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What do cancer, mediation and gun control have in common?

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

What in the world could be the connection between these three–and oranges?

Well, like all of America and maybe all of the world, I’ve been thinking a lot and feeling a lot about guns and violence, and wondering what can be done. And though I don’t have answers, here are some thoughts about healing the divide.

I’m a two-time breast cancer survivor and the third generation out of four to go through this journey. My mother and grandmother died of breast cancer, and in 2016, my older daughter was diagnosed and treated. And so, a disease has run through my lineage that needs healing.

The same is true for our country and for the world. For generations, violence has disrupted our potential to live peaceful lives. And now, the symptoms of the dis-ease have erupted into a great divide: between conservatives and liberals, or pro vs. anti gun control.

In both cases, it isn’t really that we need to win a war against cancer, or a war against the other party. It’s that we need a healing.

And how do we go about healing cancer? Well, we can take advantage of all the allopathic or technical, scientific strategies we know now. I certainly did, and so did my daughter. But we also took advantage of all the alternative strategies, those on the cutting edge of what we are just beginning to realize.

To live in both the strategic world and the spiritual one—the world of the healing arts—requires a mediation between two ways of thinking, two world views. One says the way to deal with problems is to attack them with the weapons we have available. The other says the way to deal with problems is to reach out to them with love, compassion, with deep thinking and feeling, and with a sense of curiosity and willingness to step into a better future.

One approach is intellectual, and essentially masculine in nature. Left-brained. The other is essentially heart-based and feminine in nature. Right brained.

Do we really want to perpetuate a war between these two approaches? I think this will lead toward more violence, inner and outer. What the real healing will be is a mediation, a union of the two. Just as it is in a troubled marriage.

Mediators ask us to look beneath the positions people take and to discover their real interests. Fighting over an orange? Don’t rush to just cut it in half as a settlement. Why does each of them want it in the first place? One may want the juice and the other the pulp. The orange turns out to be the common interest, not the source of conflict.

What does each side want in the argument over gun control? I would venture a guess that the common interest is in protection. Of course we all want to be protected.

Let’s begin by just breathing into that. The argument isn’t over that. It’s about how to best protect.

The argument happens because of fear. People who are afraid of their second amendment rights being taken away are afraid. So are people who are afraid their child may be shot at school.

So let’s begin the mediation with compassion for all those who are afraid. Fear blocks real reason.

When we have compassion for our own fear and compassion for another’s as well, we can begin to move toward the next step. Which is to take a serious look at what is working and what is not working to protect us.

That conversation is being furthered right now by the young people affected by all that has happened. Let us keep our hearts open in compassion as the conversation—the mediation—moves forward.

 

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Posted in creativity and empowerment, heart-centered leadership, policy making, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

The Rise of the Feminine

Thursday, December 7th, 2017

While the super moon was rising over the mountain above our house last Sunday, it also rose large and colorful over the Capitol. Can’t resist seeing the metaphor.

The moon is usually connected to all that is feminine. And the feminine is definitely rising over the Capitol—in a large and colorful way.

Of course the obvious way the feminine is rising is the #metoo movement and the way women are speaking out loudly enough to be the people of the year on Time’s cover.  As painful as the process is of leaders having to resign, most women and many men would agree that this is necessary. It’s about time that people are insisting that half the humans on the earth be honored and not desecrated.

The less obvious way that the feminine is rising is the way in which these times call for the feminine energy in all people to be honored equally and not desecrated. That feminine energy is usually associated with the gentler, more compassionate, more caring qualities of the heart—as opposed to the strategic, dominating, action-oriented energy that has been predominant for too long.

Compassion , gentleness and matters of the heart are being honored by the Australian government’s vote to honor same sex marriages; love trumps old traditional definitions. And, these qualities are also being trampled in hundreds of ways by the political decisions being made faster than you can say destruction.

So don’t make the mistake of thinking feminine energy is all sweetness and light. The feminine is on the move and will not be stopped.

Take Mother Earth, for example. Wildfires, epic winds, heat waves overtaken by sudden freezes. The threat of earthquakes. Volcanoes. Species disappearing. Glaciers disappearing.We are reminded daily that we may have thought we were in charge, but our thinking has been faulty.

