After my parents dropped me off at Rutgers University in the fall of 1990, I breathed deeply, relieved that I was on my own. It wasn’t that I didn’t love or wouldn’t miss them. It was the feeling that I was free to create my day, study subjects and garner knowledge, be friends with whom I wanted without my parents looking over my shoulder with wary eyes. I was awarded a full scholarship plus another one that gave me spending money; for the first time in my life I wasn’t financially dependent on anyone. I had a sanguine outlook because I got my golden ticket and I was ready to fly.
The first thing I decided before I arrived at college was that I would never, ever go to church again. I would finally sleep late on Sundays. I turned my back on my Baptist upbringing because, for me, it was like a suit that was always just a little too tight around the shoulders. There was something about the faith and belief system that didn’t have much to do with Christ’s teachings, but rather Paul’s tomes and interpretations of Christ’s words.
My Christian background is a part of me and I can’t deny it, but now it’s a matter of reconciling it with who I am now. After my mom died, the usual questions about life and death arose, but what I wasn’t expecting was a voice to pop up and say what it said to me. It was the same voice that told me to be a teacher; the one that told me to get my master’s degree in education; the voice that’s guided and directed me at different points in my life. It’s not the voice that tells me when to take a drink of water or skip to the loo; it's the one that I believe is connected to my Source of Being.
Last Spring, I heard it during my morning commute. I was reading a book by Harold Bloom on humanity’s fascination with the iconography of angels when the voice said, “Go to seminary.” Yeah, right, I thought. Go away. But it didn’t go away. The voice repeated, “Go to seminary.” No! I’m already in debt for my last master’s degree and there’s no way I’m going back to school right now! After the third time I acquiesced enough to say, “All right. I’ll look into it.”
After doing some research online and talking with the chaplain at Grace Church School where I taught, I found the place - Union Theological Seminary. I visited last fall and when I told the admissions director I had no idea why I was even there she said, “You’re my favorite kind of potential student. It sounds to me like it’s a calling.” I told her that I was already treading the high waters of student loans but she said the school often offered scholarships to people, so just apply and see what happens.
I took her advice. A week before I left for Paris, I received my letter stating that my application had been accepted. While in France, I received an email from the financial aid director: I didn’t get a full scholarship, but the aid package was very generous. I accepted because what’s a few more thousand dollars of debt? Just add it to my bill.
Since that first day of college nineteen years ago, I’ve walked a circuitous path from the renouncement of religion to slowly finding a different way back, more of a spiritual seeking not based on any denominational belief, and that’s what I like about Union; it’s a place where I can seek and not be judged.
My 20s was about figuring out what I was and my 30s have been living what I’ve come to understand about myself. That doesn’t mean I’m not constantly evolving, but I do know the core of who I am. Now, I want to concentrate my life on understanding more about my relationship with the mystery of the universe, the enigma of creativity, the glimpses of grace that come now and then, and how I can reconcile my past with a new synthesis of Christianity, eastern mysticism, quantum physics, Emily Dickinson poems, novels by Kinky Friedman, Brahms’ “Requiem”, and a painting by Picasso. To me they’re all connected.
I’m going to school again. If you asked me a week ago why I was going I wouldn’t know what to say. Two days after returning to New York from Paris, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I walked through the Asian wings filled with smiling Buddhas and demigods. I sat in a Japanese meditation garden. I looked out windows across Central Park as I ate a salad and drank a glass of crisp white wine. I went there because I wanted to find the answer to why I was going to seminary. The answer came quietly and simply after I turned off the chatter in my head and simply listened to my Self. The answer to why I’m going to seminary? Because I want to.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Three Entries
F. and I are headed off to France March 13th through the 24th. I will not be posting a blog from Paris, so this week’s email has three entries. Check out the Emily Dickinson poem in the sidebar. I’m memorizing it right now. I’ve got three of her poems in my head since the New Year and I love walking down the street or sitting on the subway and reciting them to myself. I find that I get more meaning out of them over time. It’s wonderful to memorize poetry because anytime you need a poem, it’s there for you, and the ones that are timeless touch our eternal soul. Also, the first flowers in our garden have popped their heads up – diminutive Snowdrops that remind me that Spring is coming. I loved the last snowstorm that dropped down on the city last week, but I’m ready for warm weather, flowers, and opening the backdoor for the Marble Hill zephyrs that float in off the Harlem River. In fact, today, I was able to brush off the adiorondack chair on the deck, sit in the sun, and read. It’s only an appetizer of what’s to come, but again, I’m ready.
