Expressions of Love
In This Issue
Gratitude - Again - Rev. Frank Arnold
Recreation - Rev. Sue Borg
The Opportunity of Pain -
Tama Kieves
The
Real Upside to Hip Fractures -
Susan Dugan
By Rev. Frank Arnold
I know I keep talking about gratitude, but from my perspective, gratitude is all that is left. If everything is as it should be, then we need only be in appreciation and gratitude for all that we are and all that we have.
When you pray do you remember to thank God for the abundance of all creation that is now, always has been and always will be? I know I don’t always remember, but I am getting better. Our only asking should be for clear vision to see that I and My Father are One, that I am the Light, the Life and the Love of God. I want to live my life as a celebration of who I am. I want to stand in Love and Gratitude for the all that we experience as a Family of Creation. I have made a decision to treat all living things as part of the Creator's oneness, accept other beings as part of my loving self, and no longer allow injustices to happen by me or around me. It is not about changing all the wrongs of the world, but about accepting me as Holy and be in appreciation for all that is part of me.
"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes our deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light." …Albert Schweitzer.
I heard a story about gratitude that has stuck with me for years. A teacher asked her students to close their eyes and think about someone who had done or said something that brought them Joy. She talked about the profound experiences she had as she listened to them talk as they remembered the joy they felt from being appreciated by someone else when they needed it most.
She asked them to write down
the name of the person they thought of and commit to their own act of
appreciation by letting that person know, in the next 72 hours, that he
or she was thought of and appreciated. She suggested a phone call, a
note, or maybe a little prayer if the person was no longer living.
One student came up to her and thanked her for creating a new awareness
in him. He said he thought of his eighth grade literature teacher
because she was everyone's favorite and had really made a difference in
all of their lives. He planned to track her down and let me know what
happened.
A couple of months later she received a call from him. He was choked up on the phone and barely got through his story. He said it had taken him nearly two months to track his teacher down, and when he did, he wrote to her. Here is her response to him which he received a week later.
Dear John, You will never know how much your letter meant to me. I am 83 years old, and I am living all alone in one room. My friends are all gone. My family's gone. I taught 50 years and yours is the first "thank you" letter I have ever gotten from a student. Sometimes I wonder what I did with my life. I will read and reread your letter until the day I die.
He said he was flabbergasted because she was the one they always talked about at every school reunion. She was everyone's favorite teacher, the one everyone loved, but no one had ever told her until she received his letter."
I’m going to finish my article
by putting that teacher’s suggestion into my life. Here is a letter to
my daughters, Rebecca and Rachel.
Hi Girls. After writing the above article, I realized I have never told
you a story of something you did that made me feel the best I had felt
in my whole life. It meant more to me than any other thing I could think
of. You may not even remember it, but I have never forgotten it and how
I felt. I want to tell you how thankful I am for both of you and for
what you said.
When your mom and I wanted to take you on a trip to Mexico and we said you could each take a friend, you both agreed that you would rather just go with your mom and I as go as a family.
I never said anything, but
your decision somehow made my life up to that point finally seem
important. Up to then, life was just life, but your joy in our family
made everything in my life seem very worthwhile.
Thank you and I love you.
******************************
I was having a conversation with a friend who was experiencing pain because she had done something which caused her to feel guilt and shame. Her mind was consumed with these awful feelings that she had caused some terrible things to happen because she had told a lie. Someone told her that lying is not uncommon in individuals who have been abused, and also her need to be in control is an issue of co-dependency. In these two short thoughts, I can easily see how we are taught by others to hang on to our stories and perpetuate them by teaching what is wrong with us instead of what is right with us. These words of inadequacy and insufficiency are so harmful and they keep us circling in self-abuse long after any abuse from elsewhere has occurred.
One of the definitions of abuse in the dictionary is to deceive or mislead. There are many ways we manage to abuse (deceive and mislead) ourselves. Self-deceit, or self-abuse is the more common than outside abuse and it is the only abuse we can truly change. We recognize self-abuse when we start replaying past pain or suffering in our minds.
I heard Oprah say that suffering ends when we give up the idea of having a better past. Wow! That’s sounds like truth to me. It clearly states that emotional pain comes from our minds and from recreating painful incidents from the past. It becomes our hope for a better or a different outcome. The Course says “All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing.” In other words, love is all that is really left from the past except when we decide to replay fear, guilt and emotional pain in our minds.