Of course indigenous people could easily say they told us so. The Hopi prophesies—and many other indigenous ones– are coming true. Will we pay attention? Hindus say we are in the time of the kali yuga , the destruction of the old and precursor of a new era. Native people say we are witnessing the destruction of the old world as it was, as a necessary cleansing before the creation of a new one.

There are a couple of ways to ride the waves that keep on breaking during this tumultuous time. The strategy of fighting the wave and grasping at the shore is time-honored, but has never worked very well. It’s easy to see who is doing this. It’s harder to understand why that grasping –and indeed doubling down on the old boy way seems to be working on many levels. But we’ll see what the consequences are. We’ll see who may rise up and say enough.

The moon rose up over “our” mountain surrounded by magical wispy clouds. We watched it by a blazing outdoor fire, celebrating its beauty. At the Capitol, I wonder if anyone noticed. Who wandered out onto a terrace to breathe in awe and wonder? Or are all eyes closed to the rise of the feminine?

Maya Angelou saw all this, and said, in her famous poem, I Rise:

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
This post also appeared on HuffPost at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-rise-of-the-feminine_us_5a29eef9e4b04e0bc8f3b336

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Posted in caring for the earth, conscious evolution, consciousness, divine feminine, feminine leadership, heart-centered leadership, learning from the Hopi people, managing change, nature as mirror, opening the heart, Photography, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | No Comments »

As Trump Reduces Wilderness, I Dare to Dream…

Thursday, November 16th, 2017

Canyonlands, Utah

Behind the smoke screen of daily drama in the media, you may have noticed that our President is busy dismantling protection for our wild lands. He has approved a recommendation to reduce protection for Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah—part of the vast land that became protected by the stroke of Clinton’s pen.

It just so happens that this very week, I’ve been reading Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert, by Terry Tempest Williams    Her poetic eloquence, intellectual rigor and passionate defense of the land clearly represents a different world than the one inhabited by our current leadership.

How then, I ask myself, can we bridge these two worlds? How can we—even with less poetic voices—be convincing advocates for the wild, untouched, precious areas in our country and in our lives?

Way back in 1995, Tempest Williams testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Forest & Public Lands Management, objecting to a wilderness bill:

“Mr. Chairman, if you know wilderness in the way you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go. We are talking about the body of the beloved, not real estate. We must ask ourselves as Americans, ‘Can we really survive the worship of our own destructiveness?’”

These issues are, of course, not new. Most wilderness has been created by visionary Presidents. amidst the protest of those whose pocketbooks are lined by extracting resources or developing wild land. Now the vision must come from the people.

Is it any coincidence that this is going on amidst sexual scandals and women speaking out in behalf of their own bodies, as never before? I think not. Women have had good reason to fear speaking about the abuse and disrespect the feminine has been suffering for millennia.

Mother Earth has a body too, and cannot speak for herself except through storms, earthquakes and other responses to the changes she is experiencing. Remember the film Koyaanisqatsi–Life Out of Balance?

“We have forgotten the option of restraint.”

This is not about politics; it is about what we want our legacy to be as human beings.

“It is no longer the survival of the fittest but the survival of compassion.”

When I consulted for organizations who were experiencing internal dysfunction or financial problems, I always returned them to the foundational level of values. Why were they in existence besides making money? What contribution did they want to make? I must ask myself these questions as I go about my own business.

“A nation’s appetite for beauty transcends a state’s hunger for greed.”

I have a voracious appetite for beauty. How about you? I understand greed and the necessity to make a living. And, I stand with communities like the Pachamama Alliance , Bioneers and many conservation organizations, whose voices echo warnings from indigenous elders and the spirits of the the Grandmothers, Grandfathers and ancient ones.

We can find ways to speak in behalf of restraint, of compassion, of love for beauty, of hunger for the wild in the land and in ourselves.

“Who has the strength to see this wave of destruction as a wave of renewal?” Something quickens in me; I think it is hope. I remember:

“We can give birth to deep change, creating a commitment of compassion toward all living things. Our human-centered point of view can evolve into an Earth-centered one….Is this too much to dream? Who imposes restraint on our imagination?”

 

All quotes are from Red, by Terry Tempest Williams

This piece also appears on Huffington Post here.

