Finding The Quiet

Credit: Photo courtesy of Aaron Penn, photographer
There are many ways to experience one's connectedness with God. The search takes you outside and eventually leads you inside. One of my most memorable church experiences of that connection was while serving as a young women's counselor while in the LDS faith as one of several stepping stones on my path to finding God.

We were at a summer camp in the pine mountains of Arizona. We held a Sunday service in a clearing in the woods reserved for spiritual gatherings. Sitting on bleachers listening to the speaker, the sun sent illuminating rays through the trees. The slight rustling of the leaves in the breeze, birds singing their own celebration of life, and an abiding peacefulness settled in my being. I felt an aliveness and deep oneness with God. Even now there is an inner cleansing, an inner exhale, whenever I re-live that moment.

It reminds me of an earlier spiritual experience while living in Germany, spending Christmas with extended family in a small town called Selbitz. On Christmas Eve we would walk to a church in the town for a sort of midnight mass. My mother was raised Lutheran, my father Methodist, and my Grandmother was a reformed Catholic living as a Jehovah's Witness. There was something about being there, with other people wanting to experience something extraordinary, and I felt a shared connectedness. I remember how it felt to watch the procession celebrating Christ's entrance into our world, and how warm and full of light the church was. Walking home afterwards, snow falling under a cold, dark sky sparkling with light reflecting off snowflakes and lamp posts, the quiet conversations around us enveloped me in a blanket of peace that resonated on a deep, deep level.

From those earlier experiences I realize why I often find myself in the mountains today, surrounded by quivering aspen leaves, under bright blue skies and the sounds of the forest. It is there where I finally hear myself, where I feel loved and accepted, and close to something greater than my insecure self; something strong and loving and kind. It is where I go to connect with my idea of God, a benevolence that strengthens.

There is a Benedictine monk, David Steindl Rast, who shares his love for God and life, and us, through a website called www.gratefulness.org. Brother David is a vibrant living example of humble humor. He makes me want to go inside, find the best of me, and offer it to the world. He inspires me to ask, "What do I have left to give?"

Here is his gentle prayer on gratitude:


And leaves me with a sense of...

Forever Marriage

“Marriage should be forever, is that true?”

That's what I believed in my twenties and thirties and halfway through my forties. But then reality hit like a monsoon, washing away that belief in the awakening storm.
And I am left to wonder....

Throughout my life relationships flowed in and out like the ocean tide. Even family (I have relatives scattered across the globe; in Germany, Florida, Georgia and Utah). So what about marriage?

Relationships in general start out strong, the discovery-of-another-human an intriguing and intoxicating journey. Some people in our lives become constants, steadfastly with us like the North Star, while others move on like constellations (okay, I know it's really the earth that is moving) weaving in and out of our lives like the seasonally shifting night sky.

Sometimes they reappear, other times they just disappear. But often they just move on. Reasons vary; relocation, illness, divorce and death. Our family moved a lot growing up because Dad was in the military, but even when we stayed put friends drifted in and out as people developed new interests.

What this means for me is, I don't need to grieve so deeply over the losses. Which was a struggle for a very long time because when my 'forever marriage' transitioned to divorce, it seemed complicated because children were involved. And I held strong beliefs about keeping a ‘together team‘ of husband and wife raising the healthiest children possible.

As things changed I struggled with the dissolution of what we had created together. Would we tear the family we had created apart? How would we help them navigate the stormy seas of adolescence and young adulthood? How could we continue to parent while pursuing separate lives? If our children couldn't count on us to be their constants in this unpredictable world, who could they count on?

I used to believe God was the answer, but my experience was that he didn't protect you from 'bad things' happening either. So I'm thinking they need to learn to count on themselves to be able to handle whatever life brings them and trust that they are okay, because they are LOVED -- by us, by God and the world at large -- and therefore safe.

When I joined the LDS faith, I was ready to start a family. I wanted to raise healthy, happy children; spiritually, emotionally, and physically. For me that meant within a religious framework, a sort of protective life-support network.

And I loved the way it felt in the early years of the marriage; the security of our religious practices, the guidelines providing a sweet, safe arena to raise children. But as our relationship stumbled and I found myself living with an increasingly unhappy husband -- blaming me for his unhappiness -- eventually I began blaming myself until I was drowning in self-doubt.

For a long time I had leaned on my faith for strength, but eventually felt betrayed not only by my partner but by God when things got worse. And in the process, lost faith in myself.

So this is where I find myself today. Bobbing back to the surface of life’s currents, unwilling to waste any more precious energy looking for blame. Still navigating the seas of parenthood, I want to instill in our children a deep abiding faith in themselves, so that no matter what happens in this uncertain world, they will know that they are fine and loved and protected, just as they are, with nothing to change. Unless they want to.

So, is marriage forever? My answer is yes, if it works out that way. And no, if it works out that way. Reality sort of comes first, because as Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality you lose, every time.”
And when I drop the arguing, I am free to take the best of what is left and move on.


Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It's All God

While showering this (Sunday) morning, I got to musing on how religion can be like the military-- institutions with rules designed to protect and defend against something; usually something bad.

We use the military to protect ourselves from seen enemies and religion to protect ourselves against unseen enemies, which often ironically includes ourselves.

We even divide religions into segments: Baptists, Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals and Christian Scientists like we separate the U.S. military into Air Force, Navy, Army Marines, and Coast Guard not to mention the elite forces like the Green Berets or Navy Seals.

Holy cow, we seem to find a lot of ways to separate ourselves from each other.

But what if, there is nothing to defend or protect ourselves from? What if it's all God? Everything? Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, and all the rest? In our quest for protection and defense, are we actually just fending off Life itself?

What if we don't have to GO anywhere or DO anything to BE WITH God? Maybe God is with us, all of us; right here, right now, anywhere and everywhere we happen to find ourselves. And that could be at church, the laundry room, a battlefield, a bar, or a meadow. In a temple, a cathedral, a mosque, a chapel, a pagoda or a forest.

Maybe we are already okay; safe and blessed and protected. Maybe we already are free.



Credit: photo courtesy of free digital photos