Question: is spiritual change easy or hard?

Answer: Yes.  Definitely.  Spiritual change is easy and hard.  Some people say "it's simple, but it's not easy."  Many people I know participate in spiritual support that says "it works if you work it."  In Science of Mind circles, we sometimes talk about spiritual shifts as if they are instant and permanent.  The truth, in my experience, lies somewhere in between.

Yes, it is possible to have an instant sweet dissolving of the old ideas, habits and patterns that have kept me stuck (I am experiencing that now in my High Mysticism class with Rev. Dr. Kathianne Lewis).   And also yes, it can take work to a) experience that dissolution and b) keep it.  In the 12 steps they say "we are granted a daily reprieve contingent on spiritual fitness."  

Dr. Joe Dispenza unpacks the science behind this better than anyone I know.  Our habitual thoughts, beliefs, opinions and conclusions form well-worn neural pathways in our minds.  Dr. Joe says something like this, if you keep thinking the same thoughts and doing the same things that you thought and did yesterday, you can just pick up your yesterday and place it on your tomorrow.  You will have largely the same experience tomorrow that you did yesterday.  

And while a strong mystical spiritual emotional event can instantly create a new pathway that produces new thoughts that produces new actions and experiences, those experiences can be few and far between.  

When we use spiritual tools such as  daily meditation, gratitude, forgiveness, affirmations and clearings, on a consistent daily basis, we can create and strengthen new neural pathways that produce different results.

"We've never been more divided in this country," Really? Part 2

Most of us at some level know that applying the phrase "we've never been more divided" to American public life today is ludicrous in light of our Civil War.  Now that I'm on page 750 of the 1000 page Grant by Ron Chernow (author of Alexander Hamilton, the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the Broadway play), I can also apply that wisdom to "Reconstruction." This of course is the period following the Civil War, when the federal government was figuring out how to protect newly enfranchised black (male) voters and to re-integrate southern states back into the union and life of the country.

Grant acquainted me with the horrific details of the white backlash in the south against former (forced to be illiterate) enslaved men voting, running for and holding public office.  Did you know that during this time the original extremely violent Ku Klux Klan had such a tight hold on certain counties and states throughout the south that a federal investigation estimated over 60% of all white men at all levels belonged to it?  According to this biography, the Klan was truly the first terrorist organization within the United States, horrific lynching, murders, witness intimidation, torture and dismembership was widespread throughout the former confederate states.

In response to the orchestrated widespread terror, President Grant pushed through Congress the first broad expansion of federal policing and judicial powers: the Ku Klux Klan Act (which you could call the Patriot Act Part 1, something I hate to say because I detest the Patriot Act).  This act allowed the federal government to use the newly created Justice Department to suspend the rights of habeas corpus throughout the south, arrest and hold witnesses and suspects without charge for months and try them in federal court before (sometimes) interracial juries, in order to break the Klan. 

The amazing thing is that this multi-year crusade worked.  The "Ku Klux" as it was colloquially known in the 19th century, was almost completely eradicated by a few years into Grant's presidency (somewhere around 1871).  The KKK as we knew it/know it was re-born anew in the 20th century in 1915 and then, according to Wikipedia died around 1944 (presumably due to World War II) and was reborn in 1946 as a backlash to the mid-century civil rights movement.  So there was a 45 year period when there was no Klan --which, of course, is not to say that there was an eradication of racism.

I find all this (re)acquainting myself with the American history of racism, division and violence useful not to minimize anything that is happening today, but to a) put it in perspective and b) remind ourselves that the history of the United States of America is inextricably linked to our history of slavery and the preservation of white power.  Every time that white power has been threatened in this country*, large swaths of white America have organized to squash the effort with rage and violence.  We can all only hope and pray that this round will end soon with far less violence and for good.  

*As it is today by immigration and reproduction trends-- estimates say that by 2045 the U.S. will make up less than 50% of the population-- in some states, California, for example, the census estimates that there are more "non-white hispanics" than any other ethnic group

Why and How I Combine Medicine and Faith

Rev. David Bruner, Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Living, San Jose, inspired this piece by asking on Facebook whether if you got glasses or took a pill it was an indication of a lack of faith in the spiritual science that we practice.  The CSL community at large chimed in a thousand times over "NO!  Medicine is part of God.  Doctors are part of God.  Just because you got glasses or took a pill, doesn't mean you don't have faith."

I found myself alone in issuing qualified "yes" to his question, and that I wanted to say a LOT more about it than is usually in a Facebook comment.  So this is that.  

Certainly God is all there is, there is no place where God is not.  Therefore doctors and medicine and medications and durable medical equipment are all part of God--that is inarguable.  That means that a choice to wear glasses or to have surgery or to take a pill is at all times could very well be a faithful choice. 

However:

While God is all of medicine, medicine is not all of God.  God/love/life/energy/light is all there is the entire cosmos.  Therefore every single thing that exists, including medicine, including doctors, is part of that.  It is impossible to be outside of God.  But the converse is not true: modern medicine is not all of God.  So if I want to bring the full power of all of creation to bear on my healing (and why wouldn't I?), I might have to venture outside of modern medicine.

A lot of medicine treats symptoms rather than effectuating a cure.  While some of us still marvel at the cures that medicine has effectuated for diseases like polio and syphillis, there are a lot of diseases, or at least symptom clusters, for which medicine may not have a cure, but may just alleviate symptoms, such as migraine headaches, insomnia, and a lot of things that cause physical pain.    