 

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Posted in Aerial photography, caring for the earth, conscious evolution, consciousness, feminine leadership, heart-centered leadership, managing change, Photography, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, The Beauty Path, Uncategorized, women's empowerment | No Comments »

Do Dreamers from Tucson Dare Dream?

Thursday, September 14th, 2017

I felt acutely aware of being one of the only clearly Anglo faces in the room. The Pueblo High School cafeteria was crowded and hot; lack of air conditioning on a summer evening in Tucson is….challenging. But this was not the moment for first world complaints. My husband Jon and I were there to serve as volunteers for this meeting for the Dreamers and their families.

Fortunately we speak pretty good Spanish, because that was the language of the night. Margo Cowan, a bilingual public defender had organized the meeting through the group Keep Tucson Together (http://www.facebook.com/KeepTucsonTogether) . Representatives of  The Florence Project were there too. Both groups defend undocumented immigrants, both in and out of detention centers.

Even though I felt like a useless foreigner (South Tucson sometimes feels more like Mexico than the U.S.), I was grateful Jon had encouraged me to come. An attorney and mediator, he had already made me proud by volunteering to represent people in court. This night was in response to the crisis that seems to threaten a whole group of people who had thought they were safe.

Fear was palpable in the crowd of over 200 people. No one was there casually. They were there to learn about their rights and about strategies for assuring that the Dreamer high school students could keep pursuing their education.

ICE has been watching people they know are illegal and literally snatching them off the streets of Tucson. One man in court for a hearing was detained as soon as he left the court room. ICE agents dressed in black have reportedly entered homes without warrants and taken people away. People are now afraid to go to school, to drive to the grocery store, to walk to a friend’s house.

A representative from Congressman Raul Grijalva’s office spoke, reminding the crowd of their rights. Everyone was urged to take a yellow and black poster home and put it in a window. “Law Enforcement: Do Not Enter without a Warrant!” Under Obama, many were deported, but only those who had committed a crime. Now it’s open season.

I handed out application forms, since all DACA recipients have to re-apply to assure their status. The form asks for information regarding any interactions they have had with police, since if someone is victim of a crime, that could provide a reason for them to be able to stay. So would having parents or grandparents who are here legally.

Of course now, DACA recipients may be wondering if it was a good idea to apply in the first place, since the government knows all about them. They had to pass background checks and submit proof of going to school or working. These are productive citizens, the cream of the crop.

The Superintendent of Schools assured the crowd that the school is prohibited from asking their citizenship status; school is a protected zone. But it was hard to feel that, looking at the innocent, wide eyes on the Dreamer students who came up to the front of the assembly. The Superintendent shared the question that makes him saddest: “What will happen to me when I graduate?” He does not know what to say.

A counselor acknowledged the students’ fears, and then reminded them they are not alone. They have the support of everyone in the room, and each other. When they linked arms and chanted, “Si, si puede!” I was afraid I might burst out into loud sobs. I saved those for the ride home.

Since that night, a week ago, it seems Democratic leaders are trying to strike a deal with an unpredictable President. Will the bright light of possibility manifest as a real change in law and practice?

Do these Dreamers dare dream? Do we?

 

Note: This post will also appear in Huffpost, as part of their current theme, Listen to America, based on their nationwide bus tour.

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Three Lessons for Now from an Ancient First Nations Culture

Tuesday, August 29th, 2017

Taking off in a small Turboprop from Vancouver, we left urban life for the Haida Gwaii, a cluster of islands 60 miles west of mainland B.C., and about the same distance from the Alaskan panhandle. Named the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1798, the Haida Nation ceremonially returned the name to the British Crown in 2010. “Haida Gwaii” means “the place, or islands of The People.”

The Haida creation story tells of Raven, a supernatural being, cracking open a clam shell. The Haida People emerged from the shell, and the human race was born. Found objects on the islands have been carbon-dated to 12,500 years ago. One village has been continually inhabited for 1,000 years.

Where had I been? Why did I not know about this tribe? This would be an adventure full of humbling information and lessons that seem very relevant now, during these chaotic and challenging times.

In his fascinating book, The Golden Spruce, John Vaillant  writes that for many, the Haida Gwaii “represent a kind of ‘soul home,’ a wild, native Eden…The islands provide a link to how things were before the arrival of Europeans as well as a glimpse of a possible future.”

