The conundrums of choices

There are so many things in life that there are expectations for. In our work, we get asked to do extra things, take on more to help others. In our families, we expect people to believe the same, want the same things. And when we say no, we can often be faced with feelings of guilt, decreased sense of worth from ourselves. And from others, maybe comments that are ignorant, lack compassion or real interest or concern about why we have made the choices we have. Often others want to create solutions for us, so that we can align with what is comfortable to them,. These can all be challenging to navigate, especially if our reasons for taking the stand we have has to do with grief, exhaustion, burnout, or something else along the lines of a person being close to emotionally lacking the ability to continue clinging to the present circumstances as they currently are. I was speaking to a colleague at work today about this. She has recently lost her mother and best friend in her life. She has just finished doing some grief counseling, which she admitted was terribly challenging and emotional, especially in trying to maintain her current load at work. She pointed out to me that as they talked in her group about the need to set boundaries as you are going through these things, others may not understand and that rather than saying "I can't", saying " I choose not to". I thought about that briefly, but still found that hard to say and then I realized I needed a conscious reason if I am saying no. I have to understand it, so that I can in good conscience know that I really am choosing what is best for me. I realize at times in the past I have made decisions to walk way from things, usually nothing very significant, but I think I always felt bad. I have an intuitive sense as to why I made those choices, but nothing I could really fully explain or feel deeply about. Mostly my intuition has been ahead of reasoning in terms of being able to recognize why something is not good for me. But I need to know, not just feel it, although that to is important. For without the feeling, it is just an intellectual argument. I have found myself struggling to understand why in my current job I am periodically feeling good and then burned out. Wanting to leave, and wanting to stay. I recognize that something wasn't working, but I didn't know what. I tend to be too loyal, and too concerned about if I will let someone else down, so I stay usually until something becomes so destructive to me that the intuition gets so strong that I cannot ignore it, even if I don't really know why. But today I realized something new, something I had not understood before. In saying that "I can't", there is more that needs to be added. "I can't" is only the intuition speaking without the concrete reason for the choice, sometimes it is ok, but in matters of significant importance, there needs to be more. The more, I finally heard and could add. "I can't choose that if I want …….whatever particular need/desire is there. My job has some great parts, but the essence of what I am doing is burning me out. So, I now know that IF I want to remain emotionally and physically healthy, have some desire in my life, I can't stay extendedly. I can limp along and finish what I have started, but in creating life in the long term, my time has to be spent in a way that better lifts and fills my heart and soul. So, this sounds so simple and obvious, but getting to the conscious knowledge of the why has been challenging. I have grown so accustomed to muffling any cries or sounds of my own voice with the expectations and/or needs of others, I had become completely unable to look at a circumstance and have any recollection as to whether it was something I could do and remain in good emotions health. Usually I just said,"Yes" and picked up the pieces later. The lesson I had been taught about life was one of racing to make sure obligations are met and then some. NEver stopping because there was a perception that we were running a race with a prize therefore we cannot stop, set a boundary or recognize a desire. No, it is always about the race, the voice that starts rearing its head always is about never stopping, as that is defined as quitting. The blinders are on. We do not look to the right or to the left, but only at the task at hand and it doesn't matter how badly it is going for your, you never stop. Those are the messages that I have heard through my life. Suddenly I realized that those were false beliefs. There is no race, just a beautiful opportunity to experience many wonderful things, that get missed when we are driving at prizes and result, comparison and statistics. When those things define a person's worth….. well, it is just plain exhausting until that point when there is nothing left. That is when the words "I can't if I want to live", "I can't if I am going to have some delight in my life", "I can't if I am going to find my reason for living", yes, that is when those words spoken, loud and clear.. It doesn't matter what those on the sidelines say, or how they judge your performance, I don't belong to the race any more. I have decided just to be a person, one who lives with her heart and soul in the present moment, seeing perceiving and understanding consciously what is here, instead of closing my eyes and pretending that what is there is something else and if I try hard enough I can believe the consequence I know is happening away, but only for a while. Lying to ourselves can soothe us for a moment, but it always catches up to us at some point. When we choose not to listen, the toll it takes upon our souls grows incrementally each time we deny what we know about our hearts, needs and desires. So, today, I say I cannot do the things that you want me to if I want to stay healthy, if I want to enjoy a fulfilling relationship of joy with my self, my family and my dreams. So, it becomes obvious if I choose what you want for me, I am choosing your dream and your hopes and your experience and not my own. That would be perhaps the saddest thing that we as people could ever do. There is only one you. Only one person who has your unique insights, experience, abilities, love, desires, passions and so forth. What would the world look like if you set those aside to be what someone else expected, walked the path someone else decided for you, someone who had no idea of your heart. In essence you would be lost and with that there would be a void left in the world where you and your delight, your life, your love and your dreams were once alive. That would be a sad day…….

