This was reportedly written by a black pastor in Zimbabwe who lost his life for the cause of Christ when the township was overtaken be communists.  I share it here because it is a perennial favorite.  One of my readers will recognize it as one of the readings at their wedding.

I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed.
  I have the Holy Spirit power
   the dye has been cast,
    I have stepped over the line,
     the decision has been made
I am a disciple of JESUS.

I will not look back,
   let up,
    slow down,
     back away,
      or be still.

It’s an obstacle course in downtown Washington, DC, between 7:30 and 8:00 on a Wednesday morning.  My vigorous walk in 34 degree, blustery wind this morning, saw me zig-zagging through downtown, taking whichever street had the “Walk” sign illuminated.  It was particularly crazy today.  At 19th and L, a police car acted as a traffic light at an intersection.  Even though there is a traffic light at 19th and L, I guess for some reason, they decided it needed more help there this morning.  Maybe it was too cold for an officer to get out and stop and start traffic – so I watched the odd site of a police car simply driving to position himself perpendicularly across 3 lanes of traffic to block their way.  Then, when the officer figured it was time to let cars proceed, he’d back up out of the way.  Then, he’d drive in front of them again.  I shook my head and laughed; checked to see if there was some presidential parade coming or something, but there wasn’t.  So, I took the opportunity to just walk out onto a deserted L Street, crossing in the middle of an uncharacteristically, artificially empty street.  So, I guess my zig-zagging was in response to either a Walk signal or an open invitation of an empty street due to traffic patterns.

I did the same thing crossing 18th Street.  But, I probably should have stayed on the other side, because I had to step my way between buildings and huge garbage trucks.  Interestingly, — who knew? – on garbage collection day, some garbage actually comes up from a trap door in the side walk, while other garbage is pushed up the long parking garage ramps by winded attendants, and the truck drivers drive the huge trucks right up onto the sidewalk.  So.  Here I was, walking a narrow strip between a gaping hole in the sidewalk and a truck body, angling to avoid the large cart full of garbage that’s on my right as well as the one that the attendant is trying to push to my left… and ahead of all this is another garbage truck just sitting there on the sidewalk for good measure.  Strangeness. But I think it's kind of fun.

I wish I’d had an aerial videotape of my walking through DC yesterday afternoon.  In an unprecedented move, I left my office a half hour early yesterday and walked to Dress Barn Woman on 17th and K to check out the clothes before catching a 4:14 bus at 17th and I.  Normally I would have been sitting at my desk at 3:47 pm on a Tuesday.  However, Mary and I have this “thing” where when we need each other, we have the power to position ourselves to be where we need to be (like me having my cell phone in the palm of my hand when she chose to call me from her Greenway wreck).  So, I get this wonderful ringtone “I Love You…” song in Dress Barn.  I answer.

“I’m LOST” says Mary.  “Where are you?”  M Street.  M and 34th.  She was driving home from an interview.  Okay.  Uhhhhh.  And so it began.

I bolted out of the store. 
Got my bearings, and once I realized from Mary that the street numbers were going down as she drove, I figured if I hurried, I could make it from 17th & K to 17th & M (2 blocks) just in time to flag her down and personally show her how to get out of DC.  So, I walked and huffed and puffed and asked her every few seconds, “Where are you now?”  As she reported markers and streets, I’m looking for M street and telling her which way to go.  Oh no!  Here I am at M and it’s one-way – the wrong way!  I can’t meet her here.  At the same time, Mary’s saying, “Oh… I’m not on M Street any more…”  Well WHERE ARE YOU?  “Uh… K Street.  That’s right.”  K Street and What?  “20th.”  20th and K.  Oh geez.  So I turn left on M Street trying to move as quickly as possible toward where Mary might be.  “Is there anyplace you can pull over???”  Silly question.  "If you see Connecticut Avenue, turn Left there!"  (At this point I am puffing up Connecticut Ave.)  "There's no left turn at this time of day - there are traffic cops saying I can't turn here."  Then, "Where are you now?" "I'm next to a Dress Barn Woman."  Which is where I started in the first place. 