When I use medicine to treat symptoms, I may miss an opportunity for total healing.  If a little red light on my car dashboard appears that says "check engine," I take the car to the mechanic to see what is happening.  If there is a problem with the engine, I generally do not ask the mechanic to turn off the "check engine" light, I ask them to fix the engine.  If I am getting a pill to treat symptoms without following these symptoms as arrows pointing in the direction of my healing, I miss an opportunity.  Are those symptoms uncomfortable?  Do I ever treat symptoms in order to relieve myself from that discomfort?  Absolutely I do.  However, I need to be aware that when I do that, I miss an opportunity.  

Symptom bypass can be as damaging as "spiritual bypass."  As spiritual scientists, we are increasingly wary of "spiritual bypass," which is going straight to prayer without first taking an opportunity to feel feelings and be with what is coming up for us.  Taking pills on a regular basis so that I will not feel symptoms is another form of bypass whereby I miss that opportunity to learn what I have to learn.

My body is a very intelligent system designed to restore me to wholeness.  My favorite kind of physicians are osteopaths (DOs) rather than allopaths (MDs) because MDs are trained to look for disease whereas DOs are trained to look for health.  While both kinds of doctors can write prescriptions and do surgery and everything that modern western doctors do, DOs function from an assumption that is aligned with spiritual truth:  my natural state is wholeness.  My resting state is health.  My body is intelligent all the way down to the cellular level and so every symptom in my body is there to point me to wholeness, to health.  

So if I combine a visit to a doctor who really is trained to support wellness, wholeness, with prayer or spiritual mind treatment, I am more likely to actually be restored completely to health, rather than to paper over symptoms.

Medicine does not have even symptom treatment for a lot of troubling physical conditions.  There are millions of people in the US and the world who are in chronic physical pain without a real treatment plan that could effectuate cure and without even real symptom alleviation.  Many are dependent on opioids which they need to be able to function at all but which give at best a kind of half life.  There are also a stunning number of diseases or "syndromes" (which is what doctors call a cluster of symptoms that they don't fully understand and don't have a cure for) like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn's disease, lupus and more where millions of people, predominantly women, are in massive debilitating discomfort for years without any real hope of cure or change.  

When I go to a doctor without seeing a practitioner first I miss an opportunity for total healing, or at least sweeter, easier, better healing.  In the Centers for Spiritual Living, we have licensed spiritual practitioners (including ministers) who are trained to know the truth for me when I cannot know it for myself.   If I go to a practitioner before or as I have surgery, before or as I choose chemo or radiation, they can help me follow the arrows of my symptoms to wholeness.  They can know wholeness for me and health.  If I must choose to cut, burn or poison myself as the best I can think is possible for my health, their consciousness can bring me the most competent, loving, short, effective version of that choice.

If I have an awesome God that is all powerful, then why wouldn't I consult that God even before I consult a doctor? Given that I have an awesome God that has created every single thing in the known and unknown world, including doctors and medicine, that means that that Divine Intelligence knows the cure to all diseases and all symptoms long before the doctors and the scientists do.  Long before scientists discovered antibiotics, it was known, it in Divine Intelligence--it was equally true that it would work 1000s of years ago.  Long before scientists discovered the microbiome, we had billions of bacteria in our gut that could play a role in our health.  What else is possible?  What else does Divine Intelligence know that is not known yet by our doctors or medicine?  What might my cells or microbiome know that I don't know?  What might they be able to tell me? 

I am open to all that is available to me for complete healing.  I have used spiritual tools to restore the ability of my knee to walk miles and carry a backpack.  I have also had surgery on both my knee (I now feel that was unnecessary) and my wrist (apparently very necessary).  I do it all with the help of the all powerful, all knowing force that I call God.

  

As women, can we be more transparent now, so we don't have to scream later?

The events of the last week, and my emotional response to them,

has me wondering what is the best way to be a woman who wants change in the world.  To scream or not to scream that is the question.  I mused last week that we were one America despite differences, and then that maybe we needed to scream more in elevators, then I beseeched God to show me what to do and how to love "these people."  

I truly feel that somehow the answer is, as we perhaps say too often in my philosophy these days, "both and."  Maybe I need to find a way that is more honest and transparent and less concerned with men's comfort and maybe I need to do it before the point that I'm ready to scream.  In thinking about how to be, I need to observe that it wasn't men who raised me to lower my voice in elevators, be circumspect and not offend men, it was women.  

It's really strange that I grew up with such strong programming to be careful of men's fragile egos.  My father was a strong gentle self-confident man whom I don't recall yelling at me or my brothers even once.  If we pushed it too far and crossed a line, the most I ever remember was him tightly gripping one of our upper arms and saying "that's enough." 

Yet, from my mother, I internalized a message of don't be strident, don't talk about women's things in front of men, and above all, cross your legs at your ankles.  And, although I have broken all these rules many times, I have prided myself on being able to work and get along with men well, where other women may not have.  Even recently I notice that if there is a group of women with only one or two men (common in my profession of new thought ministers), I'm making sure that the conversation is comfortable for the man, that we don't veer too far into women's subjects.

Generally, men will not extend the same courtesy to women.  A group of men with one or two women, will usually feel perfectly comfortable with an extended discussion of professional or amateur sports.  I think it's well-established that the groups with less power are expected to understand, tolerate and be conversant with the more powerful groups' norms and behaviors but not vice versa.  This is part of what we call "privilege."

We all know how circumspect women still are on anything to do with menstruation.  I remember feminist comedian Kate Clinton (back when there were like two such comedians) doing a hilarious bit on how it would be if men had periods.  Two men are spectators at a sporting event, one shouting out, "hey, who has a tampon? I'm out!"   A guy several rows down says, "you need a 'pon, man?  That's cool, packing right here," slapping his breast pocket.  He pulls out like a cigarette box of tampons, pulls back his arm like a quarterback and shouts "go long!" before hurling it.