We would visit the northern Graham island, where Natives and non-Natives live together and the Haida culture exhibits its resiliency. Then we would don our warmest clothes, climb onto a zodiac wearing oilskin suits over our parkas, and be guided to the southern islands and into the Gwaii Haanas. This National Park Reserve and Heritage Site where we would visit ruins of ancient villages, is accessible only by seaplane or boat.

 

Everywhere we went, we heard about how the Haida have survived through a remarkable story of human endurance. So I listened very carefully for hints about how we, in the midst of a national and planetary crisis, will survive as well.

The lessons I learned were similar to my learnings from visiting and studying other indigenous cultures. There are solid principles that surviving ancient cultures seem to share. They are rooted in the spiritual realm.

For the Haida, supernatural, unseen forces come “out of concealment” and often take the form of humans. And so, like the relationship between land, sea and sky, boundaries between the seen and the unseen are fluid and in constant change.

 

What does not change are several key principles that we would do well to take seriously.

  1. “Yahguundang” does not translate directly into English, but the closest word is “respect” for all things: land, water, air, the supernatural, our ancestors, and each other.

2. From Yahguundang comes the corollary, the “privilege of responsibility.” Haida attorney and artist Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson writes, “The Haida Gwaii (the land) and the supernatural beings decided to believe in us and entrusted us with stewardship or our home and each other.”

3. Humans are part of the natural world and are not superior to animals or other humans.

What would have to change if we lived by these principles?

It’s true that there are hierarchies in the Haida world view and tradition. They divide their ecology into three realms: creatures of the sea, land and sky. Each is organized by rank, with an animal at the top. Killer Whale is chief of the ocean people; Bear is chief of the forest people; and Eagle is chief of sky creatures. Humans are born into one of two “moieties” or groups: the Raven or the Eagle moiety is passed down by the mother, and so is the crest and dozens of clan identifications.

But these designations do not mean “power over” another; they seem to have to do more with respect, honoring and belonging.

How do these laws play out in their culture? That will be the subject of four more articles in this series about the Haida Gwaii and the lessons that we might glean from them. I’ll touch lightly on highlights of their arts and culture; their ecology; their resilience; and their spirituality.

Coming home from the Haida Gwaii in late July and re-entering the crazy world of deteriorating geopolitics, rhetoric and the dumbing down of debate and dialogue makes me more convinced than ever that we need to look at the wisdom we have inherited from our indigenous neighbors. It’s not about going back; it’s about re-membering, putting back together a way of being that has to do with who we truly are and what life really means to us.

For what principle would you really take a stand?

 

 

This post also appears on a Huffpost blog.

 

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Seeing Our Way Through the Pachakutiq

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016

477701004

The latest earthquake in Japan is said to be an aftershock from the one in 2011, and that means among other things that Mother Earth set a big change in motion back then, and the effects are still going on. Perhaps our electoral, political and psychic earthquake in the U.S. is an aftershock too, a manifestation of unseen forces of change that were already at work long ago.

The ancient Inka people of Peru and their current descendants refer to the pachakutiq, the force that turns the world upside down. The force was named after Pachakutiq Inka Yupanki, 1438-1471, the ruler who transformed the Kingdom of Cusco into the Inca Empire.

Pachakutiq was a conqueror, an empire builder, whose name meant “he who overturns space and time.” But even Pachakutiq had to ultimately bow to death and to Mother Earth, whose power reminds us that we actually are not in charge here.

We live a multi-dimensional life, whether we are conscious of it or not. In our personal world, the pachakutiq occurs when we’re faced with a personal earthquake like a divorce or death of a loved one, or loss of a job. In the collective world, a pachakutiq has occurred with the recent US election, and the aftershocks continue. And in the cosmic dimension, the force you might call God or the Great Mystery is at work too, in ways that are unseen.

What do we do in times of the pachakutiq?

My brother-in-law taught me a lesson about this years ago, when he was suddenly stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome. Within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms, he was unable to dress himself and bound to a wheelchair. By the time I saw him in a rehab facility, he was paralyzed neck down.

“How are you doing emotionally, Bob?” I asked timidly, knowing this was a pathetic, inadequate question.

