child of life, visiting grace on me for a season

Universe Twirl

Yesterday turned out to be one of the longer dances with life and universal rumbling tango twirls as I focused mainly on staying steady on my toes. It was beautiful, something I would not have predicted. Exhausting. Just life, mainly. But there was this girl…

almost 18…

she was in the backseat behind me, quiet. Rolling with the latest spin in the dance of our day. Her guitar teacher hadn’t been there. Door locked. Next? We’re taking my niece somewhere. Been an emergency kind of day…

quiet. Her silence was palpable.

And then BAM, crash, slam. “Mom! You have to stop. We have to help! Call the police…” She tends to command scenes when they qualify as such, without thinking or calculation. It just happens and this half-smile grows on my face every time.

The small pickup truck in front of us went from humming a straight trail along the path ahead to quietly careening off the road with no provocation, straight for the telephone pole. Full frontal impact and resulting crunching smash. I pull into the doctor’s office parking lot adjacent to the wreck, scanning for risk of fire, seeing none. The girl in the backseat is out of the car and running towards the truck. That’s my kid. Slow down girl. Life’s dangerous. Gulp. I’m calling emergency response and she’s helping the 86 year old grandma out of the car. Someone’s grandma. Not hers. But might as well be.

They’re talking. She’s holding her hand. Then she’s taking her cell phone and calling family for her. “Hello…first off, your Grandma’s ok, ok? Everything’s fine. But…” But the truck’s not going anywhere ever again. And I’m watching the universe spin a story of instant care. Passers by have stopped and are directing traffic. My daughter is bent over, inspecting for injuries and the police, emts and firemen haven’t arrived.

I’m not needed. Except as guardian of the girl on scene and as an observer privileged to witness love unfolding. This girl wasn’t aware of the world around her. She was focused, disinterested in any attention. Behaving like someone born to respond. And I’m in awe, now the quiet one.

The official responders arrive. And they’re appreciative, not shooing the girl away, making their way around her ministrations and determining the grandma’s not injured beyond the tear-inducing shock and pain from airbags deploying.

She’s “the girl” here because I’m watching her become all she is apart from me and yet not apart from me. I’m in no hurry to say “my daughter” because this is a person the world receives apart from any realization of me and she’s a wonder I like to witness and acknowledge apart from the blinders motherhood can be. All I could do in the aftermath was sit with tears of appreciation. She’s going to be just fine, Mama.

I had to leave her there on scene. That girl. Willful. She refused to leave before the grandma’s family arrived. So, knowing her to be cell phone armed and surrounded by emergency care workers, I finished my rescue of my niece, shaking my head as I drove off. She would be where I told her to be and all would be well.

But she wasn’t. She was ok. But across the street at a radio station sitting quietly with the woman and another passerby. And that passerby sat marveling to me about that girl. She’d left to call the family again, making sure they knew where to find their grandma. I just smiled and acknowledged the wonder of a girl, fearless, instantly concerned and eager to provide comfort.

And I waited in the car. Later the girl supreme told me the grandma said she had restored her faith in young people. Youth. Girls.

But she didn’t tell me until I had nudged her, mentioned the wonder of her unfolding response myself, suggesting maybe she should consider emergency response work (gulp). She had little to say. Mostly quiet again. Except to let me know that one thing about restoring faith.

Sometimes the universe puts us into these amazing twirling dance days of happenings orchestrated for the sole purpose of that one thing…to slam us into an appointment with faith.

