Big Graces

Sometimes we must thank the Lord/ess for big but unacknowledged graces. This text was shared from imnotrightinthehead.com on social media -- I just added some line breaks.



So glad I don't have
a thigh gap

Almost dropped my phone
in the toilet

But my legs were like
nah, girl, we got you.

Rhopaphoria

The painted lady butterfly

Last night there was a steady rain, almost sounded like sleet on the roof, lasting many hours. I always revel in this sound – it’s that sense of feeling cozy and sheltered in a warm house while it storms outside. It’s akin to chrysalism, i.e., “the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm.” (Defined in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).This morning was brightly lit and somewhat breezy. At some point I noticed what I first thought were leaves caught in a current of wind, flecks of bronze and gold flying by my window. I paid them no mind initially, then it came to me, the sleepyhead: this is March. This is not the season of autumn leaves. Perhaps they were sparrows—LBJs (little brown jobs), as a birder friend calls them?

Peering again, I see it’s a stream of butterflies – the ones known as painted ladies. Riding on the gusts like confetti, like petals tossed away from some cosmic bloom, effervescent, glittering and bejeweling the wind. A butterfly migration!

My heart lights up in this sweetest of spring storms.

What name might we give to the caught-in-a-breeze-of-butterflies sensation? I propose a combination of Rhopalocera, the taxonomic division within Lepidoptera designating butterflies, and euphoria: 

Rhopaphoria.

Empathy, The Respiration of Love with Suffering

I attended the latter part of a workshop last Saturday led by Jacob Munhoz, psychotherapist and centering prayer practitioner. The title was “Contemplative Spirituality as a Path Toward Healing and Wholeness.” Weeks prior to the workshop, I had heard that he might discuss how a meditative practice could facilitate healing from trauma. I have long wondered about this after seeing folks well-versed in trauma therapies taking very cautious approaches to meditation – sometimes even warning against it, particularly in cases of complex trauma, and opting for somatic therapies (which, I agree, can benefit us all. Here is a sample somatic approach to releasing trauma). I have also met survivors who have had negative—or at least disconcerting—experiences with meditative practice. One woman confessed to me that she could not do centering prayer because the prospect of even ten minutes of relative stillness was terrifying. She feared what would be revealed within the stillness. Another friend initially loved meditation, but came to the conclusion that she was slipping into some kind of dissociative state – the protective maneuver she learned while being subjected to severe abuse as a child. While this state felt “good” to her, she felt it might just take her backwards – keep her stuck in a mode of bypass rather than moving forward into genuine healing.

Because centering prayer is a very gentle practice, it is unlikely to cause an overwhelming amount of unconscious material to burst into awareness (as some more intensive practices can). But part of the centering prayer’s “divine therapy,” to use Fr. Thomas Keating’s terminology, is the “unloading of the unconscious”—that is, the arising of previously unconscious emotional material into consciousness, often experienced as an unusual mix of feelings or images that may bear no relationship to the practitioner’s current mood or circumstances. This unloading is part of what enables healing: we become “unblocked” as the obstacles to grace and love—toxins embedded in our psychic tissues—come to the surface and are released.

And yet, a heavy bout of unloading can be rough. I had one of my most vivid, intense nightmares several days into an otherwise gloriously peaceful 10-day silent retreat—and in my adult life, I generally don’t have nightmares. I confided to a co-retreatant that the dream I’d had was so horrible, with images of violence that would make me close my eyes or “turn the channel” (on TV) if I were to see them in my waking life. He pointed out that the much of the news (and even entertainment) we’re exposed to every day is – of course – just that horrible. But being on retreat and going into such deep inward relaxation allowed an inner “de-freezing” to occur, fostering a releasing of material that I generally become numb to so that I can go about my day-to-day life without becoming overwhelmed.

That makes some sense.

But it also gives me pause. Is numbness my default? Have I – have we – become too desensitized to the pain of the human condition? Do I over-consume—media, movies, books, information—in a way that has calloused over my spirit? How does one keep the heart of flesh from becoming a heart of stone?

There are those who live with the conundrum on the other end of this spectrum: They are highly sensitive to the pain of the human condition and may be prone to becoming overwhelmed by the injustices in the world. They have a deep capacity for compassion but may become immobilized if they are blown away when encountering suffering.

And maybe the majority of folks reside somewhere between these poles – or perhaps bounce back and forth between them. (My personal suspicion is that numbness, be it comfortable or uncomfortable, is where a good portion of us in this country live). Whatever the case may be: How might one learn to live fully and engage compassionately in a world full of suffering without becoming overwhelmed by it?

