What Comes From Listening

You discover beauty, for one. This weekend the voice inside me said to go see what was going on in the earth, so I spent all day Saturday going around the yard pushing aside the leaves and finding little sprouts of plants and colorful flowers coming up, some of them bulbs I'd planted last fall. Today the same voice told me to look around in My Documents folder. There I found this beautiful flower of a poem, something I wrote in the Autumn of 2011.

There just isn't a whole lot that can go wrong when you listen to that still, small voice inside you. Does that mean that other people won't get annoyed because they have other ideas for you? No. Pretty much the opposite, actually. Expect backlash. People will get annoyed, think you are crazy, and tell you what you should be doing instead. But heed the voice. It is your true soul, the Divine Light within you, and it always leads you gently to a place of unconditional love.


One Voice

I wonder if I would like it if there were just one voice
to tell me who I am
who I need to become
what I need to do. I wonder
if I would like a set of rules to obey, my own
1950's ladies' magazine with that voice
that black and white printed voice, the one of reason
and authority
which so calmly states what my priorities should be: lipstick and tidy hair
and a hot meal on the table for my husband.

There are so many voices to hear now. So many magazines
and books and podcasts and blogs and Facebook posts
with so many voices, each one carved out
into a small market niche, each one branded
in just such a way to attract
just such person who might pay the price
of our souls lost to convention. We think because now we can choose
which convention to follow
that we have freedom.
What we really have is just more
competition for our attention.

Somedays I want the voices
to distract me. I go looking
for someone to tell me
with authority
what to do. I search for something
besides the hard work of going inward
and becoming
very
very
still. I look
for someone to give my life
over to, to save me
from the difficulty and pain
of having to live it.

Today was a day like that. I'm learning
to see it
when it comes. The closer I get
 to the poet in me
the easier it is
to recognize the impulse to climb
inside a box and dwell there, instead of
dwelling in the wide open space
of possibility, the place where all things shimmer
with Divine Presence.
Somedays the box feels safer. Somedays I don't want to be knocked down
by the insane beauty of existence. Somedays I'd prefer to trade it
for a clean house,
perfectly applied eyeliner,
and well-behaved
children. Somedays I sell my beautiful
soul for pride.

But then in silence I hear
Be still and Know that I am God
and trade my usual
delicate gold crucifix for the heavier
chained cross whose pewter coldness hangs low
to my solar plexus.  I speak sparingly
eating light, going about my work
at home, stopping frequently to pray, mostly for the
return of the spirit flowing in me, which seems lost momentarily
in earth's gravitational pull, as if summer had me flying up in the air
enjoying it's wild ride and now Autumn's inevitable hard bump
of the ground under my behind. You can only fly by the seat of your pants
for so long, I suppose. What goes up, must come down.
I'm sure there are thousands of voices giving good advice
on how to avoid this pain, this place of lying in a defeated heap
faced with the limitations of your own humanity. Somewhere there are voices
certain to remind me
that I could avoid this moment if I would
plan better
work harder
stay focused on my goals. But somewhere there's a voice that says
this life is poetry.
And a poetic life is one worth living.
I'm listening
to that one
voice.

"Dance like No one is Watching" is Not Just a Cute Phrase on a Knick-Knack at Target

The advice in this column is not linear
or rational
or designed to take you
from A to B to anywhere
near the cover of Redbook.

Where it will
take you
is bliss
and beyond, when you learn
that the here is now
and the moment you start ecstatic dancing
from the kitchen counter to the pantry
with the peanut butter,
when you can dance
with the dirty dishes
from breakfast with the beautiful souls
you co-created into this world
with your incredible other,
then
is the experience of knowing
in the highest sense, in the sense
that teenagers would ask,
"Are you high?" as they do
in the presence of absolute ridiculousness,
of irrational, of emotional, of weird.

This is high.This is the feeling you seek
in the bottle, the bong, the line, the deep long drag
down into your lungs, in the buying of so much
or even what moves you to buy in
to something that gives you
a sense of being
more. Or perhaps you look
not to indulgence
but deprivation
and the pendulum swing over
to not this
or that
or that
or that
because the not having
has a sweet burn to it that becomes
your new high, your new shared experience
with humanity. We all love suffering
crave it
as much as we all crave the embrace
of each other, to pour ourselves
into each other, to empty out the separate
self and dissolve into
Oneness. But knowing that you want this
helps. It helps you to remember to dance, to love
these legs
these hands
this body you have been given
that is yours
and yet not yours
because it is a temple
whose steeple points upward
reminding you of
the vast beyond, the union
that you go towards.

News Flash

Here is news from the front page of The Universal Consciousness (aka God): Christianity and Science are coming together again, having another go at each other. It is quite wild to watch: sparks are flying in all directions, but there is definitely real chemistry there. SOMETHING is happening.

“One can resist the invasion of armies; one cannot resist the invasion of ideas," wrote Victor Hugo in the final chapter of The History of a Crime. And so you see them marching toward one another: Christianity clothed in light, bearing the heart of Jesus, crying out the inspired words of sacred scripture, spirits on fire with love; and then from the other direction comes Science, waving their banners of Evidence, Proven, Study and rallying each other with the words that unite them in meaning: energy, medicine, electromagnetic, vibrational frequency.

They march, slowly, advancing in on each other, each step an understanding, a reconciliation of beliefs. Tension builds as they come closer to one another, holding high everything they have come to know, each conviction a pebble, a rock, a boulder ready to build a fortress around themselves or to throw against any opposing force that might threaten them. But still they advance forward, unable to resist the curiosity of knowing the other side, a passionate interest to know.

