Wednesday, April 29, 2020

CRYING, NOT SORRY

I am crying, and I am not sorry.

I am admittedly rationing the amount of news coverage I am currently ingesting. I am accessing, to the best of my ability, the least biased reporting as is possible. I want to remain aware of what is happening, without allowing myself to become saturated or politicized.

As I am consciously participating in the news coverage my heart and my body are responding with incredible waves of both excruciating pain and exhilarating celebration. I am seeing before me and feeling within me what seem to be the broadest ranges of human experience. I am watching, in real time, as precious souls are leaving the planet in unprecedented numbers. I am witnessing as health care professionals deliver not only uncharted medical care but end of life companioning. The best and the most painful aspects of humanity are playing out before me. It is stunning at a level that truly defies description.

A dynamic has become clearer to me throughout all of this that I find to be particularly curious and downright confounding. As I listen to interviews with family members and also medical workers directly impacted by this virus and its effects, it is quite common for those being interviewed to be moved to tears. I not only fully understand that, I most often join them. It is equally as common for those shedding tears to apologize for the fact that that they are crying.

What?

Why?

Why do we as people with hearts and emotions apologize for crying when a natural and beautiful response is initiated by stimuli that warrants such a response?

Maybe it is just me, but I feel as if the apology is far more warranted when tears are dammed and suppressed at times when crying is the most appropriate response there could possibly be.

I do not want to be a human being that feels the need to apologize when my heart and my compassionate nature move me to tears. I tried to deaden my sensitivity for decades. I tried to maintain the familial stoicism that I grew up with long after I knew deeply that it was not my natural way of being and relating. It is not my goal to watch people dying without a hint of painful response. It is not my aspiration to witness monumental heroism without becoming misty and moved. It is not intrinsic for me to spiritually bypass the current human devastation with platitudes that lift me up and out of true connection and deep belonging.

This dynamic was supremely emphasized for me one recent evening when I was listening to a nurse describe being with a woman dying of Covid-19. She was Facetiming with family members so they could witness their loved one die. The toll the experience was having on this nurse was devastating and palpable. She began to cry as she told of the experience. She immediately apologized as she tried in vain to suppress the tears. As she did so I could feel my own tears welling up and spilling over. For a moment I found myself resisting the need to remove my glasses so that my husband would not know that I was crying.

What?

Why?

I weep with what I am seeing happening in our world today. I weep with those suffering. I weep with the illness, death, fear, sudden poverty and I weep equally with the transcendent acts of courage, bravery, and heroism. I weep openly and shamelessly. I do not apologize for my sensitivity and empathy. I do not apologize for my connection and caring. I am not sorry that I have reacquired my feeling nature after decades of addiction and suppression.

I am sorry for those who cannot allow the tears to flow at such a troublesome time. I am sorry for the disconnection that places statistics in place of human lives. I am pained for those who use this pandemic to push their ideology and agenda.

At a level you are among the dead.

I cry for you, and I am not sorry. It is proof that I am alive and that I am connected and that I care.

Holy water tears. I feel them and I let them flow.

No apology needed.

Thursday, April 23, 2020

HUMAN BEING

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Are we?

My question refers to the latter, not the former.

It has oft been quoted. So often I am not sure it holds much meaning.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

It took me decades to realize the last thing I wanted was to have a human experience.

I was clearly a not-so-human being trying every way I could to have a spiritual experience. Trying to get rid of this bothersome humanity in order to hover over this body and earth as a purely transcendent being of only Light. I longed for the perceived perfection that books and teachers pointed to. I lived a life divided against myself. I thought that if I was doing it right I would experience no darkness, emotional pain, disconnection, or disloyalty to the spiritual being I was here to be.

I wanted to be a spiritual being only having a spiritual experience.

Only love and light syndrome.

Now I realize that I am indeed a spiritual being here to have a truly human experience. A fully human experience. An embodied human experience. A sometimes painful, often messy, usually bumpy human experience.

I am not a spiritual being here to rid myself of a human experience. I am here for the adventure of spirit in fully human form. I am here to be the love and compassion of spirit relating kindly to the imperfection of my humanness. I am here to treat myself and others with equanimity and mercy as we all traverse this rocky realm of time and space reality. I am here to open to the full spectrum of what it means to be human. With a body that sometimes works and increasingly sags. With a mind that tends to overthink and habitually judges and tells troublesome stories that niggle and nag. A humanness that because of its tendency to want to be only spiritual will project its unintegrated humanness onto others and the world and deem it all to be too damn human.

I type these words while looking through increasingly strong progressive lenses with a hip that is throbbing and a vague sense that if anyone even reads this, they will find me somehow not spiritual enough. Too human. Too earthy. Too egocentric. Too wordy.

Did I mention too human?

God, I hope so.

The truth for me is that I am a spiritual being having a spiritual experience. And I am a human being having a human experience. Both. I want to have both. I want to dance as spirit and human. Waltz with divided yet somehow whole. Be fully embodied with all its messiness and misery. Joyfulness and juiciness.

I strongly suspect I will always be spirit. I equally suspect I will not always be human.

I for one do not want to waste this temporary embodiment wishing I were not so. I want to be here, now, as is. Messy, sagging, painful, joyful, human in every way.

I am a human being having a human experience.

And I am glad that it is so

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

ALL IN THIS TOGETHER

I have been repeatedly hearing that we are all in this together.

Why does that often not feel like good news?