Like a tongue testing the soreness beneath a tooth, it’s one of those perennial questions I keep returning to.

The final experiential exercise in Jacob Munhoz’s workshop spoke to this question. He called it “Learning to Live in the Axial Moment.”

(I want to preface this by saying that he told people it was okay if they didn’t want to engage in this exercise—to give ourselves permission to sit it out if it felt like too much.)

First he showed a slide, a photograph of a small brown-skinned girl standing alone on a beach. Her wet hair curled tightly around her face. She was crying hard, her mouth agape in an expression of terror and sorrow. We were allowed some time to just take this image in and sit with the feelings that emerged.

I was surprised to feel the tears come to my eyes. The moment somehow cut through the unconscious emotional buffer I tend to put up against these realities. This girl was likely a refugee, I thought, now orphaned and alone in a strange country.

Jacob then gave this direction: “Imagine that you step into their circle of suffering with one foot while your other foot is grounded in love which transcends suffering, grounded in the openhearted state, grounded in Presence.”

(For me, this “openhearted state” is where I go to in contemplative prayer: a spacious place of naked sincerity, the undefended place, wordlessly grateful and humbly present before the Mystery that I have come to call God. I float there, gently caught up in what feels like a warm, inexplicable current of love.)

Next, we practice the “axial moment:”

1 – “Leaning in to the suffering, touch it with love and connect with the person who is suffering by breathing in their suffering.” (Included on a worksheet, there were questions accompanying each part of the moment, e.g.: “What sensations do I feel within my body? What impulses am I feeling arising within me? How am I experiencing energy moving within my body? What images are arising? What emotions are arising?” Etc.)

2 – “Leaning out into the more spacious place that transcends suffering, breathe out the person’s suffering into love.”

3 – “Still leaning back, breathe love in.”

4 – “Lean forward again into the person’s suffering and breathe love out into their suffering.”

5 – “Repeat.”

This exercise reminded me a lot of the Buddhist practice of Tonglen – at least what I have learned of it from reading Pema Chodron. What I appreciate in Jacob’s rendering of it is the initial grounding of “one foot” in openhearted loving presence. From that stance, you breathe in the other’s suffering. Tilting back into openhearted presence, you exhale the suffering into the larger current of love. Then you breathe in love before again leaning into the place of suffering and exhaling the love there.

I see this as an exercise – and perhaps even a form of prayer – that offers a model and an experiential “how to” on engaging empathetically without becoming overwhelmed by the weight of suffering. The implication is that empathy requires “feeling with” – actually taking on (breathing in) of some of the burden—quite the opposite of numbness. But continuing to return to the openhearted space of loving Presence gives us a sustenance that restores us, prevents overwhelm or burnout—and provides medicine that we can take back to the place of suffering.

Praying / practicing this way is, I think, a deep form of petitional prayer. Not because it’s going to magically end the world’s suffering or solve all problems, but because it exercises and strengthens one’s capacity to step into suffering from a space of presence, humility (groundedness), and love.

It is the capacity we need now in our dying, crying world.

(By the way, I chatted with Jacob for a few brief minutes after the workshop. I told him about the folks I know who have qualms about contemplative practices for survivors of severe trauma and asked for his opinion on this issue. He agreed that caution is warranted. For survivors who are new to meditation, he would suggest starting with very brief sits, perhaps five minutes, and gradually lengthening them. They would also benefit from working with a skilled therapist who also has an ongoing contemplative practice.)

A Fat Tuesday Haiku

       









Heads up, my Mardi
Gras munchers. Midnight means no
more microwave s'mores.

The Value of Hiddenness in Intention-Setting

When setting an intention or goal, one of the conventional tidbits of wisdom seems to be: Find something or someone to which you can hold yourself accountable. Thus, at the new year when folks are making resolutions, they make public announcements about what they plan to do. If it's weight loss--to use a common example--maybe you join a group that requires you to check in at set intervals to report on progress or set backs--and receive feedback and encouragement from others. Group support, we are told, provides strength that helps to carry us through various resistances.

Maybe, for some intentions, this equation works. But for me it has often backfired. I might start out with determination, make lists of small reachable changes that lead up to the goal, find a circle of people on a similar path of intention to check in with, share successes and frustrations, reach some preliminary targets... only to be felled by some surprisingly strong wave of resistance. Or a series of small defiant choices that eventually shifts my trajectory so that I end up, at best, back where I began. My plan turns into a treadmill and feeds into a cynicism about setting other intentions. And thus the resistance is reinforced: "Why bother? I won't really get anywhere with this..."