BELIEF – PART TWO
I am the builder, not the architect of my life. I wanted to meditate on that today. Do I believe that? It makes me think that my Source of Being is the architect, the one who has helped me create the Big Picture of my life, the macrocosm of the the microscosmic experiences; and that I’m the one, with the inveterate help of muses, guides, and angels, who builds the life within that framework. It’s a comforting thought and I don’t think I could live without it. It may be a fantasy, a construct of my mind, but it’s what I need to get out of bed each morning. With all kinds of doubts, I believe in all this, and if I didn’t doubt, then I wouldn’t be human. It’s ironic, though, because by doubting, my beliefs take stronger root.
But how are my beliefs confluent with another belief that before I incarnated, I chose with my Source what I wanted/needed to learn during this lifetime; what kinds of experiences I should have; what family to be born into; what trials I would face that would strengthen me and help me evolve as a spiritual being living a human existence?
It’s consonant with the idea of the architect and builder. I need to remind myself constantly that I am a part of God and God a part of me. We are the same and through each other we experience this human life. As I evolve, God evolves with me because we’re co-creators and friends. (I slipped back into using the word God again! I mean – Source. When I say God I can’t help but picture an old bearded man on a throne, so I can’t use the word God anymore because of that image. When I say the Source, there is no image, only a feeling.)
The Source is where my spirit came from, where I dwelled while waiting to become incarnate, the place Plato speaks of; before I incarnated I had all the knowledge of the universe, but I’ve forgotten it, so I’m here to have a human experience and do my best to live so that I can spread my wings in the great house of my life.
As the builder working with my architect I’ve created a house in which I dwell for this lifetime, and within the house are many rooms and doors through which I can pass – it’s up to me. In my father’s house are many mansions. That’s where free choice enters into the picture. The Source creates and then lets the creations go with free will. Darwin believed this.
In order for me to stay on my path, I have to quiet my mind and listen to my heart and the voice that says, “I know it seems strange, and you probably don’t want to do it, but it’s going to be good for you. Do it!” I love that voice.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m on this rigid path and that I have to remain stalwart and not bend or sway from it. No. I’m exactly where I am supposed to be all the time, and that’s the wonder and mystery of it all. It’s a monumental paradox, like a Buddhist koan that helps transcend duality – I’m on the path of my life, with twists and turns, detours, forks in the road; there are infinite choices and even though I feel side-tracked sometimes, like I’ve made a wrong turn, it’s never a wrong turn.
I want to stop looking at experiences as good or bad in my life. They’re there for us to learn and grow. Experiences can no longer be expressed as binary oppositions. They are what they are. They exist. They happen and it isn’t always in our control.
If we could go back to our Source while we’re here on earth and see the things that we need to learn, then we could trace our life from birth to this moment and see that everything – absolutely every experience – is vital and connected to the web of our life. That web would be seen to intersect with the lives of countless others, until we could see that every choice we make, every thought, every being we meet, from the ant to the elephant, from a moon to a star, from a planet to a solar system to the millions of galaxies spiraling through space – we’re all connected.
The almost unfathomable balance in the universe, in which there is coexisting peace and chaos, is the greatest mystery to me. God? The Source of my Being? I can handle that. I accept that in a non-traditional kind of way. But the universe? That’s more mind-boggling than a belief in a source of creativity in the world that is connected to us all. Like a sweet sip of wine, I can swallow the idea of my Source, but the universe? Wow.
As I live each day, my concept of the Source evolves. I’m beginning to rely on my morning readings and prayers more and more. I don’t have to do them, I want to do them. It’s starting to feed my soul because I’m engaged to think and meditate on ideas of the Source and the nature of the universe that I haven’t done in a while. My prayers become more a thanksgiving service in which I thank my Source for the abundance in my life – my home and the love that resides in it, my writing, food, water, wine, and the money that comes and goes like a flittering bird.
By giving thanks rather than asking the universe for things, I acknowledge that whatever will come through me – the builder of my house – the architect and I will make accommodations and additions, which leaves room for surprise and wonder in life.
If I knew the plan of my life – if I knew it totally – then there would be no thanksgiving when I wake for another day to live, love, learn, laugh, and grow. I wouldn’t even want to get out of bed, so therefore, I would stop living in the house, walking on my path. So by not knowing it, but sometimes having a pretty good idea of what I’m supposed to do, and by living in the warm mystery of my Source, there’s excitement and wonder. Mystery is okay to me. I don’t need definitive answers, because really, there are none.
HEALED
This Monday is the one-year anniversary of my mom’s death – her physical one, that is. If you asked me what I believe about death, I’d say the following (and I’m still working on this): I believe in a soul, or spirit, if you prefer, that imbues our physical bodies. It isn’t our mental consciousness, but rather our spiritual consciousness that is directly connected to the Source of our Being – the place, the creative universal intelligence, from whence we come and exist and return.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Science has proven that. It’s also proven that we are made of energy, but I don’t need physical or scientific proof to believe what I believe. It’s a matter of faith and instinct; a kind of intuition. When I said this to a dear atheist friend, he harrumphed and said, “You’re fooling yourself.” I’ve been called worse.
