Sunday, October 11, 2020

A Heart Open To Love

 Tribalism and group think scares the bejeebers out of me. I've seen it go south too many times in my small existence on the planet. So much so, that I'm completely okay hanging out at the margins observing, pondering, wondering and wandering. I can see you and celebrate you without having to parrot you or buy the company t-shirt. 

When "all in" means I lose the ability to think for myself and ask questions, I might need to pause and ask myself is this really healthy. 

When "all in" means I'm relegated to silence when I call foul or challenge a decision, I might need to pause and ask myself is this really healthy. 

I'm not advocating questioning everything with skepticism. I'm advocating being in community where you are free to be your most authentic you, where the value of who you are is significant. 

When I'm only as good as my usefulness or my ability to allow my gifts to be consumed, I might need to pause and ask myself, is this really healthy?

Wonder and mystery always keeps my heart open to Love and to believing the best about people.

 How do you feel in your community? Are you alive and energized? Are you always having to be careful about how you'll form what you say? Are you seen and known? After you've invested hours of your time, energy and resources, do you feel there is a valuable return on your investment? 

Too often we go numbly through our lives, not checking in with our heart. 

You don't have to settle for the next rote thing, you can say yes to the next alive thing. 

Where is the place, who are the people that energize you and make you come alive? 

Find that place. 

Discover those people. 

Build friendships. 

Enjoy community, but don't ever sacrifice your own mind to be a part of the tribe. 

When the chants of "We Are Something" overpower the song of "I AM," you might want to pause and ask yourself, is this really healthy?

 Be you.

Saturday, October 3, 2020

Shaping Humanity

 Richard Rohr says, “Rather than fighting the systems directly and in so doing becoming a mirror image of them, St. Francis of Assisi just did things differently. The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”


How do we live into “something different”?


An organization like systems are made up of people. We can’t demand a system change without addressing the heart of its people. And we also have to let go of an unconscious but faulty supposition: I can force someone to change. 


While I might make enough noise and cause enough ruckus through protests to make them modify their behavior or dial back, on a good day, I only control me. 


To influence the collective, I focus on myself as an individual. How do I become a “”Prime Attractor” to what we as a society really want, what we definitely need, and who we finally are [called to be]?” 


I intentionally mirror the good of our humanity. I become the lived experience of “something different.” I manage me, and I offer others the freedom to manage themselves. Unconditional acceptance is the foundation of every healthy relationship not shifts in power structures or hierarchy.


Do I see you as a human equal to my humanness? Or are you still an inferior that needs to be saved, 3/5 of a human? Do I see you as a superior that I defer to, shape shift for? Or do I realize our inherent dignity, that we both are powerful beings created in the Image of Love?


Do I offer space for you to be seen, heard, valued, and protected? Can you live fully expressed in my presence without fear of harm, judgment or retaliation? 


Bryan Stevenson said in his HBO documentary, True Justice, the north won the civil war, but the south won the narrative. I say, it is in the heart that all wars are won. Starting first, with my own. What story am I telling myself? How am I participating in its narrative on the stage of life? What do I need to edit in the narrative of my perception to live into life more fully, more consciously - more aware of myself and others, without a narrative that keeps me divided and separate?

In the Court of Expectation

 Dear Black America...

Let’s talk. Yes, the media will make a mockery out of Brandt Jean’s forgiveness and use it to perpetuate an old narrative. Yes, there were huge missteps of injustice in the sentencing. But c’mon now, we all knew that was gonna happen. Yes, the judicial hug and bailiff hair smoothing were all a bit of an overreach. Yes, if you were raised Christian, you’re likely to deny your anger (be disconnected with it) and reach first for forgiveness. Yes, if you’re raised Black in America, you’re likely to deny your anger (at least dial it down or dial it back) and placate a white person to “keep the peace” (or, as we black people know, to stay out of jail - because mass incarceration is today’s answer to lynching). Yes, if you’re black and from the South, especially, you know how to act in the presence of white people. Yes, all of these things are 100% true. 


