees the inside truth of things
Like Soft Eyes Woman Leah.
Perhaps from the neck
So she walks with pride
Like the daughters of Zelophehad
Who are Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
Perhaps the ears
So she hears my laughter
Like See Far Woman Sarah.
Perhaps the heart
So she flows with tender mercies
Like Soft Heart Woman Rachel.
Perhaps the arms
So she heals and restores with touch
Like the Hebrew midwife women.
Perhaps the legs
So she goes out seeking wisdom
Like Truth Seeking Woman Dinah.
Perhaps from the flower of her passion
So she enjoys the fruits of her body
Like Shulamit.”
Then Shekinah blessed every part of the woman’s body saying,
“Be pure of heart
And always know you are created in My image.”
Then she awoke, first woman.
Righting Something Wrong in 13 Minutes, 24 Seconds
March 20, 2020
What we do to one of us, we do to all of us. (Maybe?)
Kate Kelly, Kairos Level III participant, sent the film by Kate Novak to me this morning expressing, in deep recognition, “This … is the work”. My reply is a bow to her, saying with her “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
In the film Hysterical Girl Kate Novak
choreographed how the Holy Yes and Holy No of the oppressed, in this case women, are so oft perverted and locked up by desire, privilege, and power across time and space. It’s in the marrow of our collective bones, the breath and energy stores in the mitochondria of our cells, the narrow corridors of our nightmares.
This 13 minute, 24 second film confronts the collective shadow of our times, past and present, and redeems a piece of our collective Heart, our World, our Collective Breath. Medicine is released in the hearts of those who can hear in the present, past, and future.
What we do to or for one of us, we do to or for all of us. Maybe?
Kate tells her story, your story, our story….of being embalmed by the collective shadow to be placed on the wall or mantle as a trophy, a possession, a lifeless object (ie. statue) or perhaps fodder for a joke. (The image of the ancient Sumerian Goddess of Heaven, Inanna, hanging lifeless on the rack in the underworld comes to mind as does the Irish Selkie whose skin was stolen by the hunter claiming her as “his” to love or kill, whatever suits his fancy). This knowing lies in the depths of our hearts where “deep calls to deep” (Psalm 42.7), in the original fractal, the original Face. In this story the “enemy” lives within until our spiritual sickness is revealed.
I take in this film as the heartache that is the ultimate shofar blow, the ultimate offering of our tears at the altar, opening the gates to the divine will to enter and heal. “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40).
Free will is the most misunderstood, underestimated, perverted, disavowed gift that renders our Holy Yes, No, and Maybe inaccessible, seemingly impotent against cutting oneself off from the lies we tell ourselves and each other that yolk us to slavery, to death itself.
What we do to or for one of us, we do to or for all of us. Said affirmatively, is this bearable? If not, maybe someday. Maybe.
I Am Grateful for the Souls Who Walked Through the Fire to Find Their Grace
A poem by Robin Gorn
To those who stayed on charred landscape with
Ash on their face
Sifting through bones to make soup
Pointing the way though mute
I am grateful for the heart’s expansion
For dry grass that stayed standing
For the tree in the fence
So grateful for the passion
And the worlds it creates
Feed me your story
Of your time in the tunnel
Show me
The path that you dug to get out
Show me the shape of your shovel
Was it diamond or spade or tooth and nail?
Show me the rage that drove you
and the dreams of your youth
show me the great returning
of your child’s clear truth
The heart is not complicated
Though the path is unclear
Show me the dress you were wearing
Show me the weave of your cloth
Show me the places
Of your tearing
That flounce when you walk
Show me the time you spent staring
At things beyond your grasp
internally preparing
simply to ask
I stepped off the carousel
So used to the spin
The pie cut too thin
Do you remember the park
Of our sharing and the
Dreams left within?
The songs were unspoken
The words were unsung
The voice felt broken
The thread undone
But the silent
Were weaving
Their prayers to the sky
The cycle is returning
Bearing fruit in our
Pie
We’ve always
Been hungry
We’ve always been full
We’ve always been empty
While spinning the wool
You picked up my leaf and
Made it into a tree
Just by bearing witness
To the witness
In me
By Robin Gorn
Choice
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
Listen not to what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿聽;
Look not at what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿視;
Speak not what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿言;
Make no movement which is contrary to propriety 非禮勿動
Analects of Confucius from 2nd to 4th century B.C
From what plain of consciousness do we honestly self-assess our own propriety, our own morality? Can we do this amidst the systems we are so deeply and invisibly entrenched? These are the large questions stirring in our collective consciousness on all levels as we grapple with ancient fears of the foreigner embedded in racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia in a polarized political climate and a world pandemic.
