Daily Dose (Oct 25 – 28)

Tuesday — When life feels uncertain or heavy, what is outside of us can feel threatening, and it is no surprise that we do our best to keep insecurity and distress at bay. So, I spend my days believing that my identity and well-being require armor. And I live from the paradigm that our world obliges “us versus them” (no wonder we feel threatened or vigilant with arms up), instead of “no one of us is on this journey alone” (invitation to see and find connection and community and the permission to let our arms down).

“Letting our arms down”, we give ourselves the permission to fall into (embrace, invite, appreciate, receive) our strength, fall into the enough of what is already there. And how that strength spills into the world around us. (And let us remember that we are not attempting to create something out of sheer willpower or adding something to our life we do not already possess.)
Take heart in the words of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes;
We do not become healers.
We came as healers. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become storytellers.
We came as carriers of the stories
we and our ancestors actually lived. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become artists. We came as artists. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become writers… dancers… musicians… helpers… peacemakers.
We came as such. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not learn to love in this sense.
We came as Love. We are Love.
Some of us are still catching up to who we truly are.

Wednesday — This week we’re invited to put our arms down. Stories to remind us that it doesn’t matter what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.
As a result, we can choose to unleash the heart, in order to be our better selves.
And no one can take that away. 

The Tower of Babel is a familiar tale from my Sunday School days in southern Michigan, when as a young boy I was captivated by graphics of a grand edifice of wood-reaching into the clouds-populated with dozens of builders / workers playing out a scene of exaggerated chaos and exasperation. We were warned that this photo teaches us about the consequences of pridefulness. (Which I assumed meant a life balancing on skyscraper beams while wearing costumes from the movie Ben-Hur.)
Thinking that mankind may be feeling too big for its britches, God said: “Come, let us go down and confound their speech.” And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, so that they would not be able to return to each other, and they left off building the “city,” which was called Babel “because God there confounded the language of all the Earth.”
I’ll be the first to say that not speaking a common language may be more detrimental than the alternative.
So, consider this: what if the story is not just about the inability to communicate because of language barriers? What if even those who spoke the same language could no longer understand each other; that the breakdown was not just about words and sentences, but deeper. Perhaps this is a story about losing a shared language.
A shared language of the heart.
A shared language to community and a higher cause.
Yes (with arms raised), we do our best to obfuscate any shared language with judgment, prejudice, self-absorption and greed. But we do so to our diminishing.

So. Today.
I choose to speak the language of the heart.
To create. One choice at a time.
What about tomorrow? We can’t control that.
What about reaction or public opinion? We can’t control that.
What about acceptance? We can’t control that.
There is no technique here. An invitation maybe.
Of course, in the end, we want to know… will this work?

“It is a risk to love
What if it doesn’t work out?
Ah, but what if it does?”
(Thank you Peter McWilliams)

Thursday — What does it mean to live this life with an open and authentic heart?
To live open to a world of connection and compassion and empathy and healing and forgiveness and replenishment and sanctuary.
Yes, there’s much to fear. So, it is no wonder we put our arms up for “protection”.
But I do know this: Loving (bluntly, giving a damn) costs a lot, but not loving always costs more.

“Does it hurt?” the Rabbit asked the Skin Horse (about “becoming real”).
“Oh yes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “Sometimes it hurts a lot. But when you are real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” the Rabbit asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” (The Velveteen Rabbit)

Now, what would it mean to bring our wounded and real (hair loved off) selves to the table today?

“Little Harp hated to see anything penned up. Anything he saw penned up he would turn loose, himself included.” Eudora Welty (Three Robber Bridegroom about the bandits, Little Harp and Big Harp)
Yes… this week we’re invited to put our arms down (to not be “penned up”). Stories to remind us that it doesn’t matter what we expect from life, but what life expects from us.
As a result, we can choose to unleash the heart, in order to be our better selves.
And no one can take that away. 

Friday —

“They knew about the possibility of this new heart… yet I feel I haven’t even scratched the surface of such a heart in myself. Why not? If not now, when? What’s stopping me? What absurd little gods on pedestals am I feeding and worshiping? What voice in the night haven’t I listened to, and what will I have to leave behind—and what might I find—if I set off into such terrifying freedom with only that voice for company.” Gail Godwin writes about reconnecting with our authentic and open heart, and why it is easier to stay “protected”.

Let us remember that reconnecting with our heart we are not attempting to create something out of sheer willpower or adding something to our life we do not already possess. “Letting our arms down”, we give ourselves the permission to fall into (embrace, invite, appreciate, receive) our strength, fall into the enough of what is already there.

In the Gospels, this is the invitation Jesus offers to every person he encounters.

The invitation that will embolden me to access—to draw on—what is at the core of human dignity (the light that is within… this little light of mine… keep it under a bushel, no). 

That at my core, I touch the capacity to grieve and to give,

to tremble and to be courageous,

to doubt and to be faithful…

to be uncomfortable and to love,

to be watchful and to be generous… 

to be fully human and fully alive…

compassionate, patient, resilient, kind, unselfish, responsible, spirited, high-minded. To be a listening heart.

And speaking of potential, Galway Kinnell reminds us that we blossom “from within, of self-blessing”.

“The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing…”
Galway Kinnell (from the poem Saint Francis and the Sow in Three Books)

Prayer for our week…
At the end of the day,
We give thanks for the hours that were given.
The buds that brought beauty to the land
And the vision of a world
Creating
A vision of work to do
Rituals to bring back the hope and the delight
Practices that center the mind in peace
Time that passes so beyond this day and night
We give thanks for the conversations that were
Holy work
Holy hands
Holy ounces of breath in and breath out
And we scatter the rest to the wind
To die back or to create forth
Beauty
Donna Knutson

Photo… “Hello Terry! Thank you, for the timely message that we are never alone on the journey. Today, our dear Holy Spirit swept me up in a warm Autumn breeze on this boardwalk in Chatfield Hollow State Park in CT.  I am ever grateful for God’s ever present love, and company for the journey. Keep well and may your days ahead be filled with joy and of course, much laughter!” Sheila Flanagan