I know for myself that would make me lose my composure and scream in an elevator is years of suppressing rage, fear and truth, years of pretending that things are okay that are not okay.  So maybe one thing women can start doing is just being open in real time about things to do with women: what we like, what we need, what we feel and how we do.  And maybe men can just begin to see this is really how it is.  And maybe that will make as much or more change as protest later.*

*Note that "visionary political astrologist" Caroline Casey points out that the etymology of the word "protest" is from the Latin "testis" for witness which is the same root as "testes."  Literally the original "witness" was asked to grab his testicles to swear rather than a Bible.  Perhaps women want to rethink the language and the action of protest in light of this.  Although we do need to seriously draw from our gonads into order to speak our truth.

Open Letter to God: Why? What Next?

 Dear God,

I feel so so sad today.  I feel so angry.  I feel so helpless.  I go around telling people that all is well and that all is in divine right order and timing.  And now Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court.  Why?  How? What is the plan?  Can you let me in on it?  How is it that this man who, no matter what else is true, was belligerent and rude and angry to his job interviewers has been given the job anyway?  And how is that there appear to be millions of people who are excited and riled up and angry and motivated to vote for a party that feels comfortable not listening to women, shaming women, and attacking women?

I confess, God, that I don't understand all of this.  I thought I was seeing that the President and his followers were the representation of an old tired worn out consciousness in the world, a consciousness of separation, of hate, of division, of exclusion, of hierarchy, of patriarchy, of homogeneity, of white supremacy.  And I thought that the visible expression of this old consciousness had awakened the dormant new level of consciousness that wants to come in, one of love, inclusion, diversity, of equality, of oneness, and that that consciousness was waking up to itself, standing on its feet and voting (choosing) it in this coming midterm elections.

But now it feels like the old consciousness is just getting stronger.  It feels like it has just cemented itself on the highest court in the land to overturn any law or policy that is loving or including or caring.

What am I missing, God?  What am I missing?  Is it as simple that as I am angry at "them" and their representatives in Washington, I am caught in that old consciousness of hate and separation and so it is empowered?

Is it as simple as what I resist persists?  

What is it?  What is the Truth of this situation that I need to see?  Okay, God, please let me love Donald Trump.  Let me love Mitch McConnell.  Let me love all their followers.  Let me even love Brett Kavanaugh.  Let me see them all as individualized expressions of the One.  Let me know this deep in my soul.  Let me understand that they are me.  Let me treat them as me.  Holy One, please excavate, destroy and uncreate in me any resistance of this agenda.  Let me allow it to flow through through the space of love that I am and dissipate back into the nothingness from which it came.  Let me feel my anger and my sadness and fear all the way through.  Let me act from love and not anger and fear.  Let me vote from love and not anger and fear.  Let me talk to my neighbors from love and not anger and fear.

Maybe we all need to scream in elevators

As I watch events unfold around Jeff Kavanaugh's confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice, I am more and more aware of the "hysterical woman" within me.  

Nowhere was this more apparent than the feeling I had watching Ana Maria Archila scream at Jeff Flake in the elevator.    Later, I saw her interviewed.  She comes across as a very intelligent, well-considered professional woman.  Ana Maria Archila is now an American hero.  She has been a community organizer for years.   According to the Washington Post she is now the co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive community-based advocacy group in New York.  

And I began to think about how often I present an intelligent, well-considered woman to the outside world and how often I am that screaming hysterical woman in the elevator in my mind.  I was definitely raised to keep that woman within quiet.  She is not supposed to come out and play.  

I use the word "hysterical" advisedly.  Derived from the Greek "hystero," it shares the same root as "hysterectomy" -- it means uterus. 

It is a cliché that "well-behaved women seldom make history."  And I begin to wonder if those of us who have been showing up as the women who men in power are comfortable with, the women they like to be around need to bring the hysterical woman out to play.

Maybe there needs to be more screaming in elevators.  Maybe a lot more.

One America: Texas and California

I'm continuing to consume Ron Chernow's 1000 page bio of Ulysses S Grant while I enjoy my stay in Dallas, Texas.  I'm struck by how much more California has in common with Texas then the differences between the states.  And the parallels between our time and the Civil War.

Last night (for me) Generals Grant and Robert E. Lee negotiated the terms of surrender for Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.  As they did so, they chatted a bit about mutual friends and family--they had met when they both fought for the American army in the Mexican War a decade hence.  Even though they had just spent years fighting to the death, and even though the Confederate "rebel" army had in fact committed treason, Grant was able (with Lincoln's blessing) to extended generous terms of surrender to them.  Instead of being executed for treason, they were paroled to their homes, allowed to keep their sidearms and horses.  Even the enlisted men were given a ride home on the federal railroad.   

The night after surrender, General James Longstreet, of the Confederacy, dropped by to pay his respects to General Grant--leader of the Union Army.  Grant invited him into his quarters, slapped his back, offered him a cigar and invited him to play Brag--a card game they had enjoyed before the war.

Don't get me wrong here:  The sides and the men involved had fierce ideological differences.  They weren't mercenaries.  Grant was said to be absolutely convicted about the Union cause and by this time a strong abolitionist.  Longstreet was very much for the rebel cause.  

