how do you know ...?

I wish I had thought to take a picture of the storytellers stick I was given after my first week of camp being a storyteller. My storyteller stick stands about 4 feet tall and is woven so the gathered sticks, which are light and flexible, swirl upward. During the second week of being the storyteller for the camp of nine to twelve year old children, since I now had a stick, I explained that when the story-stick was held in the upward position it signaled 'listening time' and so it would be best if they closed their mouths and opened their ears so the magic within the story could be revealed.

What the children didn't know was that each morning when I entered the hall where the children would gather, I pictured the stick as full of the power of the Spirit and called upon this Spirit to be with me as I told the story. Good thing I had the power of the Spirit with me because early last week as I told the story of Jesus' baptism and then told the children that just as Jesus had the experience of being told he was 'the beloved son in whom God was very pleased'; that this experience was also true for each of them: Each of us is the beloved child of God. And since each of us is living, then each of us have been chosen and God is pleased that we are alive.

As I finished telling the story and sharing my conviction of being the beloved child of God, a small hand raised in the air: "how do you know God exists?"

This is exactly what I love about working with young children; they go directly to the heart of the matter. Children have an inherent reverence for story and therefore are able to simply walking right into the middle of the plot: how do you {meaning me} know that God exists? In other words, if you can't tell me how you know God exists, then I think I'll forget the whole thing right now.

Working with young people requires not only conviction {understanding, knowledge and knowing} of what you believe but the ability to think fast on one's feet. The reason I put conviction as the first requirement is that to be trusted as a teacher of small children, you must speak only truth. Children have a finely tuned sense of smell for lies and they will dismiss you as inconsequential to their life if you lie to them. If truth is required for being effective then it is essential that you know what you believe. Also, without conviction of what you believe, it is really hard to be fast on your feet!

So there I am as storyteller with a dozen little faces looking to me ready to hear what I believe and out of my mouth come the words "have you ever experienced love?"

"Yes," his head nods.

"Was the love big and really good?"

A moment passes and I see him thinking about this question, and then he nods and says, "yes, it was."

"That is how I know God exists." I answer. "God is only love - that is all God is, love - and when I experience love, I know that love, the ability to love and experience love, comes from God. When I experience love, I am experiencing God."

I watched him take in my words, and then he seemed to swallow them as if to say, 'well that is worth considering.'

If you have ever worked with children then you are aware that after this exchange which maybe took two minutes, we just moved forward with the story and the experience of the story as if we hadn't been asked one of the most profound questions in existence. This is another great thing about working with children, they keep you rooted in the reality that life is about taking in an experience and then just moving forward: life is about living.

In some ways I was fortunate in being asked the question as the concept of knowing God's existence by experiencing love as well as being an experience of love for other people had been the basis of the class I had taught in church school this past year for the same age group. It was because of teaching that church school class that I used the word experience rather than the word feel when referring to love.

Experience means to have a practical acquaintance with; involvement and participation in. Generally then, experience indicates actions and behaviors that we are engaged by. When love is seen from this perspective of behavior then the words of Jesus, "love one another as I have loved you" not only make sense but the instruction has clarity.

Making sense out of this instruction was the basis of the teaching I did last year and what I came to understand was that the word love expressed in this context indicates goodness as an experience of living. When I experience 'goodness' in life then I am experiencing love. As I explored how this goodness revealed itself, I realized that goodness is not at all abstract. Goodness is quite concrete for we know what goodness is: goodness as love is kindness toward, consideration of, generosity of and toward, patience with , merciful with and the word I love; benevolent toward - the attitude of a warm-heart. These are the behaviors which allow for the experience of love.

I added the italicized words after each descriptive word for goodness to indicate each is an action word. I once read a book titled God is a Verb and it made the deep impression that God as the activity of creative goodness, always expands outward into life.

Therefore if each of us has been created to be an expression of God, then it follows that we also are called to be actively engaged in the behaviors expressing love which move outward and expand life. After all, there might be some child or maybe even a more grown-up person who is wrestling with the question of the existence of God and is asked to consider, have you ever experienced love? I firmly believe that God counts on - is dependent upon each of us - to be the answer to that question.