My mom’s body died, but her spirit lives on and I feel her in my every day life, around me sometimes, whispering in my ear, coming to me in my dreams and telling me things that I wish to God I could remember. But those illuminations are in my subconscious and I do my best to recall them from time to time. I had a dream last night and she was in it. She said she wished I’d get my hair cut. She’s probably right.
I believe in the power of prayer, of setting one’s intentions, of giving thanks for abundance that doesn’t seem to always be there, but is if we look for it. Rather than supplicate God for things, I give thanks. For years I prayed with thanksgiving for my mom’s cure, but looking back, I should have been praying for her healing. This doesn’t mean my prayers were in vain. My mom lived much longer than she should have, but to me it’s more about healing, and I find that interesting now. Now that I look back on a year since her death, I find that she was healed, even in death.
Death is a healing process and something to be embraced while we live; embraced because it’s the culmination of our lives and not something to be feared. Easy to say. Not easy to live. I’m scared of death in one breath, and in the next, I welcome it. I don’t believe people who say they aren’t scared of death. I can’t. I believe people who say they’re scared of annihilation, of non-being. Those are the people with whom I want to talk.
For my mom, like us all, death wasn’t a choice. It was a fact that she had cancer that ate away at her for the many years that she lived with the diagnosis. Her prognosis was poor – two to three years, but she lived for eight and a half, well beyond what the doctors hypothesized.
There is no cure for cancer yet. Prayers and sheer will to live kept my mother alive past the doctors’ expectations. I believe my mom had less faith in her own prayers, but absolute faith in the prayers of others. I would say that in connections through her church, friends, and other loved ones, she probably had five hundred prayers being offered for her every day. That’s transformative power, not just for my mom, but for the person praying.
Praying for someone who is ill is painful; it hurts. I hurt when I prayed for my mom, but in some way, we pray-ers took on my mom’s pain in those prayers. It wasn’t pain by substitution, but we couldn’t do it alone. One person couldn’t pray and take on all that pain. It’s in the community of those who pray that we are able to share the pain, the hope, the gratitude to our Source. That’s why when people tell me that religion is a deceit, I say: religion isn’t wrong, it’s only people’s frailty and fear that corrupts it. Most religions have at their source an attempt to make sense of the world and our place as humans in it. I would also point out that the world’s greatest art, music, literature, and architecture were done in the name of religion.
I don’t subscribe to any religion. I don’t pretend to know the truth. When someone tells me they know the truth and can tell me how to lead my life, I run away. But there are bits here and there from all traditions that transcend, and it’s in our own searching that we discover them and take what we need to create some semblance of a balanced life.
I’ve written about this before, but not until now have I come to understand what I believe happened on that wild Saturday a year ago in Pennsylvania when it stormed violently and afterwards a double rainbow arched over our home: as my mom lay dying on her bed, I saw a pinpoint of light enter the room and float towards her. Her face lit up and all around was a glow of light that my sisters and I saw. It was then, at that moment, that I know my mom was healed – not cured. There’s a difference.
She was never physically cured, but her spirit was healed, and when she looked up at us with an aura of light and love surrounding her, as if an angel were there, and told us she loved us, I knew all was well. She left at that moment. She moved on, and it was just a matter of her body slowing down, like a rusty squeezebox, until the last rattle of breath escaped her lips.
I can’t shed a tear right now. Where six months ago I was a bit more lachrymose, I’m healed through time and by the belief that my mother’s body died, but her soul was healed and transformed.
BLUE BLANKET
My cousin’s son, Jason, is now in college, but he was very sick when he was a teenager. I’m not sure of his ailment, but I do know he was ill. Women in a local church knitted him a prayer blanket – a soft, almost cashmere-like blue blanket no more than a foot and a half wide and long enough to cover an average-sized person from head to toes. He eventually recuperated, joined the football team, worked out and turned into a healthy, solid young man. In the middle of my mom’s encounter with cancer he visited her. Jason gave the blanket to my mom, something he felt had helped in his healing. He proffered it to her, almost like the Lady of the Lake holding up Excalibur, but this time it was a healing blanket.
My mom used the blanket when she sat in the living room of her house and watched TV, read, said her prayers. It became part of her life in that little home in Bird-In-Hand, PA. She said that whenever she felt weak or tired, the blanket seemed to comfort her.
When she died, the prayer blanket was left draped over her favorite chair in the living room like a memorial. My sisters and I had gone through her jewelry, cleared the bathroom of all her belongings, and for our father’s sake did the same throughout the rest of the house. It was as if he didn’t want any remembrances of his wife in the house, and we were there to oblige and mollify his sorrow and our own.