Oh shit.  It goes on this way for another several minutes – me, walking in circles downtown, Mary encountering changing streets and one-way obstacles, till finally we zero in on each other.  “Okay.  I’m on 17th Street between K and M.  YOU turn left on 16th Street.  Yeah.  Now turn left on M.  Okay.  Got it?  Left lane.  Turn left on 17th Street.  Get in the right lane.  You see me???”  YES!  I let out a deep breath and got in her car.  We proceeded home, using the HOV lanes.

On Purcellville Road, Mary pulled up to the mailbox to get the stack of mail and packages out of it from her car window.  No matter that there were cars coming both ways and they couldn’t make it past us.  Deal with it; we live here.  I had to go find a Goodyear credit card in the house, to pay for the $577.00 repairs on my VW, and then Mary was going to take me to get my car. I struggled out of her car, balancing, bungling, struggling with all the mail.  The wind blew the car door back shut on me.  It calmed down; I tried to get out again.  I approached the front door.  I opened the storm door and held it open with my shoulder, balancing mail while I put the key in the lock.  The wind came back.  With a vengeance.  And blew the door off the frame.  That’s right – it took the wood, the door frame with it, and blew the sucker right off.  Goddammit!

Obstacles.  In DC; in Purcellville.  Sometimes I am the obstacle; sometimes I am the answer.  Sometimes I navigate well; sometimes I get sucker-punched.

Gil refrained from chewing me out about the door.  Mary held me tight and reminded me that I had her in my arms and that makes everything better.  We had a warm home and tuna casserole to look forward to.  Seattle was coming home with a perfect smile and a trendy new “chocolate” phone.  And we have jobs to pay for the door and for the $577.00 – Goodyear special, “90 days same as cash.”

My heart is full of gratitude.
 

http://www.walkthetalk.com/thedashpoemmovie.php?refsource=jobr&campaign=dash1

Sometimes God sings to me.  Recently I prayed for help.  I surrendered the illusions of complications and confusion and gave in to God's caring providence and order. 

As I did so, I heard the relentless, repeated song, "I love youuu...". Just that phrase, over and over.  Yeah.  It was from Nickelback's Far Away - the guy with the lawn mower in his voice.  At first it was just background music, and then it came to the foreground until I really heard it.

When I finally heard it, I could feel it run through me — first, as if there were a 3-dimensional grid inside my brain, and at every intersection there lit a point of light.

Then, as the light glowed, there was the familiar spread of warmth through salt water, in my chest, down my spine, and out my eyes.

"I love you...." in the fibers of my being - fibers that came alive in a fabric that swaddled my soul and carried me with it.  I felt a safety and an assurance that could only be felt in a parent's arms where, it didn't matter where we were going, just that I was carried; I was safe; I was happy.  And I knew the destination would be right.

And, 'know what?  The thing I was praying about?  It did turn out all... just ... perfect, without any worrying from me. : )

Breezy kindness

lightly lilting falling

into delicate pain

traces the edges

and succulent passages

of leaf vein

behind my eyes.

Warm air

cool flow

gratitude as I go.

Humanity thick

stuck as a stick

in mud.

Gray outlines and laugh lines

buildings and faces

angles, bricks,

fences and branches

lush green

woods and expanses

s t r e a m s

signs

leading to home.

Mark Twain said, "I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education."  Valuable words to live by.

In like spirit, I would add, "I have never let my religion get in the way of my relationship with God."

The last batchelor buttons of the season. 

I cut down the many overgrown, spent, and prolific stands of batchelor buttons today.  Every year when I have to do this, I look at each plant, and I smile, and I tell it, "Thank you.  Thanks for being here all Spring, dressed in your electric blue.  Thank you for growing and making me smile.  You did a good job.  I'm sorry I have to say good-bye now.  I'll see you next year!  Thank you so much for being here.  I'll miss you."

And I will.

"Be happy!
For you are joy, unbounded joy.

You are awareness itself.

Just as a coil of rope
Is mistaken for a snake,
So you are mistaken for the world."

-Ashtavakra Gita 1:10

We may be mistaken for the world, but that does not change Who we really are.  I pray that my own eyes will be increasingly surrendered to God's eyes, and God's vision, so I can look on my self, and those around me, and see us clearly, the way God sees us.

I read somewhere that 80% of our tasting comes from the sense of smell.  I always said black walnuts taste like Nanticoke porches. 