Just a note for you

I was able to edit the posting Drink Beauty and re-post it, however, I noticed when I went to the email where I receive postings that apparently when an edit to an existing post is done, the edited posting is not sent out. Or, at least I did not receive one in my email. So, if anyone would like to read a completed version of Drink Beauty, just clink on thankyoumagic.blogspot.com and it should be there beneath this post and the oops post. Blessings to each and all ...

Oooops !!!!

I just received my email version of the 'Drink beauty' blog and reading it I discovered that the ending has somehow been lost. I had problems when I went to post it and when I finally found the draft version I was so relieved and thrilled, I simply hit post without checking it ... where the ending has gone is one of those cyber mysteries.

Please accept the my apologies for this goof ... hopefully the intended message is still comprehensible since I will not have the opportunity or time to correct the post until tomorrow. Blessings to you.

Drink beauty - Redone

As I mentioned in the 'oops' posting, part of the original post for Drink Beauty became lost in cyber space. After reading it today and then mulling on what a friend said, I simply edited a few things and rearranged and edited the last couple paragraphs. Hope you enjoy.

Many, many years ago I was in the midst of an emotionally difficult time and so my morning patio time prayers seemed to be composed primarily of 'Please show me a way to feel better God. What should I do God?" Morning after morning I pleaded to be shown some action I could take that would lead me to a different place emotionally.

I suppose sooner or later I ran out of breath and began listening rather than just pleading, for an answer arrived with simple clarity, in the voice I recognized as coming from deep within my being: drink beauty. Two words ridiculously simple in their intention and yet containing an action that was not on my personal radar at the time: drink beauty.

At times I can be ridiculously concrete in responding to directions and so my response to the injunction drink beauty was to head to the library and root around in the art section where I found books full of glorious pictures of beauty. I checked out some selections and spent part of my patio time each day simply leafing through the books drinking the colors and forms of beauty artists had created.

Yesterday on my way down from camp I was sitting outside a restaurant where the view of Thumb Butte was glorious. As I starred at the outcropping of rock rising into the sky: drinking in the beauty of creation, I remembered an incident at a parish family camp held at Chapel Rock when the boys were quite young. Possibly this was the first time we were attending family camp because after lunch people talked about going to 'the tubs' and I decided to go there with the boys too, but for whatever reason we weren't organized in time to leave with the group and so I was given directions.

Now, giving me, one of the most directionally challenged people I know,directions to a place hidden in the rocks and trees of a camp in a forest area I was completely unfamiliar with falls into the category of foolishness. Within a ridiculously short period of time I, and my three young sons, were completely and utterly lost. Despite the fact that I knew I was lost, I was determined to keep going and so I kept moving and becoming more and more lost. Soon everything around me seemed totally unfamiliar. To say I was panicky is an understatement: a thoroughly urban mother lost in woods with three small urban boys, I was actually terrorized. Finally I simply stopped and told the boys I needed to think for a bit and figure out what to do next. Luke, who at the time was maybe four years old, pointed to Thumb Butte sitting solidly against a gloriously blue sky framed in tree tops and said, "look at the beauty Mom and you'll find the way."

Sure enough, silly as his 'direction' seemed at the time, by taking a few moments to see that the area I was standing in was full of nature's beauty, the panicky feeling was replaced with the sensible thought that since the camp was actually situated in a populated area, we therefore were not lost in a wilderness {which is how I had been feeling}. As this awareness of reality settled into my mind, I saw the telephone wires strung from their poles and realized that if we headed in their direction we would most likely come to a road close to camp. We did head in the direction of the wires and soon came to a road with houses where a nice person let me use their phone and we were soon rescued by amused old-timers of the camp.