When we came to the blanket I asked, “Can I have this?” Since I don’t wear jewelry and most of my mom’s belongings were that, clothes, or knick-knacks I didn’t care to have, my sisters picked up the blanket off the chair and handed it to me. “Take it,” they said. And I thanked them for that sublime, simple gesture.
The blanket now rests on my chair at my desk. I feel the comfort of it against my back. I sit on it, wrap myself up in it on cold winter mornings, and sometimes – and I’m not making this up – I can smell my mom’s perfume coming from it. Her perfume was called Beautiful, a scent by Estee Lauder. It’s a particular scent and I swear it still lingers.
Often during the winter, our apartment has a slight chill. We’re right above the basement. There’s a dampness that seeps through the floors. Sometimes I can wear two sweaters, my long underwear, and a ski cap and still feel the cold. But when I drape the blue prayer blanket over my legs or around my shoulders I’m instantly warm.
I’d like for everyone to feel the blanket around their shoulders so they could understand. There’s an energy in that blanket, a protective warmth that reminds me of my mom. She’s with me all the time, but when I need a reminder of that, I wrap the blanket around me, take a deep inhalation, and reflect on the life and love my mom gave me and so many others who were fortunate enough to meet her on their paths.
It’s my blanket now, but it’s hers and my cousin’s and the women who made it. They imbued a healing power in it through intention while they knitted it. Excuse the metaphor, but the blanket is a thread that connects me to these people and offers an unselfish comfort for all that feel its warmth.
When I’m feeling cold, a little down, morose perhaps, I know that the blanket will never let me down. It’s timeless in its love, infinite in its repose, and selfless in purpose. I wish I could knit.
BELIEF – PART TWO
I am the builder, not the architect of my life. I wanted to meditate on that today. Do I believe that? It makes me think that my Source of Being is the architect, the one who has helped me create the Big Picture of my life, the macrocosm of the the microscosmic experiences; and that I’m the one, with the inveterate help of muses, guides, and angels, who builds the life within that framework. It’s a comforting thought and I don’t think I could live without it. It may be a fantasy, a construct of my mind, but it’s what I need to get out of bed each morning. With all kinds of doubts, I believe in all this, and if I didn’t doubt, then I wouldn’t be human. It’s ironic, though, because by doubting, my beliefs take stronger root.
But how are my beliefs confluent with another belief that before I incarnated, I chose with my Source what I wanted/needed to learn during this lifetime; what kinds of experiences I should have; what family to be born into; what trials I would face that would strengthen me and help me evolve as a spiritual being living a human existence?
It’s consonant with the idea of the architect and builder. I need to remind myself constantly that I am a part of God and God a part of me. We are the same and through each other we experience this human life. As I evolve, God evolves with me because we’re co-creators and friends. (I slipped back into using the word God again! I mean – Source. When I say God I can’t help but picture an old bearded man on a throne, so I can’t use the word God anymore because of that image. When I say the Source, there is no image, only a feeling.)
The Source is where my spirit came from, where I dwelled while waiting to become incarnate, the place Plato speaks of; before I incarnated I had all the knowledge of the universe, but I’ve forgotten it, so I’m here to have a human experience and do my best to live so that I can spread my wings in the great house of my life.
As the builder working with my architect I’ve created a house in which I dwell for this lifetime, and within the house are many rooms and doors through which I can pass – it’s up to me. In my father’s house are many mansions. That’s where free choice enters into the picture. The Source creates and then lets the creations go with free will. Darwin believed this.
In order for me to stay on my path, I have to quiet my mind and listen to my heart and the voice that says, “I know it seems strange, and you probably don’t want to do it, but it’s going to be good for you. Do it!” I love that voice.
I don’t want it to sound like I’m on this rigid path and that I have to remain stalwart and not bend or sway from it. No. I’m exactly where I am supposed to be all the time, and that’s the wonder and mystery of it all. It’s a monumental paradox, like a Buddhist koan that helps transcend duality – I’m on the path of my life, with twists and turns, detours, forks in the road; there are infinite choices and even though I feel side-tracked sometimes, like I’ve made a wrong turn, it’s never a wrong turn.
I want to stop looking at experiences as good or bad in my life. They’re there for us to learn and grow. Experiences can no longer be expressed as binary oppositions. They are what they are. They exist. They happen and it isn’t always in our control.
If we could go back to our Source while we’re here on earth and see the things that we need to learn, then we could trace our life from birth to this moment and see that everything – absolutely every experience – is vital and connected to the web of our life. That web would be seen to intersect with the lives of countless others, until we could see that every choice we make, every thought, every being we meet, from the ant to the elephant, from a moon to a star, from a planet to a solar system to the millions of galaxies spiraling through space – we’re all connected.