To begin, we might consider how conscious we are of the roots of capitalism and their promise to feed us, empower us over others (enemies included!), and free us from the natural laws of life and death. When we are hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, cold, and/or without shelter, these promises easily become our masters and terror of the foreigner in all its forms abounds.
These roots (promises), when invisibly held in the realm of innocence, easily become our jailers, keeping us yoked to Plato’s cave, afraid to leave, afraid of our own shadow and insatiably thirsty, hungry, wanting for more. Paradoxically, we can be profoundly comfortable in this agonizingly uncomfortable situation because we are simultaneously held in the womb of the Maya Illusion. Wandering, aimless, powerless, empty, we are obsessively caught in our own rituals of purification, attainment, and worship. We believe we are in control when we are not. Our will for good is activated but suffering and sacrifice cannot be reconciled in this naive, immature position. On this plain, “propriety”, what is right and wrong, is solely determined by the dictates of pain and pleasure, life and death. Intentions of seeing, hearing, speaking, and moving with “propriety” lead us further in the wildernesses until adversity wakes the seeker, the student, the follower or kills us. On this plain we are essentially orphans, regardless of our chronological age. Lost sheep in need of a shepherd, a shepherdess, a teacher, a friend. It is our choice to seek or deny him or her or them. It is always our choice. May the student arrive.
Finding Your Still Point with a Half-Ton Neurofeedback Device
As an animal lover, I was immediately drawn to the three splendid, strong, graceful beasts. The experience of extended silent time to simply touch and stroke the horses began the establishment of trust and acceptance that was necessary for the work (play, to them) at hand. As a musician, I am well-acquainted with performance anxiety, and the finesse of looking and sounding as cool as a cucumber while my kneecaps are shaking and my heart is pounding. “You look so relaxed and comfortable!” I am often told, while thinking to myself, “Guess I fooled them again.” There is no fooling the survival instincts of the constantly vigilant prey animal that needs to identify and follow a trusted leader. These highly-trained retired thoroughbreds are highly attuned to energy, moods and cues. The learning in this workshop provides some basic communication tools to relate to and lead the horse appropriately. In order to succeed in gaining their trust to follow, one must find and feel a calm centering. The experience of finding this point is both exhilarating and humbling, but most of all grounding. This is a unique feeling that I hope I am able to somatically recall and know better over time.
– Karen Klevanosky
Nature Summons Us Toward Our Becoming
Years ago I participated in ACTT Naturally’s Hearts and Harmony program at Long Shadows Farm in Cambridge, NY which gently guided me home, back to the ground of my being, into deep experiencing of instincts I had somehow lost…. and forgotten. Through engaging Natural Horsemanship principles, these amazing Thoroughbred horses have been retrained by Valerie Buck from being the sport of kings to literally being dancing partners, humanizing what the modern world routinely dehumanizes as a matter of natural course. It was in that dance, through the lens of the horse’s instincts, that the mind-body-spirit insight into the primal “Yes” of God woke in me and I have been dialoguing with and teaching from this point ever since. Inside the dance something deeply fundamental in the mystery of our being is confirmed and resurrected.
In the summer of 2019 I began partnering with Valerie, blending the spiritual practice of Natural Horsemanship and Kairos (holy time) contemplative practices to guide participants into accessing deep interior resources. Participants are invited to leave the city for a restorative retreat that will enlarge their vision, imagination, and leadership in any context, in any role we play in this great theatre of life.
Learning to engage the spirit of a horse opens our hearts to listen, lead, and reconnect to our core instincts, our bodies, our voice, our spirit, our truth — all that lies on the axis of personal authority — with a form of intention and grace that only nature can summon. These beautiful creatures help us remember our natural, best selves and hear our deepest calls into wholeness which is too easily suffocated by real survival needs and worldy demands. Meeting them at Long Shadows farm in Cambridge is a real return and with each meeting, I bring something back with me to this world.