While safely ensconced in California, I like to imagine Texas as a very different world.  When my son was younger and we took these frequent 35 minute drives across I-80 from Fairfield to Sacramento, we allowed some road signs ("Alamo" "Arsenal" and such) to queue us that we were suddenly driving in Texas instead of California.  Instead of Nicky he was Nicky Bob.  Instead of Sara, I was Sara Lou.  We spoke with Texas accents.  We talked with disdain about our cousins (Nicky and Sara) on the left coast and their misguided support for handgun control, high taxes and Democrats.  

Los Angeles freeway

Dallas Freeway

I've visited Austin, Texas before--considering it a safe politically left enclave in the state.  This is literally the first time I've spent any time at all deep in the heart of Texas.  Yet, in driving around (north) Dallas, I am so much more struck by the similarities than the differences between Texas and California.  

Look at these Dallas and LA freeways here--big difference?  I mean these large, populous, formerly Mexican states are both so wealthy, so beautiful, so culturally rich, so full of themselves.  Seeing us square off against each other in the culture wars its like watching two people hating what they see in the mirror of each other.

Granted, big cities tend Democratic (can we talk about that sometime?  When people live close together, do they basically always move to the left unless they have a dictator?) and Dallas is no exception.  

It's exciting to sit here in the heart of two potentially key Congressional races:  Democrat Colin Allred is running hard against longtime Trump-supported Republican Pete Sessions in the House 32nd district (I think I'm literally in that district now).  Democrat Beto O'Rourke is considered to have a shot at taking down Republican Ted Cruz in the US Senate.    

Today's Civil War, is, after all much more "civil" than "war."  We are fighting at the polls not on the battlefields.  And that's how it should be.  We need to fight hard nonviolently for the America we believe in.  But you take my point.  At the end of the day, Texas and California are both America.  Let's smoke cigars and play Brag while we fight.

Looking Up in Texas

I'm in Dallas, Texas this week attending the Centers for Spiritual Living Ministers Gathering hosted by CSLDallas.  Today scores of us ministers will stand at Dallas City Hall to honor and know a different truth for Botham Jean, an African American man recently shot and killed in his own home by an off duty police officer.   

In our tradition, we do not turn to prayer as an alternative to action.  We call our type of prayer "spiritual mind treatment" and we say "treat and move your feet."  Today we are doing both.  We are moving our feet to City Hall and we are taking our prayer to the streets of Dallas to know the truth of the situation instead of appearances.

We are in a time when the daily news begs us to look down.  It pulls us to fear and anger that it is still not safe for black men like Botham Jean to be in their own homes, let alone drive or visit other areas.  It pulls us to fear and anger that women like Christine Blasey Ford are publicly attacked and threatened for speaking bravely and truthfully about their experience with sexual assault.

As spiritual scientists, we know that while we do want to acknowledge and feel these feelings, we want to follow them as arrows pointing us to healing, not arrows pointing us to more anger and fear.  Dallas is no stranger to the consequences of widespread fear and anger.  This is the city in which President John F. Kennedy was murdered as he drove peacefully in a parade.  

Today I continue my daily practice of looking up for ten minutes a day to lift my heart, my mind and my thoughts to the hills, from which, the scripture says, "cometh my help...All of my help cometh from the Lord."  Psalm 121.  

What this means for us in Dallas is that we will catch the greater Truth from outside this world and we will know it for Dallas and for the world.  We will stand together in love and hope and a vision of a world in which police officers are trained to love and protect, rather than shoot to kill.  We will stand together and know a place where Black men can live, walk, drive, work, move and vote surrounded by love and peace.

By looking up, when others are looking down, by standing together and knowing that Truth, we transform our experience, we dissolve the apparent current realities and we invite in a Greater Reality, one in which a world that works for everyone is possible.

We're Mad as Hell and We're Not Going to Take it Anymore

No.  Not me.  The Senate Republicans.  They came out swinging today, furious at the "sham process" -- waaah?  Did I miss something?  They're in charge of the process.  It reminds me of a not-so-hilarious political cartoon at the end of the first W Bush administration, something like "after 4 years of controlling the White House and the Congress, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

I admit it, I spent all day watching the Senate Judiciary Committee Kavanaugh hearing.  I was spellbound by Christine Blasey Ford.  I was disgusted by Brett Kavanaugh's anger and contempt for the senators, particularly the Democratic female senators.

I was actually surprised at how disgusted I was by Kavanaugh.  Unlike some women, I don't have default anger at men.  I was raised by an unconditionally loving, gentle father.  I grew up with gentle, loving brothers.  I am blessed with an incredible loving husband and father of our children.  In short, I have experienced every man in my family, and almost all men in my classrooms and my workplace as wonderful people.   

So default anger at men is just not a setting on my dial.  And, if anything, I need to confess that I even tend to give people accused of crimes (and sexual assault is a crime in case you don't know) the benefit of the doubt.  I almost became a public defender.  This is how much I care about the civil liberties of people accused of crimes.  

When it comes to claims about things done long ago, I sometimes feel too much empathy with possible perpetrators, because I know that I was a larger than life personality as a youth.  I did a lot of outrageous things in college--none of which I would like to be discussed in public today.

So believe me when I say that I was shocked to find just how emotionally triggering I found Brett Kavanaugh's testimony to be today.  I do not think he displayed the temperament of a judge, let alone a supreme court judge.  He was belligerent.  He was argumentative.  He is not a person who I want to hold the law of the land in his hands no matter what his stands are on the issues.

Holding Dr. Ford and the Country in Love and Compassion

As I watch Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, I am holding her and all other women who have ever struggled to come forward and tell their stories in love and compassion.  She is so credible.  She is so cautious.  She so clearly hasn't wanted to bring this forward publicly.  It is palpable.  