The almost unfathomable balance in the universe, in which there is coexisting peace and chaos, is the greatest mystery to me. God? The Source of my Being? I can handle that. I accept that in a non-traditional kind of way. But the universe? That’s more mind-boggling than a belief in a source of creativity in the world that is connected to us all. Like a sweet sip of wine, I can swallow the idea of my Source, but the universe? Wow.
As I live each day, my concept of the Source evolves. I’m beginning to rely on my morning readings and prayers more and more. I don’t have to do them, I want to do them. It’s starting to feed my soul because I’m engaged to think and meditate on ideas of the Source and the nature of the universe that I haven’t done in a while. My prayers become more a thanksgiving service in which I thank my Source for the abundance in my life – my home and the love that resides in it, my writing, food, water, wine, and the money that comes and goes like a flittering bird.
By giving thanks rather than asking the universe for things, I acknowledge that whatever will come through me – the builder of my house – the architect and I will make accommodations and additions, which leaves room for surprise and wonder in life.
If I knew the plan of my life – if I knew it totally – then there would be no thanksgiving when I wake for another day to live, love, learn, laugh, and grow. I wouldn’t even want to get out of bed, so therefore, I would stop living in the house, walking on my path. So by not knowing it, but sometimes having a pretty good idea of what I’m supposed to do, and by living in the warm mystery of my Source, there’s excitement and wonder. Mystery is okay to me. I don’t need definitive answers, because really, there are none.
HEALED
This Monday is the one-year anniversary of my mom’s death – her physical one, that is. If you asked me what I believe about death, I’d say the following (and I’m still working on this): I believe in a soul, or spirit, if you prefer, that imbues our physical bodies. It isn’t our mental consciousness, but rather our spiritual consciousness that is directly connected to the Source of our Being – the place, the creative universal intelligence, from whence we come and exist and return.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Science has proven that. It’s also proven that we are made of energy, but I don’t need physical or scientific proof to believe what I believe. It’s a matter of faith and instinct; a kind of intuition. When I said this to a dear atheist friend, he harrumphed and said, “You’re fooling yourself.” I’ve been called worse.
My mom’s body died, but her spirit lives on and I feel her in my every day life, around me sometimes, whispering in my ear, coming to me in my dreams and telling me things that I wish to God I could remember. But those illuminations are in my subconscious and I do my best to recall them from time to time. I had a dream last night and she was in it. She said she wished I’d get my hair cut. She’s probably right.
I believe in the power of prayer, of setting one’s intentions, of giving thanks for abundance that doesn’t seem to always be there, but is if we look for it. Rather than supplicate God for things, I give thanks. For years I prayed with thanksgiving for my mom’s cure, but looking back, I should have been praying for her healing. This doesn’t mean my prayers were in vain. My mom lived much longer than she should have, but to me it’s more about healing, and I find that interesting now. Now that I look back on a year since her death, I find that she was healed, even in death.
Death is a healing process and something to be embraced while we live; embraced because it’s the culmination of our lives and not something to be feared. Easy to say. Not easy to live. I’m scared of death in one breath, and in the next, I welcome it. I don’t believe people who say they aren’t scared of death. I can’t. I believe people who say they’re scared of annihilation, of non-being. Those are the people with whom I want to talk.
For my mom, like us all, death wasn’t a choice. It was a fact that she had cancer that ate away at her for the many years that she lived with the diagnosis. Her prognosis was poor – two to three years, but she lived for eight and a half, well beyond what the doctors hypothesized.
There is no cure for cancer yet. Prayers and sheer will to live kept my mother alive past the doctors’ expectations. I believe my mom had less faith in her own prayers, but absolute faith in the prayers of others. I would say that in connections through her church, friends, and other loved ones, she probably had five hundred prayers being offered for her every day. That’s transformative power, not just for my mom, but for the person praying.
Praying for someone who is ill is painful; it hurts. I hurt when I prayed for my mom, but in some way, we pray-ers took on my mom’s pain in those prayers. It wasn’t pain by substitution, but we couldn’t do it alone. One person couldn’t pray and take on all that pain. It’s in the community of those who pray that we are able to share the pain, the hope, the gratitude to our Source. That’s why when people tell me that religion is a deceit, I say: religion isn’t wrong, it’s only people’s frailty and fear that corrupts it. Most religions have at their source an attempt to make sense of the world and our place as humans in it. I would also point out that the world’s greatest art, music, literature, and architecture were done in the name of religion.
I don’t subscribe to any religion. I don’t pretend to know the truth. When someone tells me they know the truth and can tell me how to lead my life, I run away. But there are bits here and there from all traditions that transcend, and it’s in our own searching that we discover them and take what we need to create some semblance of a balanced life.