I intensely dislike the taste of black walnuts. But I'm always delighted when an encounter with them carries me back to a "me" in a sunsuit with bows on the shoulders, sandals and socks, on the porch of my grandparents' turn-of-the-century duplex, with its distinctive bitter-sweet, dark, dank smell.

The smell of hot, wet asphalt always makes me smile.  It transports me to Niagara Falls.  As a girl I had to walk everywhere, in all kinds of weather, and I loved the summer rain.  As soon as the big fat drops would start, I'd run outside in my bare feet to feel the griddle-hot  surfaces sizzle and steam and cool in the sluicing downpour - and that oily, cooked smell - it was right there.

The smell or taste of lime lollipops takes me back to Niagara Falls, too.  It's the taste of the free lollipops at the bank, or in my Halloween cache.

Today it was socked-in rainy and humid - what you'd call "close." As in, "the air felt thick and close" around me.  I waited to cross at a DC intersection and I could smell a County Fair.  If I closed my eyes, I could imagine the Ferris wheel and sticky kids parading by with cotton candy.  But it was just the rich smell of the greasy hot water in the hot dog vendor's booth, trapped and all up in my face, the way the Fair food vendors' greasy pits' smoke permeates the Fair Grounds.

The spicy sweet scent of dark purple lilacs are the smell of my childhood.  Not the light purple, just the dark.  I used to pick armfulls of lilacs for my mom from Peggy Conti's huge bush across the street.  I would inhale their heady, unique fragrance, and run my fingers over the delicate tiny petals, flowers within flowers. Later, as a teen, I became fond of a candy called Violets.  They weren't delicious, in fact, they were kind of bitter and perfume-tasting.  But I remember thinking the taste (probably the smell) reminded me of lilacs.  So I liked them.

I so enjoy these scent-triggered trips to another time and place.  When I studied the brain and memory in college, I learned that our sense of smell is the sense that has access to our oldest, deepest memories - much more than our other 4 physical senses.  I so appreciate its power, the mystery of how it traverses those pathways in the brain, which no other stimuli can seem to navigate.

I think when we stop to revel in a moment, to capture an emotion, to make a memory, we should breathe deeply and remember how the moment smells. Its memory is faithful and long.

Not all smells transport me to childhood.  Some are just cool to recognize, or delightful to experience, or, weird.

Like being able to "smell rain" or "smell snow" coming, in the air, hours before precipitation starts - that's cool.

Or like smelling a delicious cologne on my husband's cheek and neck.  'Makes me want to bury my head in his neck and shoulder and sway together in a slow dance of contentment  - that's delight.

Or, like the smell that hits me each time I approach the back-door entrance to the buffet-deli in the basement of my office building on 18th Street.  It smells like the Zoo - that's just weird.

Wow.  Way to go, Presbyterians.  We recently celebrated "Trinity Sunday" and the preacher nattered on about the triune God, the mystery, yadda yadda.  I kept thinking, it's not "3 gods in one, or 3 persons in one" - that sounds like a commercial for mouthwash or something. 

The idea of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is just a way to express the Reality we have experienced.  It is a good start.  Plenty of room for pondering, discovering.  But, enter the Presbyterians, who this week have succeeded in allowing their local congregations to "experiment" with other descriptions of this same Reality.

http://usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-06-19-presbyterians_x.htm

Their purpose is to seek "fresh ways to speak of the mystery of the triune God" to "expand the church's vocabulary of praise and wonder." I read these, and I can only say, "YESSS!" because they echo, immediately, of my own experience of God.

— "Lover, Beloved, Love"

— "Creator, Savior, Sanctifier"

— "King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love"

— "Mother, Child and Womb" 

— "Rock, Redeemer, Friend"

Just like "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," none of these is complete, is the last word.  But each of them succeeds in describing a beautiful Reality.

Interesting survey results when asking people what they believe about hell.  URL: Catch Hell

It just brings up questions for me!

What purpose does hell serve for us?

Does it fill that unfortunate need we have as humans to put someone else down to make ourselves feel better?

Does it fill that juvenile need for limits - behave yourself, or else?

Does it fill the need for self-punishment borne of guilt?

