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The Mystery of Thanksgiving

Sounds True — November 27, 2014

We are quite sure that tomorrow will come, that the most sacred breath will be there, that grace will take shape as the sun falling into the ocean, as the moon in the sky, and as the crystals in the newly fallen snow. That the particles of love will continue to configure as the precious deer that we run into on our morning walk. It is so easy to take for granted that we will be given one more opportunity to touch and hold another, and fill them with our love.

But another part of us knows it is so fragile here, so precarious, so extraordinary – that something is happening that is so very precious, rare, and outrageous – and that it will not be here for much longer. Recognizing this, let us give thanks on this new day by doing whatever we can to help others, by being willing to burn for love, never apologizing for our uniqueness, sensitivity, and vulnerability.

At the end of this life – which is sure to come much, much sooner than we’d like – it is quite unlikely we’ll be asking if we accomplished the tasks on our to-do lists, if we completed some mythical spiritual journey, perfected ourselves, played it safe, or achieved all of our goals. Inside these hearts there may be only one burning question: how well did I love?

Did I pause each day to behold the movement of grace as it has unfolded in each and every radiant here and now moment? Did I look with awe into the miracle sunset and the glory of the stars and give my raw beating heart to this world? Did I risk everything to know the preciousness of what is truly happening here? Was I willing to feel more, care so deeply, let everyone matter, and be utterly devastated at even the possibility of one more sunrise? Was I willing to fall in love, to truly fall in love?

Did I spend my time here in this star of love wisely, with my heart open and available, knowing it could be broken in any moment? Did I dance with the beloved around the moon, wander with her into the desert and into the darkness, play with her in the depths of the oceans, and give everything for just one glimpse of the mysteries of separation and union?

I hope I make it all the way through this sweetest of ever thanksgiving days, but if for some reason I do not, this would have been enough. I have been given so much more than enough.

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Honoring an Irreducible Truth in Ferguson

Sounds True — August 29, 2014

During this morning’s run, I was talking with my friend about the fear and frustration we’d both been feeling about Ferguson, Missouri, among other places. What can we do? we asked each other. If it came down to it, would we be able to stand against the so-called authorities armed with tear gas, guns, and hoses?

I told my friend about the only time I’d come close to anything like it. The KKK was marching in a little town a few miles east of my college campus, and a small group of us organized ourselves in protest. We brought in advisors to teach us how to remain calm in crisis. We knew our history; we’d seen the footage; we were afraid. We also knew that remaining silent wasn’t an option. We boarded the bus in silence, and when we got there, we linked arms and lined the street peacefully, waiting for the hate group to come streaming up the road. It was summer then, but I remember feeling a chill that raised gooseflesh on my arms.

A few minutes later a pathetic bunch of ragtag malcontents rounded the corner—the odd skinhead here, old grizzled men there, and bored teen goths sprinkled in—all spewing the tired epithets we’d heard before: “____ go home… .”

After our protest, we boarded the bus and headed back toward campus.

Once returned to the relative safety of familiar surroundings, we’d talk about how sad the hate group looked. Their outfits didn’t even match! we’d laugh. They weren’t even marching in step together! Weren’t they supposed to be organized better than that?

But this morning, we weren’t laughing.

Every time events like these erupt, I wonder what there is to do about it. Up to this point, I’ve signed petitions, I’ve written essays and articles, made calls, protested, volunteered, minded my business, went back to bed, wrung my hands, paced the floors, pumped my fists, prayed, held loved ones close, fundraised, danced, run, sung, and sweated for the cause. I’ve cried, fretted, and did it all again. And I’ll keep on doing it.

I recently turned to a memorial delivered by Dr. Howard Thurman in the aftermath of Dr. King’s murder. I was searching for words to articulate the frustration, pain and loss of another senseless killing and the ongoing struggle for equality and peace for so many in America. The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman remains painfully, powerfully, resonant today:

Tonight there is a vast temptation to strike out in pain, horror, and anger. Riding just under the surface, all the pent up fury, the accumulation of a generation’s cruelty and brutality. A way must be found to honor our feeling without dishonoring him whose sudden and meaningless end has called him forth. May we harness the energy of our bitterness and make it available to the unfinished work which Martin has left behind. It may be—it just may be—that what he was unable to bring to pass in his life, can be achieved by the act of his dying. For this there is eloquent precedence in human history. He was killed in one sense because mankind is not human yet. May he live because all of us in America are closer to becoming human than we ever were before.

I wish I could tell you of the tremendous love and worry I feel for my brothers, for my beautiful nephews, especially, and for the precious children of my friends.

Today, I’m open to new ideas—to whatever helps me keep my heart open, my love alive. It’s an imperative for me because I am the beneficiary of an irreducible truth, which is this: love is all there is.

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Wake Up or Bust!

Sounds True — August 13, 2014

As I write this blog post we’re days away from the 2014 Wake Up Festival, and I’m thinking about all of the things I have to do before heading up to Estes Park for four days of camping and “WUFing” as we like to call it. But I’m also thinking about what my intentions are and why I am excited to be fortunate enough to be able to attend. Having experienced the last two Wake Up Festivals, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the unique energy field that is created by all of the participants. You can feel it the second you get out of your car on the grounds of the YMCA. It’s as if the coming together of several hundred people with the shared intention of becoming more conscious, present, and authentic generates the perfect environment in which such aspirations can become reality. It’s powerful and infectious. And it needs to be if it’s going to fuel changes that continue long after the conclusion of the Wake Up Festival. After all, it’s one thing to spend a week practicing with others but another matter to live what we learn when we return to our everyday lives.