I’ve written about this before, but not until now have I come to understand what I believe happened on that wild Saturday a year ago in Pennsylvania when it stormed violently and afterwards a double rainbow arched over our home: as my mom lay dying on her bed, I saw a pinpoint of light enter the room and float towards her. Her face lit up and all around was a glow of light that my sisters and I saw. It was then, at that moment, that I know my mom was healed – not cured. There’s a difference.
She was never physically cured, but her spirit was healed, and when she looked up at us with an aura of light and love surrounding her, as if an angel were there, and told us she loved us, I knew all was well. She left at that moment. She moved on, and it was just a matter of her body slowing down, like a rusty squeezebox, until the last rattle of breath escaped her lips.
I can’t shed a tear right now. Where six months ago I was a bit more lachrymose, I’m healed through time and by the belief that my mother’s body died, but her soul was healed and transformed.
BLUE BLANKET
My cousin’s son, Jason, is now in college, but he was very sick when he was a teenager. I’m not sure of his ailment, but I do know he was ill. Women in a local church knitted him a prayer blanket – a soft, almost cashmere-like blue blanket no more than a foot and a half wide and long enough to cover an average-sized person from head to toes. He eventually recuperated, joined the football team, worked out and turned into a healthy, solid young man. In the middle of my mom’s encounter with cancer he visited her. Jason gave the blanket to my mom, something he felt had helped in his healing. He proffered it to her, almost like the Lady of the Lake holding up Excalibur, but this time it was a healing blanket.
My mom used the blanket when she sat in the living room of her house and watched TV, read, said her prayers. It became part of her life in that little home in Bird-In-Hand, PA. She said that whenever she felt weak or tired, the blanket seemed to comfort her.
When she died, the prayer blanket was left draped over her favorite chair in the living room like a memorial. My sisters and I had gone through her jewelry, cleared the bathroom of all her belongings, and for our father’s sake did the same throughout the rest of the house. It was as if he didn’t want any remembrances of his wife in the house, and we were there to oblige and mollify his sorrow and our own.
When we came to the blanket I asked, “Can I have this?” Since I don’t wear jewelry and most of my mom’s belongings were that, clothes, or knick-knacks I didn’t care to have, my sisters picked up the blanket off the chair and handed it to me. “Take it,” they said. And I thanked them for that sublime, simple gesture.
The blanket now rests on my chair at my desk. I feel the comfort of it against my back. I sit on it, wrap myself up in it on cold winter mornings, and sometimes – and I’m not making this up – I can smell my mom’s perfume coming from it. Her perfume was called Beautiful, a scent by Estee Lauder. It’s a particular scent and I swear it still lingers.
Often during the winter, our apartment has a slight chill. We’re right above the basement. There’s a dampness that seeps through the floors. Sometimes I can wear two sweaters, my long underwear, and a ski cap and still feel the cold. But when I drape the blue prayer blanket over my legs or around my shoulders I’m instantly warm.
I’d like for everyone to feel the blanket around their shoulders so they could understand. There’s an energy in that blanket, a protective warmth that reminds me of my mom. She’s with me all the time, but when I need a reminder of that, I wrap the blanket around me, take a deep inhalation, and reflect on the life and love my mom gave me and so many others who were fortunate enough to meet her on their paths.
It’s my blanket now, but it’s hers and my cousin’s and the women who made it. They imbued a healing power in it through intention while they knitted it. Excuse the metaphor, but the blanket is a thread that connects me to these people and offers an unselfish comfort for all that feel its warmth.
When I’m feeling cold, a little down, morose perhaps, I know that the blanket will never let me down. It’s timeless in its love, infinite in its repose, and selfless in purpose. I wish I could knit.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Belief: Part One
The more words are used, the more they actually lose their power, or at least they start to become white-washed, their resonance extenuated until all flavor and gusto is gone, like a hot cup of coffee that’s been sitting around long enough to become viscous sludge. Faith is a word that used to be like carbonated water, but now it’s fallen flat; the bubbles are gone and it’s only still, dirty dishwater. If I hear the phrase “faith-based initiatives” one more time, I’m gonna pop a Vicodin, swill some wine, and Bob’s your uncle.
What does it mean nowadays when someone says: “I’m a person of faith?” Most often, the connotation is that the person believes in God. Strangely, as I’ve been contemplating faith, I realize that over the past year, or probably much longer, I’ve been winding my way back on a circuitous path to a personalized faith – the faith of Timmie – but isn’t that what we all do? Aren’t we all trying to figure out what we believe and then trying to live it?