And even as we decolonize and deconstruct the ways in which we’ve been socialized and assimilated into our own whiteness, we can include and transcend. We do not have to let go of every good virtue just because we learned it in white space. Forgiveness is a good virtue. It’s not just a “should” of Christianity that’s been badly explained and wrongly taught. 


Forgiveness is owning your own head space and heart without contention. Forgiveness unchains you from the drama of someone else's madness. The practice of forgiveness is to transcend the ego’s need to be vindicated. And really, that’s what our cries are about today. We want to be vindicated. We don’t want to look through or let go. But that’s us. That’s how we feel, and that’s not to say your feelings aren’t valid. It’s just to say they are yours. We don’t know Brandt Jean’s process. 


We don’t know what is in the heart of another. We don’t know their process or their wrestle. We can only speak to what we would do, what we know to be true for us. We have to allow room for our differences and our place on the journey. We have to - or else we will become oppressors ourselves - forcing others to think like us, act like us, be like us. 


Deep breaths today. Feel all of it. Acknowledge the pain. See it for what it is. Accept that someone chose to offer forgiveness. If the act triggered you, take the role of unattached observer (when you can) and ask yourself why. Dig deeper toward your own shadow, see what’s there. 


Our biggest disillusionment is still heavily entwined around our expectations. We expect white folk to see us, understand us, get us. We expect black folk to all be radicals and respond the way we would to every situation. We expect the system to change without people changing, without us changing. We expect the system to be different when it has always proven to be exactly what it is, not for you. 


Dear Black America, our expectations are killing us. Unforgiveness will not save us. If we mirror back the indifference we’ve always received, we will perpetuate indifference. If we mirror violent responses we will perpetuate and even excuse violence. How can we begin to move to a non dual place as a race of people that sees the injustice for what it is, speaks truth to power and uphold virtues that move the trajectory of common good further down its path? Am I asking you to bear the burden of this alone? It is true that we’ve always shouldered the heavy weight, and I am not suggesting that at all. What I’m asking today is that as a person, we open our hands, free ourselves from the demands of our own injured expectations and mirror want we want to see in our own lives and in the world at large.


Peace be with you



*This blog was written in 2019 after Brandt Jean’s murder trial in Dallas, TX.

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

SFDs

 According to Brene Brown, an SFD is the story you tell yourself before you rumble through it enough to get to the edit. Like Hemingway says, write drunk. Edit sober. 


Tend first to your suffering. Your emotions hold wisdom. What are they trying to teach you? In stillness, pause and ask your heart, "What is the fear? Where is the breach of trust? In what way has fear changed me? What's the echo of fear resonating in my heart chamber at this very moment?”


If you can handle the answer without beating yourself up, you'll see it for what it is, a sh*tty first draft, and you'll remember that fear is an illusion. The panic, the torture, the torment, the anxiety you feel are all incongruent with Love. Therefore your thoughts at the moment can't be aligned with Love, so pause. Breathe and allow love to speak. In the pause, listen for how to direct your energies most effectively for a self-edit of your stormy first draft, which is inner change. 


When the truth of your being communes with Love, there you'll find the reckoning. Grace and truth are realized in Jesus. Just follow it through. Don't stop at the SFD. And stop bringing out the lash to crucify yourself every time you have an SFD. We all do it, but the alchemy happens when we acknowledge those voices, the fear, the emotions, the pain and wrestle through the story they are attempting to weave. 


Feel all of that intensity and then pause, listen to Love's voice, receive Love's truth and say yes to it. Give your heart room to take it all in. Learn how to tango through the web of the SFD into the resonance of love that breeds confidence for your heart. There's the resting place. Sometimes rest takes a little bit of hard work. That's the joy of both/and. No dualism or extremes there. Just remember to be kind and patient with yourself in this space. As Jen Hatmaker said, "We don't need to hustle through our story."

Monday, September 28, 2020

A Prayer of Creativity

 Father God, you are the Master Artist. 

With strokes of love, you painted the world and all therein. 

Everything came into being through Jesus and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 

Together, the Trinity danced upon the deep and created the world. 

May we look upon ourselves with kindness and respect for your creative genius. 

May we look upon humanity with awe and reverence as we admire your artistry. 