Yesterday afternoon after unpacking the piles of bags and boxes from two weeks away from home, I was clearing a bookshelf to create a place for a gift the camp's program director had given me. moving the books I saw one that intrigued me and so I flipped through it's pages: "There is a sense of being taken out of ourselves when we see beauty." The words leaped off the page and, as happens so many times, I was astonished at how a truth I had been reminiscing about just that morning - the sensation of having panic removed as I took a few moments to experience the beauty all around me - was confirmed a new way.

Drink beauty and Look at the beauty and you'll find the way: both of these phrases reflect a truth about the how of living that seems essential if we humans are to not become lost during times of emotional chaos. I tend to think of emotional chaos as an experience of live wires tangled in my belly, glowing neon color and pulsating with energy that seems in conflict with the energy of the nest of wires it lays in. When I have this experience of emotional chaos, as these conflicting, pulsating energies boil within my self, a part of me always begins to panic as a sense of powerless over these tangled energies grows into the fear that there is no way out of what I am feeling. In the experience of emotional chaos I always become caught in the confines of my single self: a self that is tangled in an emotional reactions which feel overwhelmingly lonely in their confusion.

Being caught in the confines of emotional chaos causes an anguish in the human heart that often feels all encompassing. Ask any woman who has experienced the labor necessary for birthing new life and she will tell you that while she is caught in the grip of the contractions needed to move new life through the birth canal, there is nothing else happening in her experience of living at the moment. Because of this truth about birthing: (birthing any major piece of life for that matter, not just babies) when we attend classes about how to do labor, we are taught breathing techniques. When I myself went through this process, it wasn't until I was in my umpteenth hour of labor that I realized that the 'breathing' doesn't actually lessen the experience of the contraction, rather it is the focusing away from the pain and into the structured ritual of breathing that makes the process more bearable. By deliberately choosing to begin to breathe as I was taught when another contraction began, I was able to focus away from the 'complete' experience of being in pain and add another element to my experience, an element that I actually had some control over , and by this act of will, I could keep myself from panicking which is the what often happens in pain: the fear that the pain will never end.

As I heard within myself so many years ago while sitting on the patio in early morning light and pleading to be given a way out of my lonely self, the answer is to drink beauty for as my then quite young son said pointing to the mountain, look at the beauty and you'll find the way. Experiencing beauty deeply, that is paying close enough attention so that you are drinking in what your eyes see or your ears hear, takes us beyond our self. Beyond; a lovely word indicating past or outside of: past the pain, outside of the self in pain, beyond the confines of loneliness.

What never ceases to amaze me about this truth contained in the choice to engage beauty is that we are not being asked to do anything difficult: to change the feeling of the moment, all we need do is to lift our eyes away from the view that full of trouble and find a piece of beauty {which is everywhere - how clever was the Creator in that particular design!} and simply gaze at the beauty long enough to swallow the experience. Swallowing is essential to the act of drinking.

Drink beauty and let it fill you: do this act with deliberate intent several times a day and I will guarantee that you will be shown a new way - a new experience of - living.

our choice for engaging

This is a quick posting as I must still pack my suitcase and finish tidying the kitchen before I head back up the mountain but I wanted to share an awareness I had while on my patio this morning: I am able to learn patience toward living because I experience the unfailing patience of God with me!

Thirty some years ago when I first began living a program of recovery I was told a story about how to cope with confusion and chaos. One day a traveler came upon an ancient Bedouin living in the desert. The desert was large and as is the nature of deserts, dry and dusty and therefore around where the traveler and Bedouin sat, swirling 'devils' of dust rose from the floor of the desert scattering their energy and dust. As the traveler shielded his face from the blowing dust he asked the Bedouin, 'how do you live with these swirling dust devils?' The Bedouin peered into the distance as though seeing the swirling dust for the first time, shrugged and said, 'well, I just let them whirl.'