What we believe is really who we are at our core, and discovering that can take a lifetime or more. I know I’ve been happily surprised along my life’s path to find that beliefs I had which I thought made me who I was weren’t really there at all, but rather they were just floating on the surface, pretending to be me. Beliefs sometimes fall to the wayside and new ones form over time, or sometimes instantly when I least expect it. I’ll sometimes read a passage from a book, or hear someone on the radio, and think, “Yes, that’s a belief I’ve been trying to articulate for years. Thank you.”
The word faith originally popped up around 1250AD and meant “duty of fulfilling one’s trust”. Etymologists believe it derives from the Anglo-Norman “fed” and Latin “fides”, which means “trust, belief”. Religions began to be called faiths around 1300 and “faith-healer” popped up in 1885. And, of course, there’s Old Faithful, the geyser named by General H.D. Washburn in 1870. The word faith has come a long way.
The religious connotation must change. We need to get back to the origins of the word and understand that instead of it being a Christian-owned word in the Western world, it needs to return to: a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing that doesn’t rest on proof or material evidence. That’s the faith in which I want to believe.
When I looked up the word, one definition stated that faith was based on the Christian belief in God and a trusting acceptance of his will, and then it continued with the following: the body of dogma of a religion – the Muslim faith. Interesting that Islam in this definition is connected to dogma, but Christianity isn’t. Hmm. I wonder who the wordsmith was on that one.
I have faith that the chair I’m sitting and swiveling in right now is going to continue to hold me up. That has nothing to do with religion or even spirituality. It’s a sturdy mission-style chair. It hasn’t failed me yet, but I have no proof that one day it won’t simply lose a wheel, lurch to the right, and throw me to the floor. I hope it doesn’t, and I have faith that it won’t, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
What do you believe? I mean, really, what is it that you believe in the big picture of your place in the universe? Do you believe you’re an insignificant dot on the cosmic landscape or a significant presence? More specifically, what is the overriding belief that gets you to place your feet on the floor in the morning, stand up, and walk out the door on your daily adventure? I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately because it’s important for me to discover what I believe in all manner of thought, emotions, experience, relationships. This will constantly evolve over time – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly; it’ll change during the discourse of my life, but right now, what do I believe?
F. inspired me to write my creed: a set of beliefs that I hold in faith. Here again I have to look at the word’s origins and go to the Germanic word “bdan”, which means to await trustingly. I await trustingly in my beliefs until something comes along to engage me to reconfigure them into my reality and experience.
I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, but that faith changed when I found out that my mom was the one that filled the Easter basket with chocolate bunnies, Cadbury eggs, and other confectionary treats. At that childhood time, the Easter Bunny was as real as my two hands that type this blog and nobody could tell me differently. It seems naïve to compare change in faith using this memory, but it does say something to me about belief and experience. It doesn’t, however, make me throw the baby out with the bathwater.
When I began writing my creed, I started with the following words: “I believe.” The first few beliefs on my list came quickly. What I found amazing was that I didn’t realize some of the things I believed until they popped up and I questioned them. The list grew longer and longer with each belief beginning with “I believe.”
My list of “I Believes” is now four pages long and growing. I’m not going to share this creed because it’s for me, but I will divulge two, the first one being: I believe in Santa Claus. Truly. That’s on my list. I saw him when I was a child, a silhouette in my bedroom doorway with a little elf on his shoulder. I felt like my heart was a dog pulling against its leash trying to get out of my chest. I threw the quilt over my head and when I peeked out again, Santa was gone. When that memory resurfaced while writing my creed, I had to question it, and the resounding answer was that, yes, I do believe in Santa. People may lampoon me for this, but deep inside, ask yourself: Do I believe in magic?
The other belief has to do with my writing. It used to be that people like the Greeks believed in muses. Romans believe that each man had a genius and each woman a juno. Greeks and Romans both believed that the work of artists was inspired by a being connected to the larger universe. After the Renaissance it became commonplace that work came only from the artist. I’d like to go back to the belief that it’s me and my muses working together and when an idea for a story or blog entry or poem comes steamrolling across the hills, I’m going to grab onto it, reach for some paper, pencil, or keyboard, and write like a madman before the idea finds someone else to write it.
For me, life’s more fun with what some might think ridiculous, such as water nymphs, woodland fairies, pookas, and the god Thor. Thor is the red-haired and bearded god of thunder. I’d rather believe in him than thunder merely being a random atmospheric discharge. They’re my beliefs and I can’t help but believe in a little magic in the world that doesn’t have to be beyond our comprehension.
What do you believe? (Write it down.)
What does it mean nowadays when someone says: “I’m a person of faith?” Most often, the connotation is that the person believes in God. Strangely, as I’ve been contemplating faith, I realize that over the past year, or probably much longer, I’ve been winding my way back on a circuitous path to a personalized faith – the faith of Timmie – but isn’t that what we all do? Aren’t we all trying to figure out what we believe and then trying to live it?