I identify with the way she uses technical terms to describe how and why she remembers with specificity the events so long ago.  I know that the more nervous I am, the more I use big words, terms of art, and retreat into my head.  I, like Dr. Ford, am highly educated and have lots of technical terms to use.  I don't know if this is the reason she uses these terms, I am not in her head.  But I know that I am a woman who is much more comfortable staying out of emotions, and into my head.  

And yet, she is very obviously human and full of feeling. She clearly hasn't distanced herself from the events the way a lot people who have been traumatized might in order to speak about it.  It is also possible that her extensive therapy has helped her talk about this. 

And I also know from reading, looking at social media and talking to congregants, that these events and Dr. Ford's story are bringing up lots of buried pain and hidden trauma that so many people have lived with.   So I'd like to take this time to know the truth about the situation:

I know that love is all there is.  Love is the only power.  Love is the only purpose.  Love is the only Truth of life.  Love is unlimited.  Love is ever present.  Love is beyond time, space and material form.

And so I know that this love is showing up as me.  It is choosing to live out its perfect life as me.  And as I know this for me, I know this for Christine Blasey Ford, for all people who have been sexually assaulted and also for Brett Kavanaugh, for the Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee, for the President and for the country.    I know that, no matter what the appearance, each one of us is created by the power of love and operating with, by and for love.

And so I speak my word for every single person directly or indirectly involved in these events, particularly Dr. Ford and any other women who may have been assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh and any other women who have been sexually assaulted.  I know that they are surrounded by Divine Love and held safely, sweetly and gently in the arms of love.  Love has never left them.  Love will never leave them.  Love is always there.

And I speak my word for and with Brett Kavanaugh and all his supporters.  I know that they too are love.  And that all their actions are either expressions of love or calls for love--no exceptions.

No one here has any need for me to send them love, because they are love.  So I simply recognize the power of love operating here and I call it forth.

I am grateful for the power of love.  I am grateful that the love is the only power and that love is calling forth all of America and the world to a higher expression of Divine Love, one in which all children are safe and where it is safe to speak the Truth.  

Knowing that my word does not come back to me void.  I release it into the law of love which only says yes.

And so it is.  Amen.
  

Is My God a Holy They?

For years in my new thought circles we have said "Mother-Father God" as a way to include the Mother, include the Goddess in our God, something that didn't happen in our childhood.  We have also often referred to God as "It" in order to leave the gender out.  But now that I know more and more people who identify as neither male nor female, some going by the pronouns "they" or "them," I begin to wonder whether "Mother-Father God" and "It" leaves out not only the in-between nature of God but also the plural nature.

Let me unpack this.  See, where I come from, God is all there is.  God isn't a man in the sky with a beard or a woman in the sky with conch shells on her breasts, God is an energy of love that connects and makes up all things.  Because the God I understand has formed into all of creation, the sky, the earth, the galaxies, as well as all types of people, plants and animals, that God feels more to me like a They or Them than a singular point of Mother, Father or It.  

Now of course I hasten to point out that because God is all things, God is the Mother, God is the Father, God is the It and God is the They and Them and the Z and any pronoun or configuration there is.  There is really no way to limit God to one pronoun, one gender, one human definition.  And because there's no way, there would be nothing inaccurate about referring to God as He, She, Mother, Father, or anything at all.  For that matter, there would be nothing inaccurate about referring to God as Tyrannosaurus Rex or My Little Pony.

Yet, how we refer to the All in All, the Source of Everything says much about what we value and what we include in our time, place and point in history as limited humans.  I remember a huge aha a few years back when I realized that my thinking was SO black and white.  I always wanted clarity on everything (still do, as a matter of fact).  I wanted to know answers to such deep questions as Am I fat or am I thin?  Am I worthwhile or am I a piece of junk?  Should I or shouldn't I do this thing?

What I have learned is that while God is most certainly in all things, the Truth of the Divine lurks in the human gray areas between black and white.   So knowing that, and knowing the time we live in and knowing that we are moving into a richer gender expression between and including male and female, men and women, mother and father, today I am choosing to call my God, "the Holy They."

"Everything I need is right here" Really?

"Everything you need is right here," said the young woman behind the counter of the Philadelphia Airport food counter as she handed me my bag to go.  "Really?"  I couldn't resist saying.  "Everything?  Absolutely everything that I need?"  And we shared a laugh together at the idea that the bag of sushi rolls, wasabi, low sodium (wtf?) soy sauce, chopsticks and napkins could really represent the sum total of what I need for true happiness and fulfillment.

But the truth is that she was a messenger from, as Deepak Chopra would call it, "my nonlocal intelligence," or higher self.  Her comment caught my attention because she uttered a profound truth:  everything you need truly is right here.  And don't I forget that truth all the time?  Wasn't it great of my nonlocal intelligence to remind me of it?

See what I know from my study of the science of mind is that right here and right now, every single one of us is whole, perfect and complete.  Nonlocal intelligence (the unified field, Higher Power, Atman-Brahman presence, Holy Spirit, Mother-Father-Parent, Christ Consciousness, Sacred Grandmother Tree, Yahweh, Yemiya, Jehovah Jireh, God) has already given me everything that it is ever going to give me.  The Holy They (see upcoming blog on why I'm using this term) has given me love.  The Holy They has given me peace.  The Holy They has given me joy.  The Holy They has given me abundance.  The Holy They has given me wholeness.

So when I am feeling sad, lonely, sick, poor, or angry, it is not because I lack all these things that have been given, it is because I not receiving what has already been given to me.  It strikes me that "acceptance" which is often talked about as if it is about just reconciling myself to the hard truth of my existence could be reconsidered to mean literally accepting as in accepting a gift or something that is handed to me.    