I am making the choice to follow the CDC guidelines during this prolonged pandemic. I go to my office once a week to sit alone in front of a camera and live stream a Sunday service to countless people I can’t see, and many I do not know. I choose to wear a mask coming and going from my office. I am washing my hands and sanitizing my surfaces. I am primarily engaging these practices so that I remain available to be of service, and so that I do not risk infecting anyone else.

I do not seek approval or applause because these are my current practices. I do these things and share about it to demonstrate that this is my relationship to we are all in this together.

While driving home last Easter Sunday from my weekly trek to deliver spiritual food I was stunned to see a great number of people out and about. It was indeed a beautiful and sunny holiday. There were individuals, couples, and larger groups congregating on sidewalks and in the parks I passed. There were many children varying in age. I know that I saw a minimum of one hundred people. >br>
I literally saw a total of five people wearing masks. I counted

We are all in this together.

Someone who does not share my impulse to closely follow the CDC guidelines pointed pout to me that my mask didn’t protect me. The advice to wear a mask is about protecting others.

I know.

We are all in this together.

I strongly feel that this is the time in human consciousness to move from a predominantly me orientation to one of us. Though we are all independent we are also inextricably interconnected. Every choice I make affects you, effects the whole. My choice to wear a mask for the benefit of others is a choice I am profoundly glad to make. It is something I can do at the level of the physical realm that has the potential to slow the spreading of this virus. If there is any chance at all that it is helpful, I am happy to have my glasses steam up and my cheeks to sweat. I am happy to move past my personal preferences and opinions and “take one for the team.”

Ultimately the team is me.

So, if we indeed are all in this together than maybe we need to act more like it? Maybe we need to step out of what we want and step into the greater needs. Maybe we need to fully own that interconnectedness and make choices from it. Maybe we could see that the suggested six-foot distance is the same length of a grave and make a more awakened choice. Maybe we could own that this really is a big deal. That those aren’t statistics. They are human lives. With histories and loves and families and wisdom. Gone.

If staying mostly home and wearing a mask when I do go out is done in solidarity with those who grieve those lost or still suffering, I personally am all for it. If you are unwilling to do those things, then there is nothing I can do about it. Except perhaps shake my head and shed a tear the next time I hear we are all in this together.

If indeed we are all in this together then we all have a responsibility. When we all choose to do our part, this pandemic will cease. Our precious health care workers, public servants, grocery, sanitation, postal workers to name a few will be safe. And we can then celebrate what we did. Together.

We pray, and we stay home.

Because we are all in this together.

Really?

Really.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

LOVE: STAT!

I have never been clearer that the time to love is now.

With a global pandemic keeping us locked within our homes it does seem the only way to survive is to distance and to disconnect from others. In the physical realm this indeed is having a measurable effect. But even as we distance there has never been in my lifetime a more crucial time to connect at a deeper level and to love with a broader and more expansive love.

My last blog post was entitled Serviceable Disconnection. I feebly attempted to describe the ongoing mechanics of both disconnection and connection. I will not elaborate further on that missive except to say that both are essential to how we unfold and evolve as human beings. They are ongoing dynamics that move us up and forward. I may well need to disconnect from you in order to more fully connect to what is seeking to express and strengthen within myself. Releasing someone from my physical sphere is not the same as putting them out of my heart. This can be a slippery slope indeed. Great clarity and compassion are necessary to say goodbye with an attuned and open heart.

And just as we are collectively experiencing now distancing can be in the name of a greater love. I can love you enough to release proximity, and in some cases, that is in service of allowing the love to continue. If remaining directly connected allows dysfunctional patterns to promulgate than disconnecting and distancing can give the space needed to heal those patterns. In that way distancing is in service of a greater love and ultimately a deeper connection. In remaining, dysfunction continues to go viral. In distancing, the love is given the room it needs to grow.

That being said, I have never been clearer that the time to love is now.

The media is currently filled with heart-rending examples of people dying while distanced from those closest to them. Wives, husbands, sons, daughters, friends, and family are isolated from their beloveds as said are breathing their final breaths. As gut wrenching as this is it is indeed prudent in terms of stopping the contagion of this pandemic. In that way we disconnect, even in the most intimate of times, in the name of wellbeing and of love. I know I would rather die isolated from my husband, family, friends than to think their health would be jeopardized so that they could be with me. In that broader awareness I would in fact not be dying alone. I would die surrounded by my own love for those I would choose to protect. And I also know I would be surrounded by courageous, dedicated medical heroes with whom it would be an honor to transition.

So, where is this verbal meandering leading me?

The time to love is now.

The time to release petty offences is now. The time to release resentments and grievances is now. The time to end self-serving storylines is now. The time to release ideological identification is now. The time to forgive anything that blocks the heart is now.

Is now.

With countless people leaving the planet and even more people left to grieve them the time to love is now. In medical terms, love stat!

To those who fault my easily faultable self I understand. You may not forgive me, but I forgive you. I forgive you for not forgiving me. It really isn’t altruistic. I will not leave this body and this story line hanging on to things that do not serve my Soul. I am not carrying baggage into the next experience beyond this incarnation. So, choose to resent me. I am choosing to forgive and to love you. I may not have you in my dining room, but you sure as heck have room in my heart.

If I should contract and even die from this virus, I will not do so clinging to past resentments that say less about you and more about me.

If I should contract and even die from this virus, I will leave this world with an open heart and a fluent love. That is why I came to this planet and I will not depart having not fulfilled my mission. Not knowing there is a tomorrow sweetens and enlivens today.

For me, now is the time to love. Irrationally, radically, even ridiculously. To love because I am myself love. There is no more time to waste.

I have never been clearer that the time to love is now.

Stat.