Miracles

What makes a miracle? Is it an impossible event- something that goes against common understanding? Or, can a miracle be claimed by gratitude- like the reappearance of a lost child, or the gift of beauty to a forlorn soul?
December is a month of miracles. Stories of miracles reside in the tale of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, and Hanukah, the eight-day flame that existed from only one day’s worth of oil. In both these stories, the miracle is not in grand fanfare and impressive stunts. It is in the hard labor of Mary giving birth to a child, found in a manger. It is in the meaning of one lone flame, surviving from oil, the blood of the earth. Instead of stretching to find miracles “out there,” these stories remind us that what is truly important, indeed miraculous, is what we have right here.
I appreciate that this month-of-miracles rests immediately before the New Year, and my new year’s resolutions. Instead of setting goals that serve to satisfy my expectations, my resolution is to be open to surprise. To the way life defies my expectations, and that from the ordinary unfolds the extraordinary.
The Sufi poet and mystic Rumi writes “Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.” How can we be the makers of miracles by our manner of receiving life? By living with a heart full of wonder and awe for this world in which we live?

Joanna Macy and Kristin Tippet

I love "Speaking of Faith", now "onBeing"
Here is a little piece from Joanna Macy and Kristin Tippet's conversation on Sept. 16th, 2010:

Speaking about Macy’s environmental activism (particularly around radioactive contamination and nuclear arms):

"Ms. Tippett: Something that's very present for me as I'm reading about you and the passion you've had for this for a long time is you — you also were always very aware of a sense of grief as you realized …
Ms. Macy: Oh, yeah. Grief got me into it.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah. And I think that right now, say right now in this moment as we're speaking in 2010, the spectacle that's very present for people, maybe more in the forefront — certainly more in the forefront of peoples' minds than nuclear power or nuclear weapons were in the '70s — is the Gulf oil spill, right?
Ms. Macy: Oh, yes.
Ms. Tippett: Right. And there is this grief about that. And you really work with people to hold on to that, to take their grief seriously, right?
Ms. Macy: Or not to hold on to it so much as to not be afraid of it because that grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, clamp down, you shut down. And the kind of apathy and closed-down denial, our difficulty in looking at what we're doing to our world stems not from callous indifference or ignorance so much as it stems from fear of pain. That was a big learning for me as I was organizing around nuclear power and around at the time of Three Mile Island catastrophe and around Chernobyl.
Then as I saw it, it relates to everything. It relates to what's in our food and it relates to the clear-cuts of our forests. It relates to the contamination of our rivers and oceans. So that became actually perhaps the most pivotal point in, I don't know, the landscape of my life, that dance with despair, to see how we are called to not run from the discomfort and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear and that, if we can be fearless, to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn't stay static. It only doesn't change if we refuse to look at it. But when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life."

On The Other Side

An old Buddhist Saw:
Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

Last Thursday, December 2nd, 2010, I passed the Ministerial Fellowship Committee- the evaluative board that reviews each candidate for ministry, and who's approval opens the doors for ordination, and, well, employment. Thank GOD that's over!!! It was quite the journey to get to this moment... a lot of anxiety, reading, discussing, huge waves of fear, and even some excitement mixed in the bunch. I don't think I needed to go through the depths of especially the fear, but I guess that's where I am in my life, so be it.
In fact, I knew. I knew that the couple weeks before the interview would be harder than the interview itself. It is hard to prepare for such a significant "rite of passage"/ test alone. Of course, I was part of a study group of other candidate ministers, and we "met" weekly over the phone over the last several weeks, but by alone I really mean lonely. In a new town, new job, living alone for the first time in my life. It has been a lonely last six months for me and sometimes I am not that good at giving my own self the "hospitality of spirit" that I seek to offer in my ministry. But I am getting better. I hope.
I love that Buddhist saying (a colleague of mine sent it to me). When all is said and done, I still have the same list of things to do, the same things that annoy me or elevate my anxiety. I will still have my fear. Self-doubt. Workaholism. These are all part of my "minister." But I also have what lies on the other side of these harsher qualities: I also have my power. Self-love. Passion for ministry. Perhaps one thing I learned from all of this is how to be a better friend to myself. By having more self-compassion, fear means less to me. It's still there, but I can invite it in, serve it tea and cookies, and, satisfied, it moves along its merry way.
Before the interview, I drove out to Lake Michigan. It was a really windy day- the turquoise and darker blue waters patterned one after the other on the wild shore. I had a cold, but I walked that beach anyway. I needed that power. I needed the wildness and the playfulness of the great waters. At the end of my walk, I picked up a stone and gave it my hope for the whole week: that I learn something. Perhaps I have- it may be one of those "escapes words" kinda learning.