In Genesis 22, God introduces himself as "Jehovah Jireh" meaning

"the Lord will provide."  One analysis reminds us that this is not

provision in the sense of snacks or rent money, but in the context of the most profound need a person could have.  This is the story of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac (a great gift from God already long coming) on Mount Moriah.  Since the time I first heard it as a young child, this story has terrified and moved me.  Abraham is being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, to kill his most precious loved one and he is so willing and so faithful and so trusting of his God that he makes the preparations to do -- he ties Isaac to the altar and raises the knife to cut his son's throat.  And indeed the Lord rescues him and provides a ram who gets caught in a thicket nearby and is substituted for Isaac in blood sacrifice.

While I might be tempted to take the violence and the blood and the idea that animal life is cheap out of this story, there's a reason that the gore and the hell of it is important.  So often I find that the times I need to be willing to do what the Holy They wants me to do is when I least want to.  If I find myself saying "Please, God.  anything but that," I'm Abraham on Mount Moriah.  

And what does that really mean?  It means that I have forgotten that the true name of the Holy They is "The Lord will Provide."  Or, in new thought terms, "my good has been provided."  In other words, I can do absolutely the single hardest thing that is being asked of me.  I am safe in the arms of Divine Love.  Everything I need is right here.

Feeling and Breathing the Northern California Wildfires

The saying goes, there are four seasons in California: flash floods, mudslides, wildfires and pride parade.  At this point we're deep in the wildfire season.  Where I sit in Sacramento we're breathing smoke and seeing haze from a huge fire near Redding to the north, the massive Ferguson fire conflagration to the south, and another flare up in Lake County northwest of here.  It's literally hellish.

On a personal level my family's cabin in Foresta, a community inside Yosemite National Park, has been threatened for days by the Ferguson blaze near west of it.  Foresta has been evacuated for about a week.  As of this morning, the USDA has not lifted the evacuation order for Foresta or several other parts of Yosemite.  

The previous primitive A-frame version of our cabin and most of the homes in Foresta were destroyed by the "A-Rock Fire" in 1990.   The A-Rock Fire was called a "hundred year fire" at the time, which meant that a fire like that was predicted to only happen every 100 years.   With that in mind, like many of our Foresta neighbors, twenty years ago in 1998 we rebuilt on that land a real house to the code of the surrounding county.  Since its rebuilding, Foresta has survived another 3 or 4 fires (4 assuming we survive this one--fingers crossed). 

We even have a "Foresta Forever" t-shirt that lists the A-Rock, the Meadow Fire in 2009, the El Portal Fire in 2014--some people have chosen to scrawl in the Dog Fire (in 2015 or 2016?). Last year we weren't evacuated I don't think but we were chased out by smoke from a fire nearby.

I have very mixed feelings about the survival of our Foresta cabin.  Yes, I would love to be able to continue to go to our beautiful sanctuary in Yosemite the rest of my life.   But I am much more concerned about the safety of the full time residences in the wake of the Ferguson fire than I am our vacation home.  The ravages of climate change make me sad and angry.  Increasingly I feel that we are living on borrowed time up there.    And I am heartbroken that 2 firefighters have lost their lives fighting the Ferguson Fire.  

What energy, space and consciousness can me, my body, and our body politic be, such that we can quench the thirst of the earth, restore the habitability of human habitat on earth for the long term?

I Don't Have to Tell People I'm Setting a Boundary

I like to think that I know something about boundary setting, but I actually have only learned a few things, and highly imperfectly.  For that reason, I wrote a post about a year ago: the top 10 ways NOT to set boundaries. Since it was sarcastic and for that reason perhaps hard to understand, I am going to attempt a sincere approach this time.

First of all, the best books on boundaries that I've read are by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, both Christian ministers. A Bible passage alert is in effect for their books, which is great for those of us who love a spiritual thought well-grounded in Bible wisdom but for some it might be a deal-breaker. The original Boundaries book is really perfect for the person who has convinced themselves (or been convinced by the collective consciousness) that they are being loving by allowing themselves to have give and give and give without boundaries or limits. This book perfectly disabuses the notion that there is anything loving about allowing others to violate our boundaries. Cloud (and sometimes Townsend) also published Boundaries in Dating, Boundaries in Marriage, Boundaries with Kids, Boundaries for Leaders and Beyond Boundaries. All great. I have found Boundaries for Leaders particularly useful as a minister.

Most people who talk about boundaries, including Cloud and Townsend, will emphasize that boundaries are set and maintained by us, not by other people. This is so true. But today I'm going to focus on the single biggest piece of wisdom I've learned about boundary setting: there's no real advantage to telling the other person you're setting the boundary.
This is the thing I wish I had learned YEARS ago: One of the big obstacles that has kept me from setting boundaries (at least between my ears) is that I thought that in order to "set a boundary" I needed to talk to the person who had violated my boundaries; I needed to sit them down, tell them how they had hurt me or tell them what they were not going to be able to do anymore; or, at the very very least, tell them what I was or wasn't going to allow.

I would avoid, procrastinate, and delay "setting a boundary" because I couldn't possibly face that conversation and its terrifying emotional fallout.

What I wish I'd know years ago is that first of all setting a boundary (which might involve informing someone that I'm doing it) is not that important. What's important is holding a boundary. And if I am holding a boundary, then I don't need to inform anyone other than myself (and perhaps a trusted person that I hold myself accountable to), I just need to do it.