It's how we talk to ourselves that can create so much havoc in our lives. Once again, when you have guilt, shame and "less-than" thoughts you will know you have been in your head re-creating the past. (It just dawned on me that a recreation - re-creation - center is where we used to go as kids for fun). So creating or re-creating pain (fear) in your mind is total mis-creation or as The Course says, wrong mindedness.
Your head is not a safe recreation playground. Instead try to think words of love - love of yourself and love of others and then stop there and let your mind be released from the suffering. You don’t have to think up ways of loving – just the word will release your distress. Recreation should be for fun, not pain. If you must recreate, then give it your best to re-create the good and loving thoughts from the past. Think of something that brought you joy. It may sound hard, but honestly it will work once you get a handle on your thoughts. When you recognize your debilitating thoughts, quickly say to yourself, "I could see love instead of this." Just start changing your mind from guilt and fear to love and loving thoughts. It takes some vigilance for your thoughts, but it gets easier the more you do it.
The affirmation I say when I realize I am having unkind thoughts about me or my past is "All is well, NOW, in this moment, and I am loved by God and many others," and “I choose Love.” Anytime you choose Love, Love is what will happen. You choose in every moment what you want anything to mean to you. “Whenever you are afraid, be still and know that God is real, and you are His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.” Acim T49
It is so important that you express Love – in your mind as well as out loud. Your love to yourself and your love to others is how God expresses his love to you – God needs you for expressing love. Do that!
*************************
by Tama Kieves
Recently I took a yoga class while in New York City. I claimed a space
in the packed studio and drank in the peace of the altar, appointed with
images of smiling gurus and blue Krishnas. The subway rumbled beneath
us. The teacher, a low-keyed young man in a faded tee shirt, walked
casually among us. Just minutes later he would rock my world.
He had us stretching, sweating, and breathing deeply immediately. Then
at one point he had us doing squats, yes squats, like army boot camp
training. I longed to go back to the nice chanting part. Then, just when
I secretly gave myself permission to take the low road into
listlessness, the teacher said this, "Don't miss the opportunity to go
deeper into this squat, you only have two more breaths, two more chances
to get this full stretch." Yeah, don't miss the opportunity to rip open
a wound or deny yourself water in a desert either, I immediately think,
because my cynic is often the first one up to bat. But his tone catches
me anyway. He says it with a raspy voice as though he's talking about
beholding moonlight or the face of your lover before your eyes go dim
for the last time. I get it that he's talking about more than just the
squats. He's telling us not to miss the chance to get what we came for
in this life, to devote ourselves to ourselves and the moments we have
before us.
For the rest of the class, he's hooked me. He's helped me believe that
I'm on the way to somewhere grand, and that I don't want to cheat myself
of the ride, not even the squats. Suddenly I see that there is an
opportunity in pain. It's the opportunity to choose aliveness instead of
habit. It's the chance to practice stepping into my unknown strength and
love, my highest self, instead of resistance and complacency.
Haven't you had moments in your life that you wish you could have done
differently? Maybe there's a way you've sabotaged yourself with money.
Or maybe every time a certain scenario arises with your husband, you
spit out words you regret or lock yourself into a distant chamber.
Perhaps you reach for distraction every time you look at a task or
deadline. There's a place where you become automatic. There's a place
where you choose something that will not expand your heart and mind and
soul. It's not about making yourself wrong for this. It's about noticing
what you do with pain. Pain is our practice to do things differently.
How do you react to discomfort? Do you close down? Do you open up? Do
you invite it to tea? Can you become present and choose a response that
you've never chosen before? This is venturing into the mystery. This is
stepping into the gleaming green forest beyond the limits of the
familiar village. This is how we dare to experience our true capacities
and the evolving wonder of life. In this life, we create our identities
by the choices we make. JK Rowling, the internationally best-selling
author of the Harry Potter series, attributed her enormous success not
to her talent, but to her ability to walk past fear. She said, "It is
our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
The wisdom tradition of A Course in Miracles teaches, "Trials are but
lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made
a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape
all pain that what you chose before has brought to you." I love that
idea. I can choose a new response that ultimately helps me escape all
pain that what I chose before has brought to me.
This is what I remind myself now. Pain is my opportunity to expand.