And so they meet: face to face, belief to belief. And in that intimate space of knowing, it happens: the embrace of one another. They can't resist; each is too beautiful for the other to bear destroying. In love and honor and respect, they begin a new relationship with one another. With their rocks they begin to build, and their words they combine into new songs that sing of to us of healing and of hope for the beautiful earth we inhabit together.

This is the relationship that is happening within me right now, the coming together of two belief systems and the wholeness of being that results. And this I see happening in people all around me, in particular among the spiritual seekers in our midst, those who are curious enough to ask questions and be open to answers, those who can hold to love long enough to create real union in people. This is the thing we wish for and hasten to acknowledge: how much we want to understand and be together in love with others, our desire to connect deeply with one another.

This connection deeply is called intimacy; we long for it. It is the space that happens when two sides meet in the middle. In that space, we can choose love or we can choose fear. In fear, we throw rocks to protect ourselves. In love, we build something beautiful with our rocks. Choose love.

Bringing you today's news....
Love love love,
Lynn

Rest for the Weary

I bumped into discouragement this morning. It was not a friendly meeting. I fell down in it for awhile, rolled around in it. I tried for awhile to get away, but for some reason, discouragement just did not want to let me go happily about my day.

I took a shower, thinking that might help wash away the discouragement that seemed to want to cling to me, and while I was standing in the hot water, letting it pour down the back of my neck and over my shoulders,  it suddenly came to me that I needed to listen to the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in Song. This morning. Now. As soon as possible.

I continued to think about it as I dried off and got dressed, although my mind kept trying to convince me that I should do other things. My mind, small little thing that it is, and very focused on it's own motives, wanted me to do something that looked more like work, more productive than sitting around listening to people sing "For the sake of your sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world" over and over again. My mind did not like this idea. My mind tried to convince me that this was dumb: Yes, Divine Mercy! I know what that is! I know the concept. Please, can we move on now? Let's do something else today, ok? What other new things can we think about?

But I did it. I listened to my heart, pulled it up on my iphone and pressed play (you can listen to it here). About 42 seconds into the song, I started to cry. And I cried. And I kept crying for the duration of the song (18 minutes, 15 seconds), which is a really long time to cry. I would call that a "good cry". I would call that "productive". And I would call it "work", because I had to show up and pay attention, and focus, and be present.

When all the tears that needed to be shed were gone, I read some scripture verses to help bring me hope and ease my discouragment. And then I wrote the poem below, based partially on these verses from John 15:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.


John 15

It is too cold in this winter
to plant, yet the orchid blooms on the windowsill
and the evergreen outside spreads wide branches in defiance
of death. Eternal, say the outspread arms, an invitation to the weary
of heart, to all who stumble the path of frozen travels in firm steps
searching for the everlasting. Yesterday, today, tomorrow
it says, I will be
here
air
and green
and breathing

and life. So there is something in that
tree that says forever
that says not fear
something that holds us
as the wind does its changing
dance. Still,

there is soil
and roots
while the ground turns its cold shoulder
to seeds and sprouting, to the upward pushing
potential of flowers, to the garden's abundance
and vines hung heavy with creation's

fruit: the thing that comes
from labor, from the vision
of something new
to sustain us, love
harvested.



Other verses to help with discouragement:


Deuteronomy 33:27 – The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Psalm 126:5 – Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

Psalm 37:23-24 – If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumbles, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.

Throw Back Thursday

 This is a poem I wrote when I was 6 years old in first grade. My teacher, Sr. Ann Jerome, kept this in her desk drawer for 15 years. When she retired, she gave it to my mom and my mom framed it. Before anything else, before I knew anything of what is to be found in school and books and learning, in the deepest parts of my heart and soul, I am a poet. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.

Stressed? Worried? Confused about life?

Find an angel. I did. Here is what mine looks like:

 

 

She reminds me of what is important:

 

And she leaves messages on my pillow letting me know I am not alone:

Life in the Divine Parade

Strange what you remember in the turning of tragic: the detail of flip-flops
On feet running from the car, past the arrival of the paramedics walking
In long strides clasping medical bags to the scene of the horseback accident:
A pasture alive with early Ohio Spring at the turn of evening in lengthening daylight
And your daughter lying in it, in green grass and blood,
How it must have been warm that April day to be wearing flip-flops
When you rode the long siren sound down Broadway of your hometown
The street of parades, driven in cars, in carriages, on floats, waving
Always waving and smiling, while the fire engines and ambulances sounded
Their sirens and horns in joyous celebration. And now

The ambulance sounds the siren of tragic and you ride unwaving and unsmiling
In the front seat of uncertainty, turning the tragic parade with your prayers:
Praising the existence of paramedics and ambulance
Praising the place you go for sewing and mending
Praising the giving of morphine, the ease of rolling beds
Praising rubber and steel and plastic
Praising doors that open without effort
Praising hands, the hands of many:
Hands that drive
and write
and type
and carry
and clean
and bandage
and find the small vein
Hands of angels reaching from beyond
And the blessed moment in time of the recording of the Memorare
Inspired through heart and mind and mortal hand of
Someone who wants you to know Blessed Mother's protection and help
For you to know in this moment of perfect failure, in the complete humanity of your fear,
That she
Blessed She
Virgin of virgins
Our Mother wants the better for you.