Claiming God

Rainer Maria Rilke’s words come to me these days as I find more truth behind this broken relationship that as long made it’s stay on my heart this year.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is the live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

I feel like I am finally starting to live my way into an answer. An answer for why I could not stay with Fady. I have spent the last six months still bearing the painful “why,” unable to really understand. The break-up was on his terms and his terms only. But it is finally becoming my terms and that feels so good and the heaviness lightens significantly.
“God,” he, an atheist, said. “It is about God.” As a Unitarian Universalist and as someone who believes in the reason-defying qualities of love, I believed with all of my heart that we would work through this- Our love was stronger than this label- related divide.
And now, I realize, he was right. Ok, so God did divide us. But it’s not a God held by clouds holding a wand and interacting from afar. It’s not even a God such as that I believe in- a higher power that moves in and among all sentient beings, opening us up, calling us closer to life. It’s the God that is community. God as our pull out of our isolated existence towards a greater cause of societal transformation. God is not a cerebral choice to “maybe” participate in community… mmm… tomorrow? It is a deep human need for community. For in order to know ourselves, we must seek the Other. It is a deep feeling that we need each other in order to grow. This is the center of the God I believe in.
It doesn’t concern me whether one finds their power in something beyond or within humanity. Theist or humanist can worship together when there is mutual desire to grow and deepen as spiritual and response-able beings in this hurting world. It concerns me that one opens oneself to change, to transformation, through relationship and commitment.

By opening ourselves to change, we create change. There is no other way. At last, this loss is on my terms. And with it, I find a renewed sense of self, calling, and devotion to the transformational power of God/community.

My Sacred Sad

My heart is full. Full of sorrow and anger and longing and even peace. I long to connect with my longing. And lately it is sorrow that has brought me closer to the earth, closer to my heart. It is sorrow that most resonates with me and I kneel down with my hands on my face, tears washing away these barriers I have made. Barriers to feeling. To life. To love. My sorrow is not a barrier to love. It is a way to love. Many times I judge my seamlessly endless grief over a lost relationship. “Still?” I ask. “Your still not over him?”
Yet, what does this judgmental question do that is good? Nothing! It only makes me more foreign to myself. Something not right, unacceptable, wrong. Broken hearts take their own sweet time to heal. As a friend recently told me, “You never stop loving someone.”
No matter how badly they might have hurt you, and no matter how resentful in the day, when the night comes, it is that unmet love that lingers.
I thank God for my sadness. Tears pull me closer to the earth, the home of my soul, the Ground of all Being. And I find peace.

Deep Peace

Last night I felt a tiny change. Something like thorough joy nestled inside my body. Not the temporary level of fleeting emotions- the surge of happiness or the crush of inadequacy. But this feeling was more thorough, like grainy mud instead of feathers. What happened? Well, breath. There is a wonderful little yoga studio really close to my house run by one woman. It is very community-oriented, much like I experienced at the aikido dojo in Oakland. If you attend regularly, you begin to get to know other regularly attending folks and conversation in the front room lingers up to a half hour or longer after class ends. Last night I was able to breathe deeply with three other women, for a couple hours! It filled me with life, a reminder of who I am, in relationship with all beings. This morning it was like I woke up with someone else by my side. Of course, it was just my cat, who is always there. But there was an extra company, one that I brought, in my room. In my bed. In my daily tasks and pages upon pages of reading. It is good to have a friend... I am cherishing these days of returning to who I am/ to God.

Ntosake Shange's words from "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" come to mind:
"I found God in myself and i loved her, i loved her fiercely."

Recognition

“It’s Cassie!” This joyful noise sounded across the parking lot to my bewildered ears. A vendor at the small farmers market I was entering had remembered me from our conversation the previous week.
Having lived most of my life in places where I either had a given community (college and grad school) or had simply grown up there, I am beginning to realize the significance of being recognized. Hearing our name is a way of knowing we are alive, that we are part of a larger whole, that we belong.
The significance of naming can be seen in the Hebrew Bible, where there is at least one whole chapter to naming the descendants of Noah, and names are intentionally written throughout the Bible.
Last week there were four known suicides by young men who identified as gay. One way to think about various forms of oppression is an unwillingness by society to fully recognize different groups of people as part of the human community. I remember a lesbian member of a congregation I was part of describing her appreciation for the community. That she felt known by the community, giving her a sense of freedom to be recognized for who she was- not just her lesbian identity, but for her whole self, of which that was apart. Recognition is essential if we are to feel at home in our bodies and in a larger community. It is a deep and holy human need.
The woman who called my name may never know how much hearing “Cassie” meant to me. Small gestures of recognition go a long way. By looking another in the eye, asking their name or sharing our own, we are telling another that they matter- that who they are is worthy of attention, deserving of care.