There is someone astounding in me. I only get to meet her in the
presence of challenge. It's my opportunity to show myself my true
colors, to dare a more loving, patient, or audacious response. My
initial instinct is one of smallness. "I don't want to." "This scares
me." "I shouldn't have to." The posturing and bargaining goes on. My
first reaction is the guardian of stagnation. It will keep me making the
same choices. It will keep me at the same level. It will have me say
things in defensiveness that I would not say in sanity and I'd never
even think in love. It will send me into fear when the media announces a
certain perspective, even though I know a more abundant reality in my
bones. Pain is the opportunity to practice. Pain is the portal to
another choice, another self, and another life.
In the body, pain is the sensation of stretching the muscles, growing
them, turning them into a fire that will mold a new strength. So please
don't refuse the gift. Don't miss the opportunity to live large, to
choose large, to face discomfort and breathe into it until it yields new
grace. In the Bible, Jacob wrestled the angel and said, "I will not let
you go until you give me a blessing." I suggest you wrestle with your
angels and your demons. Forgive yourself over and over again for
choosing habit and limitation. But dare it now. Walk yourself across the
cosmic border of everything you know. Choose a new response. Be
generous. Trust your crazy desires. Choose to love more than you're
loved. Don't miss the opportunity. You're only here for a little while.
You only have two more chances to deepen into this stretch, two more
opportunities to choose grace over business as usual. Squat deeply. Fly
high.
With my love and blessings, Tama
©Copyright 2009 Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.
Please go to Tama's website to see all of her classes and retreats and order her book This Time I Dance. www.awakeningartistry.com
The Real Upside of Hip Fractures
By Susan Dugan
Did I mention I am just recovering from a hip fracture? There is a story; of course, in the ego’s world there is always a story. Practicing A Course in Miracles we begin to understand that our story that looks so uniquely tragic or hopeful nonetheless springs from the same old story. In the original fiction we have bought the idea that we have run away from the source of our wholeness, at large in our bodies in a world the ego mind created to both reflect and protect us from God’s punishment for the crime of separation. In our effort to prove we have pulled off the impossible sin of individuality while avoiding retribution we project our repressed guilt on to other bodies or, sometimes, our own.
This particular story began on New Years morning 2009 in the idyllic Victorian town of Crested Butte, Colorado, mid-way through a ski vacation with family and friends. I had skied for four days on a pair of sweet new K-2s and even though I had reverted to Eastern Standard Time to ring in the New Year the night before to accommodate my lark (over night owl) tendencies, I was tired. As my family and friends headed out to the mountain under a milky sky to a day that promised the kind of icy conditions and flat light I found especially challenging I begged off. I had been interacting with other people non-stop for five days. A self-declared introvert, I need chunks of time alone to replenish the energy spending long periods with others tends to deplete. That, too, is part of the story of Susan, a story I was about to illuminate in a new way with help from my inner teacher.
Here’s the bottom line. I believed I could only find my inner teacher, my connection with the divine, the voice for love, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, my right mind, whatever you want to call it, alone. This is particularly amusing given the fact that I had been studying A Course in Miracles for five years, reading the text, doing the workbook lessons designed to help us apply its principles in our lives, attending and teaching classes and still somehow managed to miss the entire point! Unlike many worthy spiritual paths that also lead to awakening but had not worked for me, this path urges us to heal the belief in autonomy at the root of our suffering through our relationships. We don’t do that by sitting on a mountaintop cross-legged with our eyes closed and our fingers pinched together. The silence we are asked to enter within has nothing to do with what appears without. We are asked to enter the silent part of our mind that remembers that the person sitting across the dinner table or chatting on the ski lift is actually the outlet provided to reestablish the divine connection we believe we severed. I heal my mind by seeing that the teenager glaring up at me as I set a glass of juice before her is not the problem, my belief in the original story of separation is the problem, but I can choose again with the help of the loving presence in my mind to remember that we are one.
But that morning I apparently needed a little review. I bid my friends and family farewell and decided to go ice-skating; one of the solitary pursuits I believed had helped me connect with the divine in the past. Walking over to the public outdoor rink through the hushed streets I indulged a fantasy of Jesus walking beside me. But once I put on the ill-fitting rental skates, Jesus made a run for it. I had worn my lightweight ski socks and my bony ankles chafed against the cheap leather. Time and time again I came off the ice to re-lace the skates, stuffing tissues over the hot spots, then forging out once more to see if I could flag Jesus down. Some local tweens playing hockey with someone’s glove nearly toppled me several times. Still, I persevered for almost an hour, striving to reestablish my connection. Distracted by the throbbing in my ankles and the annoyance of dodging ill-mannered children whose hung over parents sat in the bleachers cheering them on, the blurry sense of Jesus in my peripheral vision never materialized. Defeated, I returned the skates and headed down the icy, still largely deserted streets to the grocery store hoping to find some over-the-counter sinus medication to ease the pressure settling in under my eyes. I would go snow shoeing maybe; that always helped me connect.