May we endeavor to pick up our paintbrushes and join you on the canvas of life to paint harmony where there is tension, unity where there is discord, peace where there is turmoil, love where there is fear. 

May each stroke connect our hearts to You and to one another. 

Amen.

Tools Perform. People Commune.

 God has always loved...the Son, you, me, the world, creation. The whole of our existence is based on relationship. And yet, somehow along the way, consciously or unconsciously, we began to exalt consumption and transaction above relationship. This is so evident in our obsession with God "using" someone and our willingness to be "used" by God. God, who delights in you, has no desire to use you. 

God, who is wholly relational, submits in love and defers to us. He delights in participating in our lives with us. He loves it when our eyes are opened to the truth of union that He is not a far off God on a far away throne, that He is in us, with us, alongside us and the joy of living relationally with Him is that we get to receive from Him and He gets to receive from us. And the more we are convinced of His love, the more of ourselves we freely give and entrust to Him. It's a dance, not a transaction. 

We are His people, His dearly loved ones not His tools. This wrong belief is why we so easily and freely use people for their giftings and calling. We attempt to drain every bit of life from them in the name of ...something. This is a false image of God and it causes us to devalue people. His respect, love, honor, value and delight for you as His own is too great for you to reduce yourself or to allow yourself to be reduced to a tool. You can't have a relationship with a tool. 

Tools perform. People commune.

Sunday, September 27, 2020

Honor Your Path

 Even the idea of deconstruction is seeing faith from a scarcity mindset. The energy it takes to sustained continued resistance feeds that which we wish to avoid. If I dig my feet in the ground and push my hands out to resist, I end up stagnant while life keeps hurling at a constant pace toward me.


When I alter my perspective and begin and end with abundance, I can honor the Divine Image in myself and in others and allow my faith to evolve while admitting I’ve been slimed by gobs of paint ill fitting of a masterpiece (bad theology, wrong interpretations, un-Christlike behavior, crazy worship songs based on ungodly beliefs and painful lived experiences, unloving/unhealthy spiritual practices, church leaders with character defects, etc.). 


And with that acknowledgment and open hands, I can surrender to the alchemical process, which transforms that which is no longer working or necessary allowing me to receive that which is,  the truth of my essence that has always been true. 


Underneath the pile of wronged experiences and bad teaching lies a masterpiece worthy of restoration, you. You, created in the Divine Image. You, the essence of Love and Light that has always been the very good of all creation. You, whose being resonates with Truth. 


You are a masterpiece. Recognize the ways in which systems, cultural norms, labels, the opinions of others, and the hells of life have heaped gobs of paint on you. You can detach from that which is not healthy or good by simply opening yours hands in surrender, opening your hands to receive. You don’t have to begin transformation from the mindset of scarcity - “I lack something; something was withheld from me; I was lied to” or any other negative.


Honor the trajectory of your lived experienced. You’re here now. Deep breath, it’s just another opportunity to grow. Be kind and generous to yourself. It’s okay to evolve.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Dear Mommas

 Sitting at the gas pump at Sam’s Club, I watch the angry momma, the sullen child. Hear their angry words rise unbidden through the air. My insides twist. I remember being the child...and then, painfully, I remember being the momma. And I write:


For all the days I fussed at my kids 

I’m sorry

For all the times I didn’t remove the scowl from my brow when I looked at you

I’m sorry

For every time I embarrassed you in front of your friends 

I’m sorry

Sometimes the pain leaks

And we don’t know what to do with it

Aren’t equipped to hide it

Or heal it 

All we know to do is transmit it

Unaware of the damage it causes

The distance it creates 

We perpetuate disconnection 

Participating with disillusionment

For the ways I failed to heal you

I’m sorry

For the ways my anger and violence created your brokenness

I’m sorry

If only doesn’t change the past

But I pray acknowledgement of my wrong will be the release you need to heal

To be


For every momma in pain

Your kids see your eyes

They hear your scold

It feels like hate

It makes them question their existence

It sends them running to alternative forms of affirmation and approval

It’s the seedbed of doubt


Heal, Mommas

Love, Mommas

Be honest about your pain, your past, and your wrongs, Mommas

And most of all, Mommas, ask forgiveness for the ways in which we’ve been complicit in fracturing our young


And then return

Return to Love

Return with Love 

Return with an Olive Branch

Return armed with Forgiveness

No more harsh words

Hard brows

Back slaps and Do that’s

Return with Love

And offer the gift of your whole healed self

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Is God Enough?


