2011.06.19 Trinity, Seamless Garment

It’s Trinity Sunday, time set aside to remember Godde: Holy Divine Three AND One.

I can not imagine a truly seamless garment.

As someone who used to do lots of sewing I know how important seams are and how hard they are to place, straighten and smooth. Seams make boundaries between different kinds of fabric, parts of a pattern designed to fit different parts of a human body, itself full of seams called alternately joints, ligaments or muscles. (If you’re my age, think wrinkles too.)

Body seams delineate functions and demarcate body parts to make sure one part doesn’t intervene or intrude on another. Seams also connect one part to another—loosely.

Seams are orderly, discrete and, depending on the fabric, hard to execute. When I made the bridesmaids’ dresses for my sister’s wedding out of ecru velvet, the cut and pattern were easy but the seams were difficult—long running lines in the lush thick of velvet that stuck and bunched and didn’t cooperate. If a seam isn’t flat the line of the dress looks uneven, bumpy, ugly like a sudden pimple on your nose when you’re fifteen.

There are seams on books too. If you break one you do worse than breaking your mother’s back.

When I would sit in Mercy Center’s chapel on retreat kneeling on a pillow below the tabernacle and the ceiling-to-floor rose portrait it often felt like a seamless continuity a flow with no hardline stitches.

Tabernacle, rose and I, we three totally dissimilar AND one seamless line of being.

In Godde there is no need for categories, territories, borders, no trespassing signs because though different we are all one.

How lovely would be a seamless religion with no need for fear or aggression or proofs or denominational strictures. We would look different in our clothing, trappings, tenets, structures and song according to our churchly and worldly cultures, but we would have the same soul—and know it.

Seam rippers are sharp, small painstaking tools used to remove seams. To rip a seam takes patience, care, courage, commitment, risk, grief and more love than one alone can muster.

Still, Godde is a Seamstress. It is Her design and Her way.

So to honor the seamless Trinity, the long green pentecostal season and Godde the Seamstress, I pray..............

SEW ME A SEAM OF FINEST SILK
DON’T LET YOUR SEAM END LEST THE THREADS
THAT MARK ITS END ARE PULLED
AND THE ELEGANT FLOW OF FABRIC BECOMES
COCOON, OR WORSE, COSMIC CORSET.
UNSEAM ME, DEAR GODDE,
ONE TINY STITCH AT A TIME.
THEN BREAK MY HEART WITH YOUR GRANDEUR.

2011.06.15 Human Animals?

The editor’s page of the June issue of Presence, journal of Spiritual Directors International, began with an invitation to complete this sentence: THE HUMAN BEING IS THE ONLY ANIMAL THAT......

My first thought was “believes in Godde.” Or, in sophisticated Neibuhrian language, “can self-transcend.”

My next thought was “thinks s/he is not an animal” and I thought this second was more gut-wrenchingly honest.

I don’t know if animals believe in Godde or not; nor can I know if they self-transcend, behave on more than baseline instinct for survival.

My daughter Jill has always loved animals, secretly more than people. She talks to them and tells me they communicate to her or at least she can understand them in her gifted way of loving them. And she has lots of them.

Animals, particularly horses, dogs, cats and certain apes demonstrate intelligence and awareness of heart. Once a horse followed his owner to a lakeside, nudging at her all the way with his velvety nose and imploring with a low whinny that sufficed for words of life-giving compassion—enough to dissuade the young owner from her intent to take her own life.

And I have watched squirrels patiently give their little ones fence-top skittering and nest compilation lessons. And birds place small Blue Jays in the driveway each waiting their turn for their own personal flying lesson.

There is a continuum of creation not a rank order. Creator God is in all of it to the same degree. There is no spiritual hierarchy as human beings imagine. It is all good.

THE HUMAN BEING IS THE ONLY ANIMAL THAT THINKS S/HE IS NOT AN ANIMAL.

The human being might resist the temptation to lift the phrase in the Genesis creation story that has YHWH/God exclaim VERY GOOD about humanity. Get humble.

P.S. The Presence editor suggested this completion: “The human being is the only animal that can learn to live with the mystery of not-knowing.” Another possibility.

2011.06.12 Pentecost. What About Israel?

It’s the day of Pentecost for Christians, a day we celebrate the Holy Spirit, an honored member of the Trinity, the self-expression of Godde that is pure energy in motion. Spirit pulls for transformative healing connections throughout creation. The Spirit represents the breadth, the reach of divine compassion. I call Her the Great Connector.

A good friend and writing companion brought me to attention recently asking a question about Israel. She didn’t say What about Israel but wondered if lawn signs might be in order to remind people not to forget Israel and not to abandon her.

It’s a question again of balance, or both/and not either/or.

The concern brought me up short. Of course we haven’t forgotten Israel. How could we? I plan to visit her in 2012.

But concern for Palestinian displacements and harsh defensive Israeli politics has perhaps displaced compassion for Israel. She is a little country with so much at stake, a country that is also full of innocent people who are afraid of losing a dear homeland. Everyone needs a dear homeland and there is room for all.

Spirit helps people and leaders bend without breaking. This peace is Her job now.

If I were to put up a yard sign it would say something like SAVE ISRAEL TOO.

2011.06.08 Sacramental Dentistry

One would not normally associate a visit to one’s dentist with anything but pain. But in this case I received radical hospitality, spirituality talk for extending to all warm welcome and first class compassion with grace.

The office staff was warm, natural and humorous sharing their confusion about an insurance recipient named “Ee-pis-CO-ple.” We have insurance with the Episcopal Church.