So as I deal with the details of packing and travel and so on, I hope that I’m able to remember why I’m going in the first place, to go with the flow once I get up there without attachment to programs and agendas, and to stay present with the beautiful people and surroundings. And if I’m lucky, the energy of transformation that all of us create will indeed support positive developments for each of us as we move toward the end of another year.

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Becoming a Person

Sounds True — June 28, 2014

When I first met my partner Julie, almost thirteen years ago, I remember telling her that my greatest fear in life was that I would turn out to be “mediocre”. She looked at me and said, “there is only one thing that is mediocre about you and that is the way you’re dressed. But we can fix that. Just give me your credit card.” And Julie has done a great job of improving my wardrobe over the past ten plus years. But my point is that I had a dreadful fear of mediocrity, of somehow being like other people, being average and unremarkable; I felt like I would do anything to stand out and be different.

Recently, I have begun experimenting with dropping all need for specialness. I can see that there is a small child in me that wanted love and attention in a crowded environment (four older siblings) and that a large part of my motivation was not a spiritual need to express my unique being (which is how I had explained this unrelenting drive to express myself uniquely) but a psychological need to earn love. What if I am perfectly love-able and I am not doing anything particularly extraordinary? What if I am going to the laundrymat (we are renovating our home and our washer and dryer have been offline for several months), and I am as ordinary as ordinary gets, and I have no need to stand out in any way? (As an important aside, it is always so interesting to me when I uncover something that has psychological roots, like this need to be extraordinary in order to receive love, and to notice how I have been operating under a spiritual justification, in this case that I have been focused on expressing human uniqueness).

So I have been experimenting with enjoying the ordinary, not solving any big Sounds True problems or making “big deals” or creating a big splash of any kind. And I am noticing that I am happier than I have ever been. I am relaxing into being one of six plus billion people and simply being “one of us.” I don’t have anything to prove or anything to earn. Instead, it is about being present to what is needed and asked in the moment without a big agenda. I feel like a person instead of a striving determined-to-be-extraordinary achiever. And what I am noticing is that the glistening of the trees is brighter, the fur on Jasmine’s back (Jasmine is our 16-year old cocker spaniel) is even softer, and that I really enjoy going to the laundry mat!

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Holding Your Experience

Sounds True — March 22, 2014

Will you make a commitment to no longer abandon yourself and your present experience? That no matter what thought, feeling, emotion, or sensation arises, you will offer it a home within you, setting aside the conclusion that it is a mistake, a problem which must be fixed, or evidence that something is wrong with you?

Begin with a sacred pause, touching whatever is there, and state your intention to stay close. Offer a heartfelt “yes” to your experience and allow it to be exactly as it is, cutting into the momentum of billions of lifetimes of turning from the orphaned ones knocking on the door of your heart. Call off the war with yourself, and see that arguing with reality will only ever lead to suffering for yourself and others.

From this ground of seeing and allowing, you could then enter into the most radical act of all: to meet whatever arises in your experience with what Rumi calls a mighty kindness. While it seems so simple, it is in fact a revolution in practice. Open your heart to your rage, your shame, your despair, and your sadness, gently holding and cradling it as you would a sweet little baby, unconditionally receiving it as a raging expression of reality exactly as it is. See that it, too, is path—come only to awaken one of the qualities of love within you.

It is through this wild kindness that you may finally see just how much space there is around your experience, how whatever appears—while very vivid, colorful, energetic, and even disturbing—is luminously transparent, and not nearly as solid as it seems. It is in and through your intimacy with your embodied, present experience that it will self-liberate, without any effort on your part, into the pristine, primordial awareness and love that you are.

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You are free to be who and what you are now

Sounds True — December 7, 2013

The fear of being abandoned. The terror of being lonely forever. The anxiety of being utterly dependent upon another.

The panic of unbearable vulnerability and exposure. The dread of the looming death of yourself and everyone around you.

These are the great fears that come as you wake, as you fall asleep, and as you dream through this life.

In your willingness to take a risk, to feel everything, to truly allow another to matter, and to expose yourself to an eternal sort of heartbreak, you come face to face with the most devastating fear that you’ve ever known, but have never been able to articulate: that you are loved.

For when you are truly loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. Things will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than precious and whole as you are. The implications of this are dizzying if you let them all the way in.

It is so exhilarating to be seen and held in this way, but it is also terrifying as you are fully naked now, utterly raw, and achingly wide open. Even the breeze as it passes you feels as if it might be too much, for it goes right through your skin to touch your heart. A sunrise, the longing of a little baby, the autumn leaves, looking into the eyes of your lover – you may never be protected again. The particles of love are interpenetrating your entire sensory world and you are just not sure your heart and nervous system can take it.

You are free to be who and what you are now – no longer tied to a past you thought you wanted, no longer bound by the limited, willing to risk it all for love, and free to be the fearless wildness that you are.

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The Mystery of Thanksgiving

Honoring an Irreducible Truth in Ferguson

Wake Up or Bust!

Becoming a Person

Holding Your Experience

You are free to be who and what you are now

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