What we believe is really who we are at our core, and discovering that can take a lifetime or more. I know I’ve been happily surprised along my life’s path to find that beliefs I had which I thought made me who I was weren’t really there at all, but rather they were just floating on the surface, pretending to be me. Beliefs sometimes fall to the wayside and new ones form over time, or sometimes instantly when I least expect it. I’ll sometimes read a passage from a book, or hear someone on the radio, and think, “Yes, that’s a belief I’ve been trying to articulate for years. Thank you.”
The word faith originally popped up around 1250AD and meant “duty of fulfilling one’s trust”. Etymologists believe it derives from the Anglo-Norman “fed” and Latin “fides”, which means “trust, belief”. Religions began to be called faiths around 1300 and “faith-healer” popped up in 1885. And, of course, there’s Old Faithful, the geyser named by General H.D. Washburn in 1870. The word faith has come a long way.
The religious connotation must change. We need to get back to the origins of the word and understand that instead of it being a Christian-owned word in the Western world, it needs to return to: a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing that doesn’t rest on proof or material evidence. That’s the faith in which I want to believe.
When I looked up the word, one definition stated that faith was based on the Christian belief in God and a trusting acceptance of his will, and then it continued with the following: the body of dogma of a religion – the Muslim faith. Interesting that Islam in this definition is connected to dogma, but Christianity isn’t. Hmm. I wonder who the wordsmith was on that one.
I have faith that the chair I’m sitting and swiveling in right now is going to continue to hold me up. That has nothing to do with religion or even spirituality. It’s a sturdy mission-style chair. It hasn’t failed me yet, but I have no proof that one day it won’t simply lose a wheel, lurch to the right, and throw me to the floor. I hope it doesn’t, and I have faith that it won’t, but it doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
What do you believe? I mean, really, what is it that you believe in the big picture of your place in the universe? Do you believe you’re an insignificant dot on the cosmic landscape or a significant presence? More specifically, what is the overriding belief that gets you to place your feet on the floor in the morning, stand up, and walk out the door on your daily adventure? I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately because it’s important for me to discover what I believe in all manner of thought, emotions, experience, relationships. This will constantly evolve over time – sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly; it’ll change during the discourse of my life, but right now, what do I believe?
F. inspired me to write my creed: a set of beliefs that I hold in faith. Here again I have to look at the word’s origins and go to the Germanic word “bdan”, which means to await trustingly. I await trustingly in my beliefs until something comes along to engage me to reconfigure them into my reality and experience.
I used to believe in the Easter Bunny, but that faith changed when I found out that my mom was the one that filled the Easter basket with chocolate bunnies, Cadbury eggs, and other confectionary treats. At that childhood time, the Easter Bunny was as real as my two hands that type this blog and nobody could tell me differently. It seems naïve to compare change in faith using this memory, but it does say something to me about belief and experience. It doesn’t, however, make me throw the baby out with the bathwater.
When I began writing my creed, I started with the following words: “I believe.” The first few beliefs on my list came quickly. What I found amazing was that I didn’t realize some of the things I believed until they popped up and I questioned them. The list grew longer and longer with each belief beginning with “I believe.”
My list of “I Believes” is now four pages long and growing. I’m not going to share this creed because it’s for me, but I will divulge two, the first one being: I believe in Santa Claus. Truly. That’s on my list. I saw him when I was a child, a silhouette in my bedroom doorway with a little elf on his shoulder. I felt like my heart was a dog pulling against its leash trying to get out of my chest. I threw the quilt over my head and when I peeked out again, Santa was gone. When that memory resurfaced while writing my creed, I had to question it, and the resounding answer was that, yes, I do believe in Santa. People may lampoon me for this, but deep inside, ask yourself: Do I believe in magic?
The other belief has to do with my writing. It used to be that people like the Greeks believed in muses. Romans believe that each man had a genius and each woman a juno. Greeks and Romans both believed that the work of artists was inspired by a being connected to the larger universe. After the Renaissance it became commonplace that work came only from the artist. I’d like to go back to the belief that it’s me and my muses working together and when an idea for a story or blog entry or poem comes steamrolling across the hills, I’m going to grab onto it, reach for some paper, pencil, or keyboard, and write like a madman before the idea finds someone else to write it.
For me, life’s more fun with what some might think ridiculous, such as water nymphs, woodland fairies, pookas, and the god Thor. Thor is the red-haired and bearded god of thunder. I’d rather believe in him than thunder merely being a random atmospheric discharge. They’re my beliefs and I can’t help but believe in a little magic in the world that doesn’t have to be beyond our comprehension.
What do you believe? (Write it down.)
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