Imagine that. And a girl. She makes my heart sing.

child of life, visiting grace on me for a season
the girl of a universe twirl…

jruthkelly2 Comments

Pray For Peace

I had no words in the aftermath of so much carnage last week, all over the world, not just in Boston. All over the world. Every week. And, at the same time, so many beautiful things unfolding. It makes no sense. And that’s ok. So, I shake my head at all the loss and give my words to others these days. Creativity is random and rare. I have to remind myself not to despair of the mere trickle of poetic flow. There will be more productive times. In the meantime…

Here is one whose expression I can feast on with deep gratitude and her words say all that needs saying in the reality and the aftermath of all that is this life…

PRAY FOR PEACE by Ellen Bass

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Yahweh, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray. Bow down
to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven’t been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into,
each caress a season of peace.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

jruthkelly2 Comments

The Bee Mistress

Found this lovely spin via Stray Letters from the Moon…

I
do not
believe in
God because I’ve
never seen him. If he
wanted me to believe in him,
then surely he would come and speak
with me. He would come in through my door
saying, ‘Here I am!’ But if God is the hive and
the honeybee, and pollen and nectar and sun and moon,
then I believe in her and I believe in her at every moment, and my
life is a prayer and a celebration and a communion with the eyes
and through the ears. I honor her by living spontaneously,
as a woman who opens her eyes and truly sees, and
I call her the hive and the honeybee and pollen
and sun and moon, and I love her
without thinking of her, and
I think of her by seeing
and hearing, and
I am with her,
I.

The Bee Mistress – Simon Buxton’s The Shamanic Way of the Bee

Thanks Pierre…

jruthkelly11 Comments

Not Your Business…

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

The above quote is one of Martha Graham’s exhortation in a letter to Agnes de Mille in de Mille’s book “Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham”.

The world experienced a unique expression of vitality in the active life of someone I loved from a young age. And sometimes I circle ’round and ’round the conundrum in my mind created by the somewhat immature conflict over why it is I can be so very glad he was a Christian when I don’t share in the basic premise of his beliefs, that we have all sinned and fallen short. But I land on this quote and find the conundrum is only in my mind.

The soul makes sense no rational thought can fully comprehend.

The one who had such a profound effect on many, and died this past Friday, was very much a “Christ-in-you,” deeply spiritual person, but oftentimes with an undercurrent of Zen flow. John was a profound inspiration. And it was, sometimes, a challenge to fathom that combination of Zen Christ-likeness. And in retrospect, I cannot fathom except through this quote.

“There is a vitality. A life force. A quickening.”

And in this one man, it was contagious. It came through and was received by many as a call to Christ. And when I walked away from what I had embraced of the semi-fundie world I formerly resided, that which came through was not completely lost. Love remained. Acceptance remained. The same soulful transaction took place but my mental receptors had changed. This is not true of everyone I’ve encountered from my past life. Their channels are clogged with judgement and fear. His were not.

We often, if not always, translate who we are by the sometimes ancient, sometimes recent code of dependency, particularly dependency on beliefs or thoughts we are either intentionally or unintentionally embracing. And in that translation, the world either rejects or embraces us. Or is ambivalent. John mostly experienced hearty acceptance and he embodied what is best known of Christ, within and beyond the ultimate sacrifice. He loved regardless of ________, which is to say, he loved no matter what your story might be.

I have no stomach for sin-fixation because it fixates on humanity with a judgment resulting in an amorphous but potent cloud of condemnation of being bad or missing the mark. “Sin” as far as I can tell is not what my children were born in. They were born bearing the spiritual inheritance of all that my life and their father’s life bore from the debts created by generation after generation. What debts? Well, when you’re raped as an infant and toddler, and then you conceive and birth a child, that child will have received a measure of the damage done to the spirit and soul and body of the one originally raped, the mom. And that’s just one thread. Only one. Ask therapists what they know about how the Holocaust is born in the bodies and minds of Jews to this day (and Germans). As far as I can tell and truly believe (no, do not call me a Christian), Jesus stood in the gap created by every debt and it is on us to work out for ourselves the healing and release from generational oppression in our personal lives. Our savior did a work and it’s on us to continue that work. But in the celebration of John’s life, the undeniable reality shines through all the confusing mental riddles. He translated the life force we all partake of and that translation imparted hope, strength, a desire to live outside of fear and in love. Both in and out of the realms of semi-fundie confusion. He said often “You are the Your Name Here expression of Jesus.” And many were blown away by it. It set aside the “WWJD” fixation and required a personal expression of Christ. In my view, both in and out of that particular flavor of Christianity, it is the purest form of Christian practice, evoking the highest possible walk of integrity within the structure of that religion and it has my highest regard.