Example: I had a very close person in my life who was calling several times a day, and if they didn't reach me, leaving terrible voicemail messages about how I had ruined their life and how terrible I was and about all the things that I needed to do differently. Because this person was a very close relative who I was choosing to continue to have a relationship, I wasn't going to completely cut them off, but I also couldn't continue to abuse myself by speaking to them often and listening to their messages.

A trusted advisor suggested that I talk to that relative once a week only at a set time and stop picking up the phone or listening to their messages. At first, I misinterpreted the advice and procrastinated informing this relative of the new policy. Eventually I informed them. As I predicted, they were furious, hurt, and terrified. Their behavior and calls only escalated after I informed them. And when I called at the weekly time, they were especially abusive on the call.

I went back to the advisor and told them how it had played out. The advisor asked me, "why did you tell them you were doing this?" The answer: I never considered any other option! From then on out, I never informed anybody who I was holding a new boundary with that I was holding a boundary, I just did it.

If I could deal with a person coming over once a month for dinner but no more, I just invited them once a month, I didn't tell them it would be only once a month. Works like a charm.

The other plus is that if I don't inform someone of my new boundary, I'm the only one who knows if I can't do it.

Summer Junk Food for the Mind

Where do you stand on junk reading?  I go back and forth.  For years I have alternated "quality" literature--like deep spiritual inquiries, riveting memoirs, biographies and histories and prize-winning novels--with "beach" reading like science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers and the occasional better written romance (only the Highlander series comes to mind).  As I move from the former to the latter I tell myself that I need a break.  I need not to have to work so hard at my reading.  But do I (need a break, have to work hard)? Is that actually true?

After recently completing the awe-inspiring Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, I realized that my relationship with junk reading is eerily similar to my relationship with junk food.  I have trained myself to think that there's something I deserve or need about junk food and junk reading, but it's a lie.  Our culture is full of stories of the person who is forcing themselves to eat kale, quinoa and tofu and then escapes into the true pleasures of a burger, fries and a milkshake.  

Believe me my brain is very much capable of enjoying a burger, fries and a milkshake, possibly several of them.  But is my body?  see my body reliably has strong negative health reactions (stomach trouble, headaches, sinus infections and uncontrollable cravings) to beef, wheat, dairy and sugar;  so is it really "enjoying" the burger and milkshake? or is just enjoying the idea of the burger and milkshake, the cultural concept of taking a break from what you should do, having a treat?  If the tofu is crunchy and salty, the kale is properly flavored and quinoa is marinated, I can eat a meal that my mind AND body fully enjoy.


It's the same, I realized, with literature.  There was NO way that I had to work to "get through" Just Mercy.  It was a treat from beginning to end.  It was a page turner.  It was inspiring.  Reading it changed my life and enlivened me.

Why on earth would I need a break from inspiration and being enlivened, I began to wonder?  Why on earth would I need to consume anything but brilliantly prepared, well-seasoned magnificent and also nutritional literature this summer?

Now don't misunderstand me.  I DO understand that there are brilliant, well-written science fiction, fantasy and other genres out there, and I intend to keep reading them.  Nor do I seem to be done experimenting with pulp fiction.  The last book I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was The Hearing by John Lescroart (and then I ran out and bought 3 more books by him--well written legal mystery/thrillers set in San Francisco). 

Similarly, I don't judge anyone else for eating burgers, fries and milkshakes.  Although I really don't touch beef, I do still experiment with wheat, dairy and sugar--always to ill effect.  "What I can eat could kill you and what you can eat would kill me," say some friends of mine.
The challenge is that the downsides of choosing junk over nutritional lit are much more subtle for me than those of choosing junk food.  I don't feel sick. I don't gain weight.  Mostly I miss out on new ideas, new thoughts, an expanded horizon, that feeling you get when you read a perfect sentence that you could never ever have written but that you recognize as sheer genius (I'm talking to you, Jonathan Franzen).

And so I leave you, as I leave myself, strongly considering consuming a stronger ratio of nutritious to junk literature this summer and beyond.  And that's a start...

Feel the Slow Sweet Good Love of Mister Rogers (aka God)--5 Snouts up for Won't You Be My Neighbor?

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) 5 enthusiastic Snouts up (Understand my Snout-Based Rating system) for Wont You Be My Neighbor? The movie about Fred aka "Mister" Rogers.  

A month ago I was in San Diego to see my mother and this movie was sold out on a Wednesday night.  I said "WTF?"  Last night, I bought tickets in advance--lots of empty seats but a solid 30 people, mostly under 40, saw this movie on a Tuesday night months after it opened.  What is happening here?

What's happening is that Fred Rogers is one of the comings of the Christ--I don't want to say "second" because I think there are many expressions of the living Christ consciousness amongst us.  And I think that when people see Mister Rogers in action in this movie, they recognize that on some level, whether they can articulate it or not, and they want others to feel what they felt while watching the movie.

Many friends recommended this movie to me.  One couple described a scene where, in an early episode from the late 60s when white people were violently reacting to swimming pool integration, (white) Mister Rogers invited (African-American police) Officer Clemmons to bathe his feet in the same wading pool.  Years later, in the eighties during AIDS scare, Mister Rogers invites Clemmons (who also happens to be gay) to share the pool again and Rogers dries off Clemmons' feet with a towel.  The imagery of shared communion and Christ's love is obvious when you think about it, but it is not explained.  It is just done.  So powerful.