The Parable of the Sower

When I was reading this parable, I had questions about how I have always interpreted it. The idea of if you are not faithful enough you fall prey to the places that cause a seed not to grow. Simple explanation, all within the realm of my control based on the choices I make. If I do the things that supposedly keep me within this realm, then there is nothing to fear and I can be assured of my place. But something about this didn't seem right. Being a gardener, I know that if a seed falls in a place that it cannot grow, it is my responsibility as the gardener, not the seeds'. So what does this mean. I looked at the explanations later in the chapter of the story and it seemed pretty straight forward. Then I started wondering about the Hebrew words as opposed to the English ones that I was basing the meaning on. So I started looking up words and comparing them to the Hebrew word that the passage was derived from. A new theme began to emerge for me. So,first the idea of kingdom. (Matthew 13:19) Kingdom, the idea that struck me from my reading is that this is not a realm, or physical area and group of people under the rule of a monarch, but the idea is more subtle, implying dominion, or influence, thus removing the idea of specificity of declared allegiance, place and ideas, but instead more like a blanket of love being thrown out and we can bask in the warmth and comfort that is offered, but the implication about influence has less rigid patterning in order to be a part of this "kingdom". Secondly, same verse, the wicked one, based on my upbringing the image is very clear, but again something about that needed clarification for me. So I started searching and saw in reference to the Hebrew word connected to that, hostile to God. My mind went around and around trying not to superimpose an idea that wasn't actually there because someone else had said it before and left my feelings to dance freely in a space of openness. I started to think what is God? What would be hostile to God? The thought came that if we removed the physical,material idea of God and reduced him down to his most fundamental quality, we have love. Anything that leads us to love and its influence is of God, but anything that leads us from the influence of love is hostile to God. Anything! For my own purposes and experience, those things have been fear, anger, regret, sadness, sometimes physical things places and people have triggered those things in my life and although they can leave me hostile to God, they can also lead me to God, depending on how I hold them. So my state of mind in holding all things is what determines whether I am under that influence of either hostility to God or his dominion. The more I studied this the more I realized that the real message was that we move in and out of all of these places, meaning, the stony place, the wayside, the thorny spots, regularly in life. It is part of the process of finding God and experiencing his influence. We move from stony place, to thorny place, to falling by the wayside and back again, purposefully and individually designed. God knew we would. These teachings are about seeing the places we are in and recognizing that perhaps at this moment we are wilting and withering and knowing that the miracle of his love is the ability that it has to bring fresh life and nourishment when we are withering or feeling close to death. These are not meant to be permanent places, places that we see others in and point a finger recognizing their demise is forthcoming. These are meant to be illustrations of how God invites us back into his influence and his blessing??? Blessing….. Another word I had a great need to look up. Blessed, it has come to mean a state where if you do the right things you get a good result that is what is promised right? But doesn't that leave the possibility for this to oft times see things from a very comparative and prideful perspective? Like, if you are not where I am you are……… fill in the blank. BAck to Blessed, this is what I needed to understand about that word, it is about self contained happiness. It is holding with contentedness, our journey, based on the ability to see what is beyond the material,physical perspective and meaning and in (Vs 11) again, the ability to see is not because of something we have done, our works,or all the perceived service or devotion externally. That does not give us the ability to see. As Jesus points out, there were many prophets and righteous men that wanted to see and could not. So clearly the ability to see is based on something outside of our material, physical action. Jesus came to bring life and to bring it more abundantly. He didn't come to bring a longer to do list. That doesn't give us vision. In fact he gives but two simple commandments. They are about love, not an external, physically defined by action love, but a love defined by an inner content, not an outer representation. We can have outer representation with no inner content. That is perhaps the thing we should be most watchful of in our lives. As Thomas Barrfield in his book "Saving Appearances" defines: An idol is something that has an outer representation with no inner content. The inner content is love, desire, our soul's on definition of meaning. That is what Jesus came to bring. And to break down he came to break down things in antithesis of that, the rules, the externals, holding so dearly to those instead of love. He fought every tradition to bring everything back to love,the inner content. In my own life, the only reason I could not and sometimes till cannot, let go of the outer is that I wasn't and am not always fully convinced that holding on only to love would actually net the same things as all of the outer rules and ideas. I guess what I am saying is that I realized that I didn't really believe him when he said that all things hang on love. I thought that I had to put all of the other things first. Personally that is when I started to wilt in the sun, my root wasn't in his love it was in some outer form, lacking the inner content of love. After studying and trying deeply to let his love influence my ideas and thinking, Today I am just beginning to see that the most important thing ever is the influence of his love. And love, it does not know religion, it does not discriminate against sex, or race or beliefs. Sometimes I really want to discriminate and hold onto the things that put me in a light that I perceive will make me "loved", But really his love invites us in when we are wilting and when we want to know, not what someone else's idea about that are, but his he will tell us. Every day I am trying or let someone else provide them, of what I am trying to understand. Because really when Christ defines them who knows what may grow from the perceived wayside? It may be far greater than our minds and hearts could ever imagine. And who knows the heart of the master and his plan for us? Hearing his heart requires different eyes to see and different ears to hear. He said it himself that many righteous men and prophets could not. The question is Do we want to see his way, or ours????