Christa Black Gifford‘s words, “You have no emptiness in you, for you are filled with God. Which also means, you are already filled with everything you could ever need,” evokes a memory of a conversation some years back that left a deep impression on my soul. It was a convo with a dear friend about something they were desiring, a longing they continuously put before God. And in our conversation, I asked, “Is God enough? If that thing never happened, would God be enough?” And my friend told me, “No.” Then the friend told me that as a minister of the gospel, I should never ever ask someone is God enough and not to repeat the question again. I admit, the rebuke sliced me to the core. I had been careless with my friend’s longings, their unfulfilled desires, hope deferred and in my naïveté, I truly believed, you + God = enough. But what if He isn’t? What if God isn’t everything I need? What then? And now, I find myself wondering ...what if I shift my focus from a perspective of separation - God being a part from, God being out there, distant, afar off. What if I shift from the story of separation to the Truth of oneness with God who is Love, and Spirit, the Source Energy of all life? Does that change my ideas on scarcity, on what exactly is enough, on unfulfilled desires? Is there contentment in embracing Union with God? How does our thoughts shift when we move from the story of separation and lack to one of union and abundance?


 “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” -Eckhart Tolle

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Judge No More

 I remember being in my mid-40s sitting with a young woman in her mid 20s going through body issues, dieting to the point of almost starvation, judging herself, hating on her body and I got in my car and almost cried. Her state was like an issue. I turned to my 50 year old friend and said, “When does it ever stop?! Who taught us this? Why do we as women do this to ourselves?” 

The mirror gaze shifted something in me. I went home, stripped down, looked myself in the mirror and said. “I’m not judging you. No longer will I judge you. Thank you for holding my frame, for supporting me. For keeping me alive. I will honor you and listen to you. Forgive me for trashing you and devaluing you. I don’t yet know how to fully love or hold you, but I will.”

In that moment, I made peace with my body. And whenever my mind slips into recrimination and criticism, I return to the mirror and say, “I’m not judging you. I’m not judging you.”


Moments of darkness are an invitation to integrate the things I’m reading and learning with how I’m living. Paul Young would simply call it wholeness, where the truth of our being matches the way of our being and we are fully human and fully alive. I call it integrity in the spiritual practices I adhere to - it’s how we let the Light shine.


The only thing Love doesn’t call good in the Judaic creation story is separation, evening and morning is one day. Learn to live with what is, trusting that Love is good and only good allows me to live with open hands and an open heart, embracing it all that is while looking for the light.


Sit With It:

  1. How have you participated with self-judgment?
  2. What does the mirror say when you gaze at yourself? 
  3. Where is the light shining through in the ordinariness of your everyday life? 
  4. How do you integrate what you are reading and learning into your way of being?
  5. What spiritual practices do you adhere to? 

Your True Self

 Encountering Love is an encounter with your deepest self. Paul Young says wholeness is when the truth of your being matches the way of your being. 

We don’t decide to be loving, love is who you are. Your truest self is a divine expression of beauty, truth and goodness. 


Your truest self is the presence of Love existing wide open, uncovered and unashamed in interior freedom. 


Freedom from your false self. Freedom from the superficial programs for happiness we invest in to protect us from humiliation and unmet needs of the past. 


Unrestrained freedom is absolute well-being, and at our core, the truth of our being is Love. 


Sit With It: 

  1. What program for happiness do you over identify with when you feel afraid?
  2. How does fear keep from experiencing unrestrained freedom?
  3. How have you compromised the way of your being to prevent humiliation?
  4. What does beauty, truth and goodness look like expressed through my life?

Surviving Together

 I crawled on top of Bae and buried my face into his neck, my tears warming his skin. Grateful 28+ years of incredible loving and living - oh, the adventures that we’ve shared together. I thanked him for the life he’s worked to give us, holding the ups and downs. Every immature and bad decision, and the growth we’ve both experienced in the process. 