The scene that actually caught me the most though, probably because of my years as a lobbyist, was Fred Rogers' 1969 testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications chaired by Sen. John Pastore.  In the movie, right before this testimony, you can see Pastore's snarkiness about PBS and his strong inclination to cut $20 million (a lot in 1969) from its funding to give to President Richard Nixon to fund his growing "exercise" in Vietnam.  When Rogers testifies, everything changes.  Rogers tells Pastore in his simple sweet way how his goal is to let every child know that they are loved exactly as they are right now.  And you can (I almost wrote "literally" but that's a different post lol) watch Pastore's face and heart melt as he feels the importance of that ministry break through all his cynicism. 
Link to Fred Rogers Testimony

I had no idea that Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister and his life's work was this ministry with children.  Sure I watched 100s of hours of this show as a child.  I loved the land of make believe.  I hated Mister Rogers slow conversations with other adults and us.  As I hit puberty, I mocked this show and did my best to ruin it for my younger brothers.

I learned in this movie the real reason I intuitively hated Mister Rogers.  It turns out that Fred Rogers was a lonely sad fat kid like me.  My response to that childhood was to run like hell from that kid, to do anything I could possibly do to be popular, to be happy, and, if at all possible, to be thin (only moderate success with that).  Rogers healed his body -- every day he swam and maintained a curious weight of 143 pounds (you need to see the film to know the significance of that number).   Like me he became a minister.  But unlike me he turned himself TOWARDS that sad fat kid, not away from it.  He stopped.  He slowed himself down to the speed of love.  And he didn't leave one person behind.  He personified divine love throughout his life.  What can we do to emulate Fred Rogers?

Hurry to see the Hilarious Thanksgiving Play at Cap Stage

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) Five enthusiastic snouts up (see Understanding the Snout-Based Rating System) for The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse on the Capital Stage through July 22nd.  It's no small trick to create a play that is edgy, brilliant, thought-provoking (all hallmarks of the Capital Stage canon) and also hilariously funny and fun.  By grappling with the question of how to write a play examining Native American issues without any Native American actors,  playwright Larissa FastHorse has done it all.  

The play centers around 4 teachers/actors attempting to "devise" a new more culturally sensitive Thanksgiving play for elementary school children.  The two lead characters sound more like an episode of Portlandia than your average play--hilarious caricatures of well-meaning white progressives.   At the top of the show, the Yoga Guy/Street performer boyfriend (Cassidy Brown) gives his failed Actress/Elementary school teacher/Director girlfriend (Jennifer Le Blanc) the ultimate sensitive gift: a water bottle crafted from the recycled glass from broken public housing windows.  She is so touched.   It only gets better from there.

The two other actors, a sexy actress (Gabby Battista) whose heritage we begin to determine from L.A. and a nerdy teacher/would be playwright (Jouni Kirjola) in town, are wonderful too.  The teacher/director lady is the lead straight man around whom the other 3 land great jokes.

Director Michael Stevenson (also the Artistic Director of Capital Stage) has done it again with direction that enhances but does not detract from the work--funny funny physicality in this play brings laughs that surely not every production could manage.

Listen, I gotta run and this is only up for another week--see it and tell all your friends!

The Path not Taken--Some Version of me is a Fighting Death Penalty Cases Right Now

You ever have a strong sense of the road not taken in your life?  Not necessarily regret, but just a sense of what might have been if.  Sometimes I get this feeling that life is like a video game in which multiple versions of the same story exist side by side dependent on upon key choices.  In one version of my life, I am living in the southern United States representing people accused of capital (death penalty) crimes.

About 2 pages into attorney Bryan Stevenson's brilliant real life To Kill a Mockingbird story: Just Mercy: a story of Justice and Redemption, I had stopped reading to Google bar review courses and look for jobs defending people facing the death penalty.  

This was one of my alternate universe lives and I came pretty close to living it.  I went to a public interest law school (SUNY Buffalo School of Law) because I wanted to do this.  Ignoring the advice of my boyfriend (now husband)'s grandfather who said "the problem with going into criminal law is that most of your clients are criminals," I took all the classes most oriented to criminal law.  I even took a special class on federal law and a special class on the doctrine of habeas corpus (latin for "you shall have the body"  -- which is highly relevant to capital crimes--this is part of the legal doctrine that makes it illegal to detain someone without charges but also false charges).  I worked for the Federal Public Defender in Oregon one summer under the great Steve Wax (who retired a few years ago after 31 great years in that role).  And upon graduation, I applied for a public defender fellowship at Georgetown University Law School (and very nearly received it-- see Post on how I lost a prestigious Georgetown Fellowship due to sexism) .

All of this was with the goal of representing people accused of capital (death penalty) crimes.   As wrong as I believe the death penalty is, it is that much more wrong that it wildly disproportionately is applied to people without financial means and African-American men.   It is said that a "capital crime" is a crime where people who don't have the "capital" are sentenced to die.  And that is in large part true.  Almost no one with an extensive legal defense gets sentenced to death.

By the grace of God, I still stayed in public interest law (so many of my fellow law students did not find a way to do that) and got to have a career representing consumers and workers in Congress and the California legislature.  And although I have no regrets about that decision--it was a thrill to be of service in that way.  And although I have now left even that behind for ministry, I am nonetheless finding myself wistful about the path not taken.

Michael B. Jordan

I will continue to read Stevenson's marvelous engaging story of his crusade to represent Walter McMillian, an African-American man from Monroeville, Alabama (the same town in which the famous To Kill a Mockingbird story took place) sentenced to die for a crime he, and large portions of the town, insist he did not commit.   It's such a great story in fact that it's being made into a movie next year starring Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) as Bryan Stevenson--you know its big time when a star like that has been hired.  

I can't wait to see how this story comes out, how the movie is and how my life comes out.  Will I take the Alabama bar next year and move to Montgomery?  Stay tuned...