I am not the sum total of my Facebook posts

I have noticed this interesting phenomenon about social media. We define ourselves, and others, by what we see and post online. We think hard about whether we should "like" something on Facebook or whether or not to post something we thought interesting, not sure what people will think. I remember a few years ago a friend of ours was gong through a change in his life and posted some things on line that out of context looked like he was angry, critical and trying to tear down other people. I remember one of my sons, "unfriending" him, because he didn't want to "get caught up in his negative emotions". At the time I didn't really see what was being said, but thought "yah, for sure" and "that must be the space he was living in, in the rest of his life as well". I mean, he posted it on Facebook, so we can for sure take inference and decide what he meant and how he is living his life? Or can we? So, later I sat with this friend and he told me what had been happening in his life and how the people in his world, not the Facebook world, but the real one had responded to him. He cried and told me how sad and betrayed he had felt by the people that had hurt him and the trust that had been lost. He told me that he didn't know how to find a "new normal" without the things he had lost. What appeared so straight forward, had been the polar opposite of what I had thought. As I had made assumptions, so had many others, who shared their assumptions and judgement of his situation without ever picking up the phone, knocking on his door, inviting him out for "tea". I felt a little embarrassed when I thought of the things I had thought. How I thought looking at his pictures and posts that I had some sense of who he was, but I was dead wrong and not even close in my ability to see him. In the world of social media, we are starving and dying for friendship, for touch, for being seen, being heard, being held and being known. I am not my Facebook posts. You do not know me by what I put up on my wall. You might have an idea of some things that have crossed my mind, but how they play with light with darkness, with love and hate, you will never know if you do not look into my eyes, or listen to my voice. When I get up in the morning, I hate to turn on the lights, so when I shower I have a little seashell "night light" in my bathroom that I turn on, just enough light to see and feel the beauty of the morning. I love scents, so between the nightlight and the soft scent it is a wonderful way to start the day. I have studied to become an aromatherapist. My play smells delightful and calming. It includes mixing and brewing all sorts of concoctions, that calms my emotions, soothes pain and make a person feel loved, those are the most important things in life to me to share with the people around me. I have discovered there are many different ways to share those things. My family knows when I start creating I have entered an alternate universe and it could be a while before I return and when I do, it will look like a whirl wind has run through the kitchen and it will smell wonderful. Sometimes it tastes wonderful too, since I am always experimenting with food, as well. The joke at our house is that whatever I make will have no name and I will likely never be able to recreate it. The other one, is "What is growing on the counter, Mom?" Between bread, sourdough, kefir, kombuchu, sauerkraut, or some other fermented dish, they think I am crazy and sometimes just downright strange. I teach children's preschool programs. When I got that job, I wasn't sure if I wanted it or not. I just wanted something, but now I love watching their eyes when they see you and you know their name and what is important to them. I love that you can pick them up and hold them when they are crying and you can change their whole world for that moment, And waving to Mommy from the window will turn the tears to a smile of delight I love that you can fix what is going wrong for them and watch them smile and send them back to face the game or the other kids. It reminds me of when life still was innocent and I had not watched my own children being broken by things I could never fix and will never be ok. But for the moment, I remember their childhood, the dreams and smiles. Now the world is punctuated with hard words, like rejection, divorce, death, and fear. Fear of things that are not fixed by a hug, a drink and a night light, things that have taken those they loved, and parts of themselves that can and never will be the same, a loss of innocence, with a depth I could never have imagined. But with all of that, we still laugh, go shopping, make music, share dreams and hold onto faith and love. We still pray and try to make sense of the senseless. I study all the time. I am studying Heilkunst, which is homeopathy and the sequential treatment of trauma. Right now most of my study comes from philosophers and doctors from the 1800's. It is challenging to read. It has made me realize how dumbed down we have become. How little time we actually take to see, hear or feel the world. It is like a black and white still shot we live in, with sterile emotions and conforming actions. That is how we are living. The more I study, the more I want to touch the world, sit with you and listen to your voice. I want to laugh with you, hold your hand, hug you and hear your stories too. I don't want to read your Facebook posts. I want to read your eyes. I want to see what is real, not the facade. I don't want to be known from this place, I want this place to invite you to call me and invite me for tea. I want to laugh with you because I miss you. Right now I assume that you are happy in your world and that you don't miss me because all you do is "post" this, "like" my status "comment" on my link, but where are you? Are you ok being alone too?……………………………….