The dentist took time to find out who I was other than the info form. The assistant was equally relational. They went over every tooth in my mouth, all numbered and with each one’s own pride of place and identity. Every move was thoroughly explained and I was asked if I had questions my comfort level checked at every point.

Dr. Gregory André, Silver Lake Dental in Willmington, MA., had a way of jiggling my cheek whereby the Novacain needle did its business with absolutely no pain. Light interesting conversation went on about their weekends above me as the drill did its job. A nice distraction.

While I waited for camera and computer to be set up the assistant Barbara gave me a shoulder massage!

A little camera went into my mouth, took a picture that registered onto a nearby computer where I watched André fashion the tooth that would go into my mouth.

In a half hour VOILA a crown was inserted into the emptiness and I had a new tooth. (If you will need a crown don’t wait till the tooth breaks and you then need root canal.)Is this laproscopic or its equivalent?

The whole procedure took about two hours. When it was done the dentist and the assistant thanked each other and they thanked me for my good work as a patient. Amazing!

The experience was entirely mutual, non-hierarchal, all of us experts, all of us with necessary gifts to give to the task. I was included and my dignity and needs were as important as theirs.

I felt safe, held and, yes loved, the entire time.

And when I went out I found I’d locked my keys in the car and didn’t freak just calmly took the appropriate actions.

This dental practice is a sacrament: an outer sign of an inward and spiritual whole-heartedness.

2011.06.05 Slow Down for Sabbath

Today in the world the weather slows us down; in fact it can bring some of us to a grinding halt, forcing us to to pay attention.

Occasionally going to Church can slow us down, praying in silence and in community, listening to lessons, sermons, or drifting free; or listening to music or your lover’s breathing next to you—or your own.

I don’t think the current measure of time is a clock. I think it is a speedometer. To wit:


Now I Become Myself
by May Sarton

Now I become myself.
It's taken
Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

"Hurry, you will be dead before--"

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O,in this single hour I live
All by myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran.
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun.

2011.05.31 Three Muses on Spiritual Writing

I have been guided along my way by three Muses—Religion, Spirituality, Feminism. The three often contend for my soul and they also come together as one when it matters most.

These three Muses taught me:

-that Religion offers nourishing gifts like Eucharist, the Bible, and Jesus
-that institutions though clumsy are not the enemy, and that most communal efforts are organized in some way, hopefully placing equal value on every part of the whole.
-that patriarchy is not men’s fault and that women must help to change it for the sake of relationships
-that Spirituality is not only a catch basin for deep and true feelings but an inner crucible where the divine Spirit stokes holy fires within individuals and also takes divine energy beyond the one to the many, igniting healing connections and creating human community
-that Feminism wherever She lands is a force for justice helping realize the radically egalitarian dream that all creation is one and a beloved community is possible
-that all genders, and today there are many variations, are holy
-that some day Femin-ism won’t be needed to urge us along


Spiritual writing at its best pays attention to the Muses as it seeks to plumb the depth dimension of people, places and things. It seeks within the holy, divine, eternal, beyond. It speaks of Mystery which can not be measured replicated or contained in any way because it is not yours; you don’t make it happen; and it does not belong to you though it is graciously given and shared with you.

The paradox of spiritual writing is this: you have to write it, to put it into some kind of words, but the more you try to explain or define it the more it sluices away from you. (See, I've just tried to do it anyway!)

So just write! (Bull Durham as a hesitant baseball player at bat was told: Just bat!)

Write your words. Write it down. If your words are true and deep they may by accident or grace communicate Mystery to someone else.

That’s all you want isn’t it?

2011.05.30 Time to Remember (Memorial Day)

I remember summers on the farm in Ancramdale NY.

On the farm I learned everything I ever needed to know about life, death, love, terror and courage.

I saw a horse birthing a colt, feet first. I saw a surgeon slash open one of a cow’s four stomachs, heard the blood splash onto the concrete floor, smelled the stink of gastric air that rushed out, cringed as the gloved arm of the surgeon plunged in and pulled out a piece of hardware the cow had swallowed. God knew how. The cow ate during the procedure.

I rode my pony bareback into the swimming hole, buried my face in his mane and felt safe as large water rats sluiced by. My friend and I on our ponies herded the cows back to the barn to be milked each evening. One cow was missing. We found her and had to watch her sink to her death in quick mud, the last bellow, the last reach of one nostril snatching at life as it disappeared—while we stood by helpless.

There were rats in the old farmhouse. We stuffed old newspapers into their large holes. Rats once chewed the flesh off a baby. The father a farmhand caught as many rats as he could and burned them alive nose down on a hot stove burner. He had to hear them scream like his baby had before she died.

Even sex. The bull mounted the cow and hopped around while she bellowed—then she resumed eating. My mother told me it was the way they made babies, that she and Daddy did that too, and that it was the most beautiful thing two people could do. There’s only so much a six year old’s imagination can bear.

I learned the freedom of wind in my hair, dirt on my face, and bare feet pounding and toughening on dirt roads. I learned that cornfields whisper and, like Godde, hold all secrets sacred.

Once I watched my father, along with Farmer Kurt and another hand, herd a raging bull onto the back of a truck using pitchforks. It wasn’t enough protection. What if the bull killed my Daddy? I knew what bulls could do. My father was city not country. This wasn’t something he knew about. I saw the fear creep into his eyes. But he stuck it out. He did his brave part. I was proud of him.

What I remember most though was how much I loved him for his answer to my question, “Daddy were you afraid?” He said, “Yes I was, my darling.” Then he hugged me and planted a kiss on my forehead. My Daddy, so brave and so scared all at once. A hero.

Isn’t that what Memorial Day is all about?