Oh, I thought hearing the story thirty some years ago, I suppose that makes sense; just let the dust whirl. In a lot of ways, I immediately intuited the point of the fable: dust tends to swirl so let it do what it does. I was however missing a rather vital piece needed in order to live as the old Bedouin did in the midst of whirling dust, and so although my intuiting was correct, my knowing: that is,understanding having seeped through my Being, so I could live from my intuiting, had yet to be acquired. The piece that needed to be acquired was the understanding that allowing dust devils to swirl as is their nature and yet not be exhausted by their swirling required that I choose to not engage their swirling - their whirling - their chaos and their confusion.

Not choosing to engage chaos and confusion has taken/is taking/does take learning how to be awake and aware of what is happening in the moment: a deliberate commitment to mindfulness. Acquisition of mindfulness is essential to allowing dust devils to be over there rather than jumping into their whirl because it is only by being mindful of the moment that I am able to be deliberate in the choosing of my thinking attached to the moment. Without knowing what my thoughts actually are attached to in the moment, my human tendency is rather to become fascinated by any kind of energetic activity and if we are not deliberate in creating our own energy our tendency is to jump into or onto the energy created by a separate situation. Often when we do this we engage turmoil.

Turmoil is simply confusion and agitation. The picture at the top of this posting is called turbulent waters and wonderfully illustrates the power of roiling energy continually thrust into a mass of boiling energy. When we engage turmoil we also then boil with the energies of confusion, agitation, anxiety, hostility, fear, nastiness, self righteousness and resentment. Whenever I am experiencing any of those feelings what I know is that I have somehow jumped into the dust devil and am whirling with it's energy. I have chosen - for whatever reason - to engage turmoil.

The reason I said at the beginning of this posting that I am learning patience as I become aware of God's infinitely kind patience with me is that although I had been given the story of dust devils thirty plus years ago and I have been trying to learn how to live it's meaning, it was only a couple weeks ago that the 'ah-ha' light bulb gleamed with understanding.

The light bulb lit up when I read a morning meditation with the rather simple {not to mention obvious} injunction do not choose to engage turmoil. I responded to those words with 'you mean experiencing turmoil is a choice I make?' Fortunately the meditations are good ones and it went on to answer my question by explaining that emotional turmoil always involves people and I always have the choice both in how I choose to see people as well as my choice of how {i.e., the manner in which} I involve myself with people. Duh!!! that is kind of obvious!!! Except .....

You see I was one of those annoying kids in class who heard something the teacher said and then raised my hand with a 'yeah, but, in this situation ....' That part of my self has mellowed a bit but my mind still tends to go 'well, that may be true a lot of the time but what about .....' I mean if you are river rafting through the rapids and the water is boiling all around you in turmoil it would be foolish to say 'oh whatever' and ignore the rather obvious fact that turmoil is occurring!

What about that situation?!?

I told you I have learned a bit of patience by experiencing God's patience and I swear to you as I 'thought' that scenario into consciousness I could hear/feel God's Spirit sigh and then patiently answer with: 'first of all, 'whatever' as a response to anything is not acceptance, it is the cop out of refusing to care about the well being of other people. Secondly if you are running the rapids in a river then most likely you made a choice to engage the sport of river rafting. Thirdly, you are not in a river running the rapids as a naked body bobbing about in the boiling water. That would be a truly dumb choice. If you have chosen to enjoy white water rafting as a sport then you are equipped with knowledge of how to engage the sport and you are in a 'boat' of some sort: control the boat and don't dip your oars into turbulent water!

Control the boat and don't dip my oars into turbulent water. When I 'heard' that phrase as I was picturing my dramatic scene in the white water rapids, I felt the light bulb shine, for in that moment I realized that choosing to engage turmoil was as foolish as thinking that one could control the direction of a boat running the rapids of a river, by digging into the water with their oar: a sure and proven way to become capsized as the boiling energy of the water will always be stronger than an oar. The only use for oars in that situation is to lay across the water and thus become a boundary for the water to push against thus allowing a bit of direction in the chaos.

