Dear readers,
Hello!
Recently I was sharing with my students how each of us have this innate wisdom inside of us. When we are still and quiet, and have opened our will (heart) to do so, we can tap into this inner knowing. Often, this wisdom speaks without words, communicated through our bodies in movement. In the stillness is not only the physical silence; it is also about us quieting and clearing our minds of its chatter, the often internal babble or ranting filled with judgment and doubt. When we allow this subtle guidance to speak, we release barriers that inhibit us connecting in instinctive and natural ways.
As some of you may already know from previous messages, one of my favorite parables is one passed on from Cherokee wisdom about the two wolves we feed. In our dance of grace between opposites as human beings, in any given moment we are challenged to feed the wolf that embodies such things as joy, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, forgiveness, compassion, faith, and love. Or to feed the wolf that is filled with such things as anger, envy, doubt, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, inferiority, and superiority. In this human experience we each live, every moment is a dance and we each choose in those same moments how we want to experience our humanity.
Approximately twelve years ago I watched the movie “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. For those of you who have read my second book “Hope has a Cold Nose”, you may recall how I described the impact that movie had on me. It included these words I wrote. I found that I, too, desired to find and build 427 people into my scrapbook, twenty-fold. In that way that Rainer Maria Rilke writes, and the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
I thought I knew exactly how this movie touched me until I lived these past twelve years. I anticipate I am not done understanding the impact of my desire to build this scrapbook. In this now moment, with the grace (and messaging) of the very large flock of black birds stopping at our yard on their migratory flight, I understand that my desire includes inspiring people to stay connected to that innate wisdom in each of us as human beings so that we will not lose our relationship to ourselves and as humanity.
It is innate in us to be human, as it is innate in these beautiful black birds to flock together.
It is innate in us to have two wolves, as it is innate in us to be of mind, body, and soul.
It is innate in us to choose what we hear and see, as it is innate to life that the energy we embody is the legacy we leave.
I am becoming very aware of the energy I am embodying in every given moment, knowing that far greater than algorithms and the wealth of information accessible, how each of us our showing up as humans is what is shaping the future.
May each of you know that, too. YOU make a difference simply by BEING you.
Thank you for being YOU dear readers. Thank YOU for helping me build my scrapbook with the gift of each of you.
The Creases Now Speak
Patricia
Throughout the years Patricia asked herself why it had been so important to her that who she married would be a man of faith, or better said, would show he was by attending church.
The first time she asked herself why was when she had to ask Edward to carry her over the threshold of their new home. After he set her down in the foyer and started walking into the living room.
She asked herself when she raged against God after her daughter Stephanie died of Leukemia. She questioned her choice when her church condemned to hell individuals like her daughter Laura for loving someone of the same sex.
Patricia condemned herself for her decision to choose the church when her husband Edward disowned his own flesh and blood when Laura told them she was a lesbian.
Patricia was remorseful that her dear Joshua felt he had to hide his marriage to her beautiful granddaughter-in-law Kaylen. Biracial marriage was also not accepted by her church. The only acceptance was marriage until death parts, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer.
For comfortable or for longing.
To cherish from “I do” forward or to take for granted after the honeymoon ends.
That is why she broke up with Johnny the summer after they graduated from high school. Because he didn’t attend church. Because he wouldn’t go with her when she asked him to.
Patricia and Johnny started dating when they were juniors. Johnny was the handsome jock that all girls wanted to date. Football quarterback. Point guard in basketball. Pitcher in baseball. He did enough in classes to pass with B’s and C’s so that he wouldn’t jeopardize playing sports, but Johnny had no plans to attend college. His plan was to work for his uncle who owned a local construction company.
Patricia was the opposite. The thought of standing in front of a bleacher full of spectators while she led them to cheer on the team made her queasy. She didn’t believe she had the body to be a cheerleader, so she never tried out. Patricia was a straight-A student, and it was a given that she would be attending the Illinois Teachers College: Chicago South (now the Chicago State University).
They talked about getting married. Johnny was the first to mention it. He had picked up Patricia on a Saturday afternoon telling her he wanted to show her something he had found. After about 45 minutes of driving from the suburb where Patricia lived, Johnny stopped at a place where she had no idea where they were. She only knew there was a lot of trees clustered together in a vast meadow, and very few houses in a ten-mile radius. Patricia thought this must be what people meant when they referred to the “countryside.”
Johnny came around to her side of the truck and opened her door. He was always an attentive gentleman that way. Opening vehicle and building doors. Pulling out her chair at a restaurant.
When Johnny took her hand and walked her to the center of a meadow, Patricia felt like a princess, one who would follow her prince anywhere. When she asked Johnny where they were, he looked around and into the horizon then looked down at the ground and she barely heard him as he said, “the place where I want to build a home for you and I and our family one day.”
In that moment Patricia couldn’t wait for one day.
Their fingers interlocked, Johnny led her in an imaginary square, showing her where the living room would be. The kitchen. Their master bedroom. A nursery. At one point Patricia stopped and closed her eyes, imagining Johnny carrying her over the threshold of their new home, not setting her down in the foyer. Instead, he would carry her down their hall, to their bedroom, gently laying her down on their bed. He would begin to slowly unbutton his shirt, and Patricia would wonder if she should begin to undress. She would be getting naked in front of a man for the first time. She would be making love.
As Patricia stood in the outline of her future home with her eyes closed, feeling a surge of heat and energy through her pelvic area of her body, she faintly heard “sex is for procreation; sex out of wedlock is a sin.”
Patricia quickly opened her eyes and tried to shift her focus from the pleasurable ache in the mid-section of her body while she listened to Johnny talk about how he could build their home on the weekends and how he knew his uncle would help.
A few weeks later during dinner, Patricia’s parents were talking about a cousin who had just gotten engaged. Her mom was relating Patricia’s aunt and uncle’s concern that the fiancé did not attend church and how they feared their daughter was losing her way, especially given how she had talked back to them when they tried to tell her they didn’t think this young man was the right one for her. They were deeply troubled that their daughter threatened to leave home, exclaiming they would never see her again if they tried to stop her from marrying the man she loved. Patrica’s mom looked at her and Mary as she said to their father “thank the Lord our girls have not gone astray; we are so blessed our girls are good girls.”
It was shortly after that Patrica began asking Johnny to attend church with her.
The first few times Johnny gave an excuse. He needed to help his mom around the house. His uncle asked him to work. When Johnny finally told Patricia that he believed in God and that he would always support her choice to attend church, but that he would never step foot in one except for their wedding, Patricia broke up with him.
She didn’t want to go astray and end up in hell.