The local grocery store looked like it had been looted following a summer blackout in Manhattan, its shelves largely empty and ransacked, drifts of confetti swept into a corner of the linoleum floor. A boy with stringy hair and blood-shot eyes—a snow boarder, or shredder as we not so fondly called them--said he had no idea when fresh supplies might arrive over Monarch Pass. “Hey, we’re lucky I showed up,” he said. “It’s New Year’s, man.”
I hurried outside, and had gone maybe 200 yards when I wiped out, my legs thrown in one direction, the rest of me catapulted in the other. I landed hard on my hip, and bounced. I don’t know if I had ever felt so alone. In that instant of a pain so excruciating I could not pull air into my lungs a terror gripped me, almost immediately followed by outrage. I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to find the person who had surely pushed me, the shredder, maybe, or one of his kind. I didn’t see anyone, of course. But I did feel the presence I had been seeking all morning, the presence of my inner teacher, the clear-eyed gentleness of Jesus. In that moment of complete surrender I could almost see him holding up his hands as if to say; it wasn’t me. As if to remind me who had chosen this, and to promise me he would help me see why if I would allow him.
A stricken looking woman in an SUV stopped and rolled down her window. “Don’t move,” she said. “I’ll be right there.” Several good Samaritans stood fretting over me. Did I need the EMT’s? No. If I could just get up, walk on it; I would be all right, I said. They helped me up, offered me a ride I refused. I sat for a while on a metal chair beside an old yellow dog that rested his muzzle on my knee. After a while I dragged myself several blocks back to Elk Avenue, taking baby steps on the slick sidewalks, through tunnels of plowed and shoveled snow, my mittened hands pressed against the glass of store fronts selling books and high-end pottery, jewelry, and kitchenware for balance, my favorite little prayer playing in my head: help me, help me, help me.
Eight blocks later back at the rental I peeled off my ski pants, filled a plastic bag with ice, popped some ibuprofen, and grabbed the Course, asking my inner teacher to show me what I needed to know. I opened the book to Chapter 21, The Responsibility for Sight:
This is the only thing you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain and complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
Upon the goal I would achieve
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you. Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken and all effects of your mistakes will disappear.
As in the instant when my body hit the ground I saw that I had created this, that I had already been feeling unfairly treated, my peace somehow jeopardized by these others. The fall merely reflected a belief in my victimization. Although my ego mind raced forward wondering what would happen if I had really damaged this body, how I would make it to scheduled client meetings, get my daughter to all her activities, rewrite my novel, launch this blog; the presence of my inner teacher helped me accept responsibility for my mistaken projection. As I did, I understood that this was all in my best interests. However it played out, I would be OK. The truth in me had nothing to do with another story of Susan. The truth in me could not be threatened, broken, or destroyed. And as I picked up the phone to call my husband, a part of me had to smile because I had finally gotten the quality time with Jesus I craved.
That connection has not gone away. In the weeks that followed, confined to crutches or a walker, my husband and daughter and friends stepped up to care for me in ways I never would have otherwise allowed and a funny thing happened. As my relationship with them became less identified with the rigid roles I had scripted for us and I allowed myself to receive their love in whatever ways they offered it, my connection with my inner teacher continued to strengthen. It did not go away when my husband entered my office and began talking to me while I was writing or on the phone. It did not go away when my daughter lay on the couch watching a reality TV program involving wealthy, potty-mouthed teenagers I sometimes longed to kidnap and reform. It did not go away when clients changed their mind about what they wanted from me several times an hour. It did not go away when I studied the crumbs and dust accumulating on the hardwood floors that I could not sweep up one-handed.
It did not go away because it can’t go away. It can’t go away because it never left me. It never left me because I never left it. I learned from my hip fracture that I really don’t want to be alone ever again, even though I might sometimes need to close my office door to finish a project, or take a yoga class or meditate to clear my busy mind. I want to be in constant relationship with my inner teacher, the only real relationship available. When I forget it is there, I find it again by listening to the terrible loneliness of my belief in separation, the loneliness I begin to recognize and heal when I truly and with complete attention begin to listen to you.
Reprinted by permission.