I’m grateful that he is alive. Grateful that it’s not worse than it is. Grateful that this does not have to end in death, and yet I wept into his neck. How could this be our life, our new rhythm? How could it not? 


The Mystery of the Ages has always included fellowship with suffering. Do you we survive? Do we thrive? Do we own illness as an identity? Do we revel in victim and pity? Or do we look life straight in the eye, see its pain and its beauty? 


Our choice is sacred. In fact, conscious awareness of what we are choosing is one of the deepest spiritual acts we can embrace. We co-create our lives with our choices. With each choice we make, we either walk toward love or away from it toward fear. The most profound choice we can make, even as we participate in the fellowship of suffering, is to say yes to Love.


My tears, while a lament for this place on our journey, were also a cleansing. The salty mixture a place of alchemy. The release came unbidden, something akin to letting go of a pent up burden. The what ifs, how comes, and fear of the unknown held captive in my psyche released from pores as I held onto his neck. His arms wrapped around me. As we deep inhaled and exhaled, the rise and fall of our bellies and chest like a dance, the peace between us became something otherworldly. 


I climbed off Bae and went to sleep.


Sit With It:

What are you grateful for?


Can you recognize growth in your journey? How do you honor the progress?


How have you learned to hold the tension of life situations? How do you hold space for suffering?


Are you cognizant of your choices? What emotional issues are attached to your choices?


What do you do as an intentional practice to release stress, tension, and anxiety from your cellular memory? 

On Becoming

 Only the whole carries the Mystery. A single individual - one part alone is too small, too temporal, too isolated, too insecure to carry the weight of life’s journey alone. 


Integral consciousness looks more like a holon than a hierarchal power structure where one lords over the other. The sum of the whole equals its parts. Becoming holistic, in part and in whole, will lend to greater expressions of equity and equality. 


The process of becoming whole is an invitation into paradox, a dance of tension between the uncertainties of life and the certainty of Divine Love. Love moves us from a conditioned transactional response of begging the Divine Magic Genie or other human beings to rescue, fix, deliver us from pain, send money quick to participation in other centered, self giving relationships based on mutuality. 


Becoming is not a place we arrive at. It is saying yes to an on-going, infinite evolutionary process that is lived out day to day as we dance with love. Love is our True Self. The one who fears has not come into wholeness in the matter of being loved. Becoming is the journey from fear to love.


Becoming is our unique expression of Love thrumming its song and weaving its thread through us individually as we participate with the Divine in service to others. Billions of scores blended together in Love creating a cosmic symphony, one masterful tapestry. We are a part of the ocean and the ocean is a part of us or as the Wisdom Teacher Jesus says, we are vines in living union with the branch as our Source. 


Sit With It:

  1. If it’s more about how we journey through the process of becoming than it is about arriving at some point, could there be a greater purpose to your being here than what you thought?
  2. What does Love look like expressed through my life?
  3. What does Love spilled over look like in our community today?
  4. In what ways am I becoming? How have I recognized myself as part of the whole? 
  5. How am I coming into wholeness in the matter of being loved? 

Sunday Sermon

 Happy Sunday! Let me tell y’all what’s hypocritical AF... Folk who go to church on Sunday and worship the King of the Jews. Support Donald Trump, the self proclaimed King of the Jew. Vote for and support national welfare to Israel (yes, we give them billions of dollars each year) while whining and complaining that universal healthcare or free tuition for college is excessive and exorbitant. Yet, Israel, with our government handout bankrolling their small country, offers both universal healthcare AND free college to their citizens. While small business owners in our country can’t afford healthcare or to maintain their businesses in the face of dire illness. Either we’re woefully uninformed as a people or intentionally turning a blind eye.  And yes, I feel some kind of way about it. 


Cis white conservative patriarchy is not the only mirror for Divine Love. I know we’ve all been colonized to believe assimilation is the only way to God. But who are we to say someone does not bear the Image because it’s not our idea of the Image? Yea, I’m speaking to those promoting conversion therapy. The shame these tactics create alliances with evil that keep us separated, hiding from ourselves and others instead of speaking to the good of our connection and interdependence. Free people to be who they feel called to be. No one has the right to police the personhood of another. 