I speak of “mental riddles”, but those words don’t convey the struggles I encountered within myself because I walked away from Christianity and here stood this man who inspired me by his love for Jesus. Mental gymnastics would ensue after conversations with John, but mostly the heartache griped me, the ache to not lose what was precious and will always be precious of the life of Christ. And I didn’t want him to think less of me. (He made it clear that he did not.)

And so today I came across this quote again from a source supreme. And I found peace in the words not because they solved the riddle as much as because they pointed me to the reality of soul, of life force and of how it is we can receive the best from those we may not totally agree with and we can receive because there is that life force nourishing us within and beyond all belief systems.

“Keep the channel open.” John P. Kellogg was able to keep the channel open through his faith in Christ. And not many, in and out of Christianity, have found a way to keep that channel open. His life and passing into the next grand adventure reminds me that we don’t know what we think we know. Some say, “Christianity is bad because it…” but the truth is, when we are sick within, whatever we embrace will be corrupted by that sickness until we face it, heal it and translate life anew. Whether we’re heavy into our atheism or our religion or…

Keep the channel open…accept who you are without denying how you need help with healing or how you’ve fallen short (we all do, whether we believe there’s this thing called “sin” or not) and…

stay in love.

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For John P. K.

 

j ruth kelly, 2013, all rights reserved
j ruth kelly, 2013, all rights reserved

pondering existence and all we grasp to assure us of the meaningfulness of a life, my phone rang. it’s true. i was exhausted. had finished my morning round of work, resting before the next wave, feeling the frustration of loss the past month had become and realizing how many times i’ve had to remind myself that measuring my worth solely by some evidence of obvious success is a nowhere game. so, i was pondering, sensing, feeling the pull of the very fact of existence itself and all the possibility held in one life. in mine. in my children. sighing. hoping.

my phone rang.

the father of my children in the middle of the day. this can’t be good. “hey, what’s up?” i answer. “my dad died this morning.”

his dad. 80+++ years. i’d known him from the age of 3. of all there is to know of him, the thing that remained was his capacity to accept and love people in the moment, to so seldom speak harshly to anyone that i cannot recall ever witnessing such. a rare individual who often bubbled up a little dance i took to calling the barney dance back when i was sure he couldn’t cut loose, convinced it was a major dysfunction, picking over all that i thought contributed to all that is wrong in a religion. so little i knew for all my knowing…

now i just want to see that dance again.

this is what life does to us, if we open our hearts. it cuts away all that we judge to be flawed, all the measuring sticks we cling to for proof of value. it teaches us that some blossoms come and go fast, never to return again ’til the next season of blooming. others bloom at the most unlikely times and then turn around and bloom again. and again.

this was true of a man i think of as my other dad. (not just because i married into the family. but because he exuded nurturing concern. and he radiated a nourishing color of love unique to his own expression of life. he called me ruthie. and he said it with such love and pleasure. he oftentimes prayed over me throughout my childhood, here and there when life had ripped at my confidence. he was so sure of my value. so full of confidence.) he kept blooming. one more expression. and another. and a new one there. and he encouraged the same in whomever bothered to open up to him.

i got off the phone after spilling involuntary anguish and concern, then the dam broke. and broke.

and broke. and i went to the school to pick up my sons with my daughter by my side, urging me to not reveal anything until we were outside the school, knowing i was barely holding it in.

we made it out into the sunlight before they had had enough of being deflected. then we all just stood there in a huddle, hugging, a tribute to a man who made it possible for me to know love by way of knowing his son and bringing three amazing children into this world. divorce doesn’t change that gratitude or diminish the meaning, the purpose of our knowing each other. it reminds us that there are limitations. we are not super-human, able to fix all problems. but we can do the best with what we have to care for, to cherish.