“Oh, I’m actually fine, now that I made the psychological adjustment,” he answered quickly, as if he had been expecting the question.

“Come on, Bob,” I countered. “How can you make a psychological adjustment to being paralyzed?”

“Oh, but that’s the point. You must.” He had worked this through. “And now that I’ve made it, see those toes on my left foot? You come back next week and I’ll be moving them.”

Clearly he wasn’t paralyzed psychologically, and that’s because he had moved to acceptance. I’m sure he didn’t like being paralyzed, so acceptance didn’t mean approval. It meant he had ceased to allow shock to numb him into a state of denial where action is impossible.

I’m only now moving into a state of acceptance about the election. It does appear that it actually happened, and it also appears that it’s as bad as we originally thought. Given the severity of the aftershocks and the probability of many more, what do we do?

Bob pointed out back then that when we’re dealt a bad hand, we naturally want to give it back. Acceptance means we give up that fantasy. Now we can play our hand, even if it’s not the one we wanted.

Elizabeth Gilbert posed the question, “Who do I want to be in this situation?” Thank you, Elizabeth.

I want to look at the world through two lenses simultaneously, and to have the near view and the big picture work together, even though they seem opposed.

The big picture is that I’m a little creature in a magnificent creation, making me both tiny and grand, a formless bit of the Life force swimming in the great cosmic soup. So out of the big picture lens, I want to see everything as part of the One Being, part of Love. Despite appearances and conditions.

Out of the other lens I see smelly garbage I need to take out, and our latest empire builder making horrifying appointments that seem to overturn time and space. In this dimension, I will not be paralyzed or silent, but will stand for the truth I see with all my heart, wearing as much beauty as I can muster, and perhaps some combat boots hiding under the silk.

We must hold both truths to be self evident: that this is a sacred time when it is foolish to meet the beast with his own energy of fear; and that real Love can be fierce, shaking us all into a place of humility. If we can put these two views together, perhaps that will give us depth perception.

I do not forget that Bob did get up out of that bed and walk again, and even play his own version of tennis. He did not do this out of a desire to conquer, but out of a love for life. And, I know he prayed. I will do the same.

This piece also appeared in Huffington Post, and can be seen at:  Link to article.

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Posted in conscious evolution, consciousness, heart-centered leadership, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Responding to Chaos with Compassion

Sunday, March 6th, 2016

cosmic heart

I love teacher, Lynne Twist’s observation that in these times, it is the role of those on a spiritual path to “do hospice for the old order, while serving as midwives for the new.”  (Lynne Twist) If you are one who believes that the earth and our species are in the midst of a great shift, then this observation can help us digest all that is going on.

As I watch the chaos and comedy of our political scene and the potential disintegration of the Republican party, it helps to think that we are watching the painful death of the old order. After all, who said it would go out without a whimper?

While it appears that things are worse than ever, and that the brash, juvenile, heartless approach of The Donald is evidence, perhaps the opposite is true. What if these are death throes? After all, even those who were “on his side” are finding him intolerable.

Even though on the world scene there is unthinkable violence, perhaps even the incidents of suffering refugees, terrorists crucifying their critics and Chinese mega companies raping the Amazon rainforest are last, frantic gasps of the old order.

The old order is the one where winning is everything, where money rules, where the end justifies the means, where power and force are synonymous. This is not the order that visionaries are dreaming into being. It’s an order that is dying—but not without an enormous, probably prolonged fight.

How do we do hospice for this old, dying order? It’s hard, but spiritual leaders tell us we must have compassion. These are people who are afraid, grasping for control, telling themselves a false story about how right they are. They are in the grasp of the ego.

And the truth is, every one of us struggles to avoid the grasp of the ego. Every one of us experiences being afraid, grasping for control and telling ourselves a false story about how right we are. So even though we are tempted to be morally superior, we are actually connected to the humans whose behaviors we deplore.

Sufi teacher Jamal Rahman points out the important difference between behavior and essence. We can absolutely reject reprehensible, abusive behaviors while remembering that people we think we hate were born children of God. We can draw a line in the sand while not exiling any soul from our hearts. This is like rubbing our heads while patting our stomachs, but it is possible.