As I 'watched' this picture in my mind, I began to understand that my 'boat' was NOT my 'self' - hello Mary! the self is in the boat! So what is the boat? What are the oars? The boat is created from my beliefs: the truths that are the foundation of how I choose to live. This being true, I can only control my boat if I have clarity about what I believe, what truth is contained in those beliefs and how I go about engaging those truths. My oars are the activity; the energy of engaging life with my choices: my perceptions, the thoughts arising from how I perceive and then the how of using my perceptions and thoughts as behaviors.

So, what I finally realized thirty years after hearing the story of the traveler, the Bedouin and the dust devils is that how and what I experience as I go about living depends completely on my choice of engagement. What I engage i.e., involve myself in, within any situation is what I will experience: engage love; experience love: engage delight; experience delight: engage learning; experience growth: engage the unknown with curiosity; experience adventure: engage adventure; experience creativity .... and on and on and on. Actually, what I am now learning is that the longer my personal list of engage - therefore becomes, the more options I have when I see the whirling dust of turbulence on the horizon.

So, here's the upshot of the whole thing: never give up on learning because the Source of all Knowledge never ever gives up on us - all we are asked to do is to remain an open and willing student. {I know, I'm tiresome on this, however, the best way to be an open and willing student is to set aside time each morning to actively engage the energy you want to be part of. Your discipline of practice is what creates your ability to learn and grow} If willingness is indeed evoked, I can guarantee that understanding does in fact arrive .... which actually is kind of fun as I learn that in fact an old dog CAN indeed learn new tricks!

Note: I am now off to pack my suitcase and head up the mountain to be a teacher and storyteller at church camp where I have no personal access to the internet and thus, no ability to post. Blessings to each of you and I will visit again when I return in a week.

Sixteen months ago I was reading one day when a series of words flashed like they were neon lights blinking insistently and telling me: "this message is for you. Take it in: embrace the these words; engage them, chew on them: know their meaning."

This experience of direct message to my Spirit {from The Spirit, I believe} is not a frequent happening and yet, the above occurrence was not a new one either and so I paid attention and grabbed an index card from the packet I keep handy for notes, ideas, reminders and words that blink as neon lights.

The words blinking at me belong to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I am (he said) an organ through which the Spirit executes it's will and creative power." I have now lived with Emerson's words for over a year, speaking them aloud several times a day, honoring them with their own candle as I whisper the words and light a flame knowing that with this ritual, I open the door of my Spirit so the energy of the words may burn within me.

When I am given a gift such as Emerson's words I know that in order to make the words mine - to know them - requires more than just reading and thinking. Knowing requires that I engage them and to this end, I wrote them; I wrote about them, I drew an image of what 'engagement' means for me, and the words themselves are taped to the side of my end table where I see them as I sit in my chair for I have discovered that seeing the same words at different times of the day is like a horizon seen from different viewpoints.

The most important act of engagement was that I took the words with me each morning onto my patio where I sit in the silence of a newly born day thanking the Spirit of Life for a new day and for the guidance I receive as I move out into and through the day. Emerson's words became my words as they moved into the ritual of my meditation and prayer.

Committed to engaging the words that were given to me (engage indicates being involved with and becoming entangled in) I took time to reflect on how I was experiencing the truth of the words in my life. I reflected on the concept of the word execute: to carry out; fulfill; accomplish. Execute is a very powerful word and Emerson was brilliant in his understanding of words and so I knew it was the correctly chosen word and therefore the power of the word was not to be dismissed. I chewed on the idea of allowing myself to be 'used' in this manner. I sat with the idea of being an organ - a Being - through which a plan: a 'willing through' is carried out. Was I okay with this? Was I willing to agree to these words? We are self-choosing individuals and so the Power of the Spirit would wait for my agreement - my personal yes before 'using' me as it's personal 'organ'.