we drove up to my house and found him waiting in his car. wanting to see his children. and another huddle in sunlight. all of us.

there’s no preparation for death, not truly. we are so busy with our blooming. in all my awareness of existence and the fleetingness of life, i wasn’t even slightly prepared to hear this cherished father had gone on to the next expression, beyond our sight or ability to witness his adventure.

up to the last, he held out in love. only until his wife of many decades spoke the words “I release him…” did he actually let go and fade. within minutes, he was beyond our grasp. but our lives unfold and blossom in ways uniquely influenced by his presence. he lives on. and we gather our stories, grateful to include his best in our words, in our actions.

here’s to meaning we cannot fathom, achievement we can never measure and the love that holds us all together when those we cherish move on…

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Stand Strong…

“Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you.” ~ Caroline Myss

j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

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God is the Name…

“God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my path violently and recklessly, all things which alter my plans and intentions, and change the course of my life, for better or worse.” Carl Jung

all things which turn my soul inside out,
fretting my spirit a song,
fingers playing me along the song of humanity,
this melody, me, sometimes serene,
and then suddenly crescendo-ing a new direction,

all because this God drags me to the ground,
stuffing the dirt of life’s truth into my mouth,
down my throat, into my stomach
to churn something more sustaining
than any assembly-line belief system solace could stew.

more real than any brew of words could induce
and yet the words come spilling out
the evidence of something new.

God is the name by which I describe all torrents and currents
shifting my tides into a more passionate storm of living.
And Goddess greets me in the details revealed, the aftermath,
their mutual conspiracy unfolding a life.

*with thanks to Carl Jung for reminding me*

j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved
j. ruth kelly, all rights reserved

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New What?!

Things I’ve seen, been touched by, moved by, otherwise disturbed or encouraged by in the past month and 8 days…

…grass growing up from the cracks, carving inevitability across sidewalks of “progress”

…hearts reuniting after months of estrangement and breathing a sigh of relief in the refreshing flow

…lives suddenly torn away from each other by the oddest, most revealing turn of events (with some lingering unfortunate confusion)

…overhearing two of my children conversationally saying “I don’t think you realize how much I love you…” (!!!!!!!!!) (they were dealing with relationship strain, beautifully, and the one who said it first was NOT the female. that’s the kind of argument you like to overhear…)

…the news of a beautiful 23 year old in India dying after the most horrifying example of inhumanity

…the proclamation of Newtown, CT “We choose love…”

…realizations of love as a conspiracy in spite of all the tyranny and violence suggesting otherwise

…renewal of faith in fate (married passionately to free will, of course)

…free-falls into grace

…a shimmering color-filled halo around the moon with barefoot laughter and kids dragged out of bed to watch (on holiday)

…a string of “coincidental” encounters speaking purpose bigger than my own designs

…a cat fight (or 2?) o.O

…friendships strengthened

…concerts calling a symphony of diversity

…paradox making meaning

…the release of singing 5 minutes of my life as a musical

…brewing schemes for more good wickedness

…recognition (the annual one) that “new” year is a great concept, allowing us the opportunity to reflect and review our lives, and wish others all the best but it’s also just another day…

And that’s the stuff I can share…

jruthkelly5 Comments

Spirit

Synchronicity speaks deeply, quietly, relentlessly of Spirit, of the every “allplace” Spirit resides perpetually. And I love how just this week my kids kept us all up past midnight talking about Spirit. The quote below visited my Facebook newsfeed from Rob Brezsny as I sat exhausted after the toll of that worthwhile, lengthy dialogue with my children. Love the clarity…

Ken Wilber says:

“If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and all-encompassing. There can’t be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn’t be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness, precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly and completely permeated by Spirit.

“Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but just don’t know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now. You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness. There is nowhere Spirit is not. Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment. Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now. We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition.” The above is by Ken Wilber from his book “Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber”

It is one of my deepest longings to instill in my seeking children an openness to Spirit, to the love that is always everywhere and within, a stewing, humming, perpetual and literal vibe of great pleasure, comfort, nourishment and grace. The radical kind. We’re blazing this trail within and in our lives and it takes courage not to have “the answer.” Because of that, it’s wonderful to find expression from another source, expression of confidence, of assurance of what is inherently experienced here. It imparts renewed courage to share with confidence of what we experience, each one, in our own spiritual awareness.

jruthkelly4 Comments

Specifically Human

This Sunday my youngest son participated in the bell choir at a local church. It wasn’t just any worship service. It was a Moravian feast candlelight service. I sat there (and stood and sang hymns and held the candle and broke bread) looking up at the chandeliers and all around at the lights and decorations of the season and wondered why I felt glad to be there. Former semi-fundie no longer of religion sitting in a pew. With sister to my right and son and daughter to my right and the father of my children too. It was, once again, an odd arrangement of purposes. I was there to honor my son’s love of the bells and all things group. He loves community and has felt estranged from it all by our very unique way of living. His parents co-parent ‘though separated and don’t fight, squabble or otherwise do anything but support each other in nurturing three beautiful lives. This is odd. We foster love and generosity in their lives and educate them on different paths of spirituality, as we’re able. And we live in a town that is 99.9% uber Christian. So, we are even more odd. And add to that the fact that we sit in what is actually a beautiful church with thoughtful and caring souls and we are that much more odd. We can go where we don’t “belong” and yet find belonging. And I realized, as I sat there, that I was glad to be there apart from the wonder of hearing my son in chime rhyme with all of his choir friends.

It was perplexing to me. On the one hand I knew immediately that it was that part of me longing to belong to a group bigger than my own clan, my own little world. I watched the bell choir director and her passion, knowing from her own revealing that she was struggling with some deeply challenging grief. And she stood there giving with whole heart.

There are, to my mind anyway, so many deep flaws in Christianity and so I walked out. But there I sat. Glad to be. And today I find this from Fromm:

“The most important sphere of giving…lies in the specifically human realm. What does one person give to another? He gives himself, of the most precious he has, he gives of his life. This does not necessarily mean that he sacrifices his life for the other–but that he gives him of that which is alive in him; he gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness–of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. In thus giving of his life, he enriches the other person, he enhances the other’s sense of aliveness by enhancing his own sense of aliveness. He does not give in order to receive; giving is in itself exquisite joy. But in giving he cannot help bringing something to life in the other person, and this which is brought to life reflects back to him; in truly giving, he cannot help receiving that which is given back to him. Giving implies to make the other person a giver also and they both share in the joy of what they have brought to life.” Erich Fromm – The Art of Loving

And I realize that the source of perplexity in my mind was the recognition that there was something deeply and authentically good about my being glad to be there. And that it didn’t mean I had changed my mind about my place in Christianity (not IN but with those who can be in it without being destructive). It meant that I could appreciate the flow of giving that occurs in these odd arrangements of purpose. I wondered, as I sat there, why are these folks here? Each family. Each person. Why? Do they do it by rote? Is it just another habit? And as I wondered that, it occurred to me that even that didn’t matter. I knew, without being able to say so to myself, that they were there to partake of each other. Even if stiffly assembled in long pews of wooden restriction. It is a place of sharing, of opening up to receive and reaching out to give.

And in the one most cherished verse of a long-favored hymn…

Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel…

We inherit our delusions sometimes, or our blind acceptance of long-held beliefs passed down from generation to generation. Or we openly, knowingly choose our walk of faith. We are an odd arrangement of reasons and purpose. And we resonate to what is inherently human within both our delusions and our beliefs. We do the best we can until we learn what more we can give, what more we can know, what more we can discover.

And sometimes we make ourselves odd. We disrupt the rhythm and cast off the tradition. But ultimately, we all want the same thing: To know and be known in love, to give and receive of our stories. The only way to do that is to meet each other where we are, as we are, without insistence on agreement in all things. We have this common ground…

j. ruth kelly, 2012 all rights reserved
j. ruth kelly, 2012 all rights reserved

 

 

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