Part of this may be that I have a primarily introverted temperament. It's just not my inclination to check in with others about where I am on a self-initiated project. (I'll admit that certain kinds of deadlines have value. But I wrestle with them mightily, and that's a lot of energy that would have been better applied to the project itself.)

Some intentions are best kept hidden, protected and shielded within the cave of the heart -- especially at the outset. Think of what happens when you light a new candle. The fresh wick cannot instantly hold a strong, sustained flame. The new fire is so small and tender. It needs protection from even the briefest of breezes. It must be hidden from too much air and held close until it can burn on its own.

Some intentions, especially those involving repeated acts of creativity, need to remain secret in their initial stages. Don't tell people about the song, the painting, the story that's still forming. Explaining and sharing too early is like exposing the tiny new flame to a breeze. Or, to use another metaphor--like exposing a fresh sprout to too much rain. The energy that goes into sharing what "is to be" can dissipate what is just starting to take hold.

This has a certain resonance with my primary contemplative practice, encapsulated in Matthew 6:6--"When you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who sees what is in secret will cause your life to blossom."

I will go into my room, into the cave of my heart, where I can open in deep sincerity and radical vulnerability to the mystery I know as God. My heart trusts that God will cause the prayer, the intention, the yearning, to blossom into a fruit that I cannot now taste or see.

At some point, the flame remains strong in the breeze, and the sprout blooms into nourishment that is to be shared with others. But it needs to begin in a sheltered place, in a hidden room where it is tenderly held between you and the divine, or between you and whatever name your muse prefers.

Winter's Dove

I saw the dove through my window again today – a very healthy silver-white dove perched in the tree right outside the room where I work and write. Later it rained, and he or she was joined by a mate. I’m a little surprised to see them. The tree has just been trimmed, had branches sawed down to avoid telephone wires, and it was looking rather stark--as a tree in winter tends to look, even in these warmer climes. Perhaps the doves have been stopping there all the time, and now that the tree is barer I’m able to see them.

 

It’s as if nature is whispering to me: prune the branches, clear the clutter, release the unnecessary. Then the creative fervor within you will alight on the lean branch of this restive season, present and plump in the rain.

Who Is a Christian?

Thank you, Soren, for some needed cold water in the face:

"When we see someone holding an axe wrong and chopping in such a way that he hits everything but the block of firewood, we do not say, 'What a wrong way for the woodcutter to go about it,' but we say, 'That man is not a woodcutter.'"

     Now for the application. When we see thousands and thousands and millions of Christians whose lives do not resemble in the remotest way what--and this is decisive--the New Testament calls a Christian, is it not tampering with the meaning to talk as one does in no other situation and say: 'What a mediocre way, what a thoroughly inexpressive way these Christians have.' In any other situation would one not say, 'These people are not Christians.' Now be earnest about it and say: We are not Christians. Let this become ordinary language usage and you will have a world transformation."

     ~Soren Kierkegaard, in Provocations

Thunder Thighs

   Girl
   stop
   dissing
   your 
   thunder
   thighs.

   Where
   there's
   thunder

   there's
   lightning.

The Purr

The purr of the cat is the universal hum, the thrum of all stars, mysterious reverberations from a wild and fathomless peace. Do not take this silken grace for granted. Daily cruelty and indifference abounds. Old wounds burned into your bones have smothered your delight. The purr beckons you to release your clench and deeply soak in warm quivering creatureliness. Linger there. Let it softly cradle the tender trembling mammal of your heart.

If manna has a rhythm, it is the purr.

Hues of Silence

Sometimes, in closed-eye silent prayer, colors bloom into view. They might swirl into my field of vision as from a subterranean spring -- or drift in from the edges like a radiant fog, an interstellar cloud gathering form.

This seems to happen after some time, after settling more deeply into the silence. The feeling is of blessing, of spaciousness, of subtle but rich nourishment. A tender gaze from the divine.

The colors are usually lavender-violet-purple tones, and this is why I have chosen these visual themes for Bloggio Divina, although what you see here doesn't really capture the richness of the hues.

In her most famous novel, Alice Walker wrote, "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back."

I confess I am a fool living in the world, a fool for Love. And it is my intention to notice what I see in these fields.