Red tape on our mouths to save the babies and laugh lines, firm brows and a nod of the head when prisoners are executed on death row because we so high and mighty, we get to determine who deserves an opportunity to live and who doesn’t. In the words of your own King, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces....You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.... Woe to you, blind guides! You blind fools! .... You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”


May the scales fall from our eyes and our hearts be enlarged with compassion. May the other become us and may our scarcity mindset and fear of loss of power give way to generosity and equality. 


Yes, let’s do help Israel AND Palestine. There’s more than enough. Yes, let’s champion the unborn AND the incarcerated on death row. There’s more than enough for both. Let’s stop talking from our heads while sitting on our watoosies. Let’s stop swinging from the poles lost in tension of opposites and find balance in humility, understanding and listening - even when we’re uncomfortable with someone else’s lifestyle. Can we choose quiet instead of condemnation?


Take a day and experience the injustice of the oppressed. Ivory castle ideas that haven’t been forged in the fire break under pressure of sustained heat. 


Justice is love lived in our actions and acknowledgment of humanity, no matter how alike or different that human is. Justice is right alignment. Every person on the planet has the right to exist in their own skin and to walk out their journey with the Divine in their way without my policing their path based on my agreement with their decisions or my own personal beliefs. 


How uncomfortable does my ideas make you? Can you challenge the worldview of your own “yeah but...”? Trace it back to its origin. Who told you that? Where did those ideas come from? Are they rooted in Love or passed down from someone else’s discomfort? 

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Intentional Parenting

I love each of my kids equally. Truly, I have no favorite. They are a product of the love that flows between me and their dad. And while all of this is true about how I feel toward my kids, each relationship is different. Complicated. Respectful. Distant. Fun. Withdrawn. Easy. Transparent. 
Our interactions run the gamut based on each child and their perception of me, their trust in me, their willingness to choose me and confide in me. Right or wrong, to a large extent, I often follow my child’s lead for the frequency of interaction. I do text. I send things that remind me of them. I freely tell them of my love and how proud I am of them. I ask Spirit often to show me ways to remain connected across distance and time. I check in periodically to see what they need, to make sure they know I’m available and thinking of them. But now that they’re adults, I’m committed to allowing them to lead the dance. I choose not to force or make them feel obligated to be in relationship with me. They owe me nothing - not gratitude, not time, not visits, not call. Any giving they extend is all a gift. I want to honor the fact that the dynamics have changed now that they are adults. 
Sadly this means sometimes I don’t know the adult version of my children as well as I’d like to, but even the unknowing does not change my fierce love or championing of their person. 
My heart doesn’t swell as a response to their choosing, my heart swells because they are mine. Am I elated with their gifting of self, of time? Absolutely. But their actions or inactions don’t deflate me or disappoint me. There is no condition which changes the swell of my heart when it comes to my children. None.
I see them. I believe strongly in each one of them, and yes, I will fight to the death to defend them. They and Doug are pretty much the end of my belief in nonviolence (I admit I’m a work in progress).
I didn’t have children to meet a need. I didn’t have children to fulfill some unrequited egoic desire. I didn’t have children because I wanted to create beings who would fall down and worship me, sacrifice their life to serve me. The beauty of extending the love that flows between Doug and I is the perpetuation of mutuality. The sound of laughter continuing through the years. The shared history, the passing of treasured memories. The belief in the goodness of one another. The sacred circle where one can be held, supported, seen and known. If no one else has me, I know they do. This is the gift of family - healed family, broken people working through their own ish to encourage one another in the pursuit of wholeness. 
Truly, this is the gift of God. All I want to be to my children is exactly what Divine Love is to me - home, trust, comfort, belonging, anchor, utter belief in my goodness and humanity, unconditional acceptance, freedom. This is the Father who loves me. The One who runs to meet me. This is the Sacred Mother who draws me to Her breast and welcomes me. Anything less is not an accurate picture of God as parent. May we come to see and be the expression of Love that is filled with Grace and Truth.