And, I think it is what is required now. If we truly believe that love is the answer, that real power comes from the heart and not the fist, then we must stop the hate. Every time we vilify an enemy, we perpetuate hate and fear. What if we kept drawing lines in the sand while sending every supposed enemy love and peace?

This is what heart-centered leadership must look like. And it is how we act as midwives for the new order. I have to believe in the dream of a day ( one I may never see) when force will seem outmoded and weak compared to love, which will be the new currency, the new form of abundance.

We have it in us. This is the time to dig deep for it. We need to persistently seek for love in everything, especially in our own hearts. We are indeed the ones.

Note: This post is on Huffington Post and can be viewed at the author’s archive, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-hale/

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Posted in conscious evolution, heart-centered leadership, opening the heart | 1 Comment »

Trump as the Shakespearean Fool

Friday, February 26th, 2016

Shakespeare loved inserting the character of a fool into his theatre, as a way of being entertaining and pointing out bluntly certain truths that other characters of higher standing wouldn’t reveal. His fool was usually a clever peasant who used his wits and spoke outside the codes of morality. Not believers in the supernatural, Shakespearean fools had no idealogy or regard for appearances, or for law, order or justice.

Doesn’t it sound like Donald Trump?

Since the function of the Shakespearean fool was to wake people up, I keep hoping that Trump is among us simply for that. The way that he presents himself and the things he says are so utterly grotesque that one advantage is he makes it clear what we don’t want.

Contrast seems to be a necessary force on this human plane. We seem to need to know what we do not want in order to know what we really desire. And so maybe Trump plays an important role, in that he reminds us how much we do not want a country ruled by prejudice, mysogeny, brute force and disregard for the tenderness of the human heart.

If the great playwright in the sky placed him here for the sake of contrast, then time is growing short for us to stop snoring in our theatre seats. We need to wake up to the real dangers this particular jester poses.

First, the Shakespearean fool does not see how ridiculous he is. Unlike a comic who is doing a routine, he is serious. In this case, that is scary.

Secondly, people are falling for this stuff. Everyone loves to watch a clown, but who wants one for President of the United States? I hope both Republicans and Democrats think about this.

Thirdly, the man is using his wits. So far, he is able to live up to his name. He has trumped the pundits and kept on gathering steam, even while chalking up more and more hideous statements. In our culture, we may have reached a new low where entertainment actually trumps the dreams of our forefathers. Where is liberty, freedom and justice? “Winning” seems to trump these.

Before she died, my mother said through her morphine fog that “It’s all a play, and we are just playing our parts.” Let’s remember what part Donald Trump is playing and take a look at what we want to happen in the last act. Please.

My friend Richard Kimball, founder of Project Vote Smart (http://www.votesmart.org) recently wrote a letter in which he cited some depressing studies showing that candidates who lie most outrageously capture headlines and get the highest poll numbers.

To make it worse, other studies showed that people rarely change their minds when confronted by facts, and that they’d rather listen to a politician who will tell them whom to hate than one who tells them the truth.

Now that is not funny.

If you were in the audience watching a play about this, what would you hope the most powerful characters would do? Will they wake up? Will they act in behalf of the greater good? Or will they be trumped by the fool, who will end up with a crown on his head?

 

This post has also been sent to Huffington Post and can be seen at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-hale/.

 

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Posted in authenticity, caring for the earth, consciousness, creative imagination, heart-centered leadership, The Sacred Masculine | 5 Comments »

Opening the Heart

Wednesday, October 7th, 2015

baby

Once upon a time, I didn’t know what love was.

I knew it was a good word, a desirable feeling, but I wasn’t sure I had experienced it. How was it going to feel? I was a child, trying to team up words and concepts with real-world feelings.

In 7th grade I made friends with a girl named Missy. I went to her house a lot to spend the night on weekends, and I started to notice something. Every time I went there, I got this odd feeling. It was like a tingling in my chest, a kind of light, airy feeling, and it seemed new to me.

Now, looking back on it many years later, I know what that feeling was. It was love. It was my heart opening. It was a time when my own household did not feel predictable to me. My mother was ill, and so one minute she was lovable and the next minute, loving her felt impossible. After all, she wanted me to brush her hair, and I wanted her to brush mine.