I think that when we realize that our Souls are made of the same Stuff as Jesus', and that we exist as part of, and one with, the Heart of God - before birth, during this time on Earth, and afterwards - then,

• there's no need to put others down, because they are made of the same Stuff, and our own self-value increases immensely
• there's no need for an "or else" because the Else is always returning to God, no matter what we've done
• there's no need for self-punishment because it is irrelevant and unnecessary - God is not looking to punish us, in fact, God wants us to simply acknowledge mistakes and pick up where we left off and start again - free.  Us making mistakes does not change our unity with the Heart of God, nor our "sonship".  We can't be separated.

We can't be separated.  Therefore, there is no hell. 

The only hell that exists is the one we choose, here, on this Earth, when we participate in a belief that we (or anyone else) are separated from our Source. That belief can indeed cause us pain, because it leads to all manner of dysfunctional behavior and illusions.

This is a foundational teaching from the Course In Miracles:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Therein lies the peace of God.

Herein lies a little clue to the illusions of which I write.  Whatever threatens us, worries us, absorbs our nervous attention - these things are not real.  They are illusions we have created, learned and passed on.  Look harder - as Raffiki says - and we see that what threatens us is not real at all.  Look harder, behind the illusion, and see what is real, and we have peace.

"Forgiveness is the only illusion that does not beget more illusions."

This helps.  I do understand that God doesn't need to forgive, but that forgiveness is the bridge to humanity's experience of its true Self. We need to be forgiven, and to forgive (ourselves and others) so we can put an end to illusions and create a path to God, and to our true selves.

I wonder how many other illusions I can stop, preventing them from spinning into more illusions - Probably not many.  However.  I'm thinking that when I stop, and breathe, and stop thinking, but rather meditate to "come back" to my Self, and to my body (as Thich Nhat Hahn says), THEN I emerge, from the midst of the illusions and stop their spinning.

When I return to my life here, I pick up and swim among my perceptions and collective illusions.  It must be this way; this is the game of life we play.

But, I'm thinking that to re-enter from a STOP, from a clearing, I stand a chance of acting and thinking in a more true sense.  I stand a chance of making a choice born of God's thoughts, refraining from the old thoughts and actions that no longer make sense once I take myself out of the chain of assumptions that create our illusions.

No one really can see the difference - or can they?  Is there a difference between a Me who is swimming among my illusions, fatigued, working hard, following where others have pointed... and a Me who has just entered the stream, still standing, looking over the waters and seeing all ways, all possibilities, refreshed, not tired and not being propelled along?

To forgive is to let go, first.  I can see how forgiveness is a ladder out of the swirling stream - a ladder I can use to step onto the platform of my true Self for a while, one with our Creator.

So, I have learned that I am NOT different from others as I have suspected all these years.  Well, let's say I am learning that.

I am not different because we are all one, and of one piece.  Our Source is the same.  If I dishonor my brother, I dishonor myself.  If I dishonor myself, I dishonor my brother.  To love myself or my brother is to heal the world.

I am not different because not only do I have the same divine capacities as my fellow travelers, but I have the same human capacities.  I can choose ugly thoughts and selfish and destructive behaviors.  I can choose God's thoughts and selfless, god-reflective behaviors.  I have it all in me.

I used to think I was so different in thought and in deed.  But I'm not.  I'm the same as anyone else.

And I look on it all with indiferent love and relinquishment.  Acceptance and hope for both immersion and transcendence.

(Even as I write this, I remember a 5th grade class where the teacher was trying to make a point about our uniqueness, I think.  She asked the "obvious" question to the class:  "If a being from outerspace were to ask you to describe humans, would you say that we are all different or all the same?"  I sat at my little desk and pondered the question.  I decided that the right answer was "all the same."  Ha.  I was surprised that according to the teacher, the other answer was the right one!)

Sometimes I'm plowed like a field, furrow after furrow through my heart.

Sometimes I'm mowed like a field, swath after swath of tall growth felled, then gathered into swirls and bales to feed the life around me.

I feel so rich because -

we have a truck AND a car, and another for our college daughter.

I am running the dishwasher at the same time as the washing machine - we have BOTH! and we have plenty of water.

I get to see deer AND horses every day as I come and go and an overabundance of beauty every hour... sunset through rhododendron petals through my church window, weeping cherry blossoms and glowing daffodils framed through my stained glass front door.

I have a desk.  Gil has a desk.  Seattle has a desk.  Mary has a desk.  HOW do we rate that each of us has a place for work and solitude and writing??