Yes is also a powerful word. Actually yes is possibly the most powerful word in the world for yes opens doors and windows of the self to experiences that remain closed until our personal yes is said. What I was also aware of however is that the older we become, the more difficult it is to say a big yes; an unequivocal yes (you know, the kind of yes that is said without addendum's) because the older and more experienced we become the more aware we are of the truth of saying yes. The truth of saying yes is that we have no guarantee of what the yes is attached to - we do not actually know all the doors and windows the Spirit will open when we say our yes. Our own past experiences of taking 'vows' of saying 'yes' has a tendency to make us wary and cautious - whether we admit to this truth or not! I know very few 'adults' who are not wary with their yeses. Actually I admire people who are least honest about their wariness in saying 'yes' for I know immediately that they understand the power of yes. Better to wait and chew on our willingness than to say a mediocre yes!

Sooner or later however, if we say our yes and willingly engage the message we are given (hard to miss flashing neon lights) and we then follow the guidance guaranteed in the idea of actually 'being' an organ through which Spirit executes will and creative power, understanding of the meaning - meaning as I personally experience the words - begins to dawn. And so it was this morning as I sat on the patio engaged in my morning time of prayer, meditation, study & reflection, and then BAM!! it hit me: I am a coffee maker of the Spirits will and creative power!

First of all, please know I love coffee so I'm actually pleased at the idea of being a coffee maker used by the Universe. I am in fact a connoisseur of coffee: I blend my beans, I grind them fresh for each pot of robust, bold, delicious and delightful coffee. Daily I engage this ritual of coffee creation and so I am familiar with the process of pouring in water, grinding beans, putting the grounds in the basket, flipping on the switch and KNOWING the end result will be a pot of glorious coffee. Which, I realized today is exactly the same process I engage each day on my patio: I sit in my chair and offer thanks to the Spirit of Life for this day of pouring through me - the water has been poured into the pot of me. I offer myself: the seeds - the beans - of the unique individual named Mary whom God placed on earth here and now with my quite human personality traits, gifts, abilities and quirks: the 'grounds' of my being are now sitting in the basket. I flip the on switch of yes by engaging the ritual that begins each day of my life: sitting on the patio and being intimately engaged with the Creator of all and each: I pray, read, write, color mandalas, study {any combination of those}: these are my actions speaking my yes and from my commitment to their practice I KNOW that the power of the Spirit of Life is now pouring through my Being in the exact manner of the the water dripping into the basket and creating coffee. Voila!! I am the organ through which the Spirit of Life now executes It's will and creative power.

Does the fact that I know myself to be an organ of the Spirit mean I think I am now perfect? Not at all perfect - which is not unusual as nothing human is perfect - for the Spirit must be content to use my quite human self to pour through. What I do know however is that every day that I am willing to engage the practices; the actions and rituals of availability, I am enlarged. The more I am enlarged the bigger the space within me for carrying the Spirit of life becomes and in this way, my Being becomes bold, robust and delicious with flavor - despite it's human imperfection.

Each of us carries this potential Emerson spoke of so poetically for {I believe} this is the design of Creation: we are the carriers of the Spirit of Life into the world. However, just as a process must be engaged in order to drink of this glorious beverage called coffee, so too must we engage in a process in order to be effectively used as an organ through which the Spirit executes It's will and creative power.

We are self choosing individuals and so we have many options for how completely we are willing to be used by the Power of Life just as we have options for the quality of coffee we drink: we can choose to run into a coffee place and accept what is being served and made by them; we can make instant {personally I don't see the point} or we can learn how to make the coffee that fits our taste buds most perfectly and therefore provides the greatest pleasure.

Here's the other thing to consider: how frequently do you wish to enjoy a cup of coffee that is perfect for your taste buds? Personally, I want wonderful coffee daily and so too do I want to be a coffee maker of the Spirit daily. To get the best coffee possible I engage my coffee preparation and making ritual daily and to be the best possible coffee maker of the Spirit I engage my ritual and practices for that daily also.

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Just a note: this is a crazy summer for me of going in and out of town and so I apologize for not being consistent with my Postings. I leave again tomorrow for another wonderful week of teaching at church camp and since I have not yet 'received' instructions on how to obtain a laptop with WiFi capability, unless I get really organized and post one tomorrow before I leave again, this is the last one until I return a week from today. Blessings to all.