Missy’s house felt different. Her parents seemed pretty much the same to me every time, and so I felt a trust that I’d have a good experience there. Missy felt reliable too, and so I dared to trust her. I dared even to trust myself in those situations. So my heart opened a little and felt more spacious. Lighter.

Again, looking back I can relate this feeling to other times. To times when my mother was well, and when I loved her beauty, her brightness, her laugh. When my dad was barbecuing in the back yard and I felt  happy about more than the yummy chicken I was about to enjoy. When my baby brother was born, there was a magic about his being in the house. These were heart openers.

Babies do it for us, don’t they?

When mine were born, I knew that I was discovering what real love was all about. It was as though I’d never felt it before. I barely knew who they were, and yet knew I’d give my life for them.

Now I have five grandchildren, and so I’ve been blessed with many heart openers. Many times of feeling that spaciousness, that tingling, that lightness.

And, in all these years, I’ve had heartache, tragedy, betrayal, disappointment and pain, just like you. Just like all of us. And so, I’ve had many times when I’ve closed my heart.

What to do about my heart opening like that, only to close again?

Well, for me, it’s important to do some proactive things about this very human dilemma:

1. I practice opening my heart. My meditation practice is all about this. It’s meant to “polish the lantern,” to clean off the gunk, to let the light shine. It’s about attuning to the Big Heart.

2. I try to be conscious of when I’m closing my heart. I try to notice what triggers me and how my habitual response is to close. And I try to keep aware that it’s a choice on my part. Do I really want to keep doing that?

3. I try to be grateful for all the heart-opening experiences when they come, and to be grateful to myself for noticing.

These simple steps seem to help me change my habits. They help me keep that heart open more often. More and more I notice that it’s all related to how I choose to see a given event or situation. If I choose to see it through the eyes of the heart, I may feel pain, but I can survive that. It’s better than closing my heart again and having to figure out all over again what that word “love” feels like.

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The Pope: an Embodiment of the Sacred Masculine

Thursday, September 24th, 2015

PopeFrancis-8I write this fresh from watching the Pope’s address to Congress, an historic moment that fills my eyes with tears and my heart with hope. As a non-Catholic who has left organized religion, I am deeply moved by the transparent heart he presents to the world, and by the heart-centered leadership he models for us.

My husband is a legal mediator, and so I hear many stories of people who come armed with their stories and their positions, angry and righteous, feeling predatory about getting rewarded for being right. Jon has to try to lift them to a little higher place, where they can look through the lens of their  real interests. Then they may be able to see what those interests have in common with their adversaries’.

The Pope is a mediator for the world right now, reminding us of principles that are in all our interests, regardless of political positions, religious affiliation, class, race, sex or nationality.

All life is sacred. We can all agree on this, and ought to give each other credit for believing this, no matter what we think about abortion.

All people want and deserve the same compassion we want for ourselves. We can all agree on this, no matter how we would vote on social justice issues.

All people want the same possibilities we want for ourselves. We could all agree on this and then move forward with our dialogue about how to provide those possibilities.

We need to protect the earth. This seems like a basic, a principle that would be hard to argue.

Even though these principles could be considered a lecture to Congress, it was delivered in a way that satisfies our human hunger. The Pope, arriving in his little grey Fiat, is humble and real. He comes from poverty. He speaks in a gentle tone, and uses flowing gestures and a soft voice. I would say that the Divine Feminine within his own heart is palpable in his presence.

And, as Holy Father, his role is to embody the spirit of the Christ, updated for this moment. If he is doing this, then that spirit is tender, protective. Who wouldn’t want a figure like the Pope as a kind uncle or grandfather?

The thousands who greet him are clearly hungry and thirsty. Maybe not all of them for religion. But we are hungry for a leadership that “mothers” and “fathers” us in the best sense. A kind of leadership that marries the Divine Feminine and the Sacred Masculine that lies (sometimes hidden) within our own hearts, waiting to be awakened.

The magic alchemy of this awakening is, in this case, a gentle kind of alchemy. Something is touched, and so people appear. Hope is kindled, once again. Maybe we have another chance to save the earth. Maybe we can rise above our silly political positioning. Maybe we can stop demeaning ourselves and others. Maybe we have another chance to be human.

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, conscious evolution, consciousness, heart-centered leadership, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, The Sacred Masculine | 9 Comments »

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