I have a church community and a family and friend community.

I have a summer quilt AND a winter quilt for my bed. 

I have a good bed.

I have a garage.

I have aching muscles because I had the leisure time to trim trees and dig weeds this weekend.

I can invite my family and friends to Massanutten Resort for relaxation.

I have a teak table coming tomorrow.

My children LOVE me.  My husband LOVES me.

I have a faithful, handsome dog.

I am surrounded by color and I can see it all.

I have a joyful heart and a healthy mind and body.

I just feel SO so RICH.

And I am grateful for it all.

So, I, heretical, marginal, free-spirit me, went to mass on Ash Wednesday.  At Saint Matthew's Cathedral in downtown D.C., with a Cardinal presiding.  I, and hundreds of other downtowners.  A holy throng of us filed in, filling every available space in the massive cathedral. 

"This is cool."  I thought.  "Look at all these people.  And I'm just one, solitary soul filing in amid the crush of people. Alone, yet I 'know' these people.  I know what to expect.  They are happy I am here."  And I was glad for my upbringing and my heritage that taught me about this community of believers and their interesting rituals.

There's a little surface irony here, if you contrast my choice to be there in the over-the-top gothic ornate, pomp and circumstance cathedral with my sitting at mass next to Seattle in our little white-washed church last Sunday, telling her I refused to support the bishop's annual Lenten Appeal because I was "mad at him. And, until he lets girls serve on the altar, I'm not giving him any money."  But, it is only surface irony.

I am not an angry Catholic.  When I enter the cathedral and sit amid its grandeur, I'm not brooding over opulence and disconnected clergy, or about archaic laws and injustice or abuse.  I am pretty much inert. I sit, without judgment; with some community memory, and with a benevolent indifference, a blank slate, an empty urn, ready to be written upon, poured into.  I'm happy.

And, I realized the reason for the irony of my going there on my own today.  It is not my solidarity with my church so much as it is my solidarity with my husband.  Being there is a way of being one with, and honoring my dear husband, who is Catholic through and through.  It is just who he is.  He is faithful to it.  He is patient with me and my occasional rantings.  I loved being there "with him" in spirit today.

So, today as I rolled into DC on my commuter bus, after just a few hours of sleep the night before, I noticed it was raining.  It wasn't supposed to rain until later.  But, it was coming down.  I hadn't brought an umbrella.  But the coat I wore did have a hood. 

I made the decision: get out and walk. Rain or shine.  So, the hood ruins my hair for the day.  Who cares.  So, I walked the 11 blocks.  I got really wet.  I could see the raindrops dripping off the hood above my bangs.  I liked that effect.

I walked and I prayed that I might be a bearer of Joy to my co-workers today.  Joy and comfort and confidence.

And I added this to my profile:  "You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction." - George Horace Lorimer

I pray today for more determination to eat right, and I praise God for the determination to keep walking.

I'll be 49 this year.  I am overweight (WAY overweight) and I'm seeing gray hairs.  I have night sweats and hot flashes.  My periods are beginning to change.  My 5th grandchild was just born yesterday.

I don't really recognize the fat me in the mirror.  I don't care for the way she looks.

I've refused to hate myself or my life or to despair over my girth, but instead, to take consistent measured steps to improve from the inside out.  I pray and meditate.  I can't remember the last time I ate ice cream.  And I have resumed my walking to work, 11 blocks in the morning, rain or shine.  I also walk at least 50 minutes a day on the weekends. 

I've been doing this since last October or November - about 5 months.  I can walk now and breathe deeply to recover quickly from the shock that my large body is moving.  And, just when I have established a nice, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other pace, clipping right along, thinking I'm doing so well, I notice... everyone and his brother is passing me.  Even old people.  HOW IN THE WORLD IS IT that I am walking so slowly, when I feel like I am making such progress? 

It is just unbelievable, unfathomable to me.  It's like this past weekend bowling with my daughters.  I know how to bowl.  I know what to do.  But none, and I mean none, of my analysis, adjustments and willpower had any effect whatsoever on my game.  I was completely powerless to change.  I have never really felt this way before.

I don't like it.  I don't understand it.  I am surprised and flummoxed.  I don't really know what to do about it.