sanctuary

i grew up knowing the inside of a church as well as, or perhaps even better than, the inside of my home. over the years i have worshipped in and visited every possible kind of sanctuary, from humble wooden one-room churches on unpaved roads to grand cathedrals in europe, brand-new modern structures to temples that have served countless generations, churches where women were not allowed to speak and churches run only by women, churches with young stylish bands and churches with music only a cappella, churches that offer pomp and circumstance and churches whose congregations gather in silence, churches where women and men sit on opposite sides of the room and churches where families sit together. i have joined worshippers in christian, jewish, hindu, buddhist, and other faiths.

i love sanctuaries.

i live in a suburban neighborhood with an anglican church just a few doors away. as i travel 16th street to my office in the mornings, i pass 39 sanctuaries in my thirty-minute drive. the last street i pass before turning onto my street is church street. my office building is next door to washington, d.c.’s oldest baptist church.

i love sanctuaries.

as is my custom on many days, today i took time to leave my office and spend a few minutes in the sanctuary, a beautiful old church filled with stained glass windows and towering stone columns. i entered and stood in the softened light at the foyer and stood still, allowing my soul to embrace the spirit there. as my feet walked the stone floor that led to the front, i was awash in the beauty and riches of this spiritual place. i was alone, surrounded by the sound of organ music. i reached the front of the temple and by now my face was wet with tears. in this place i am open. i am cleansed. i am whole. i often weep (but not from sadness, from wholeness). here i am on holy ground.

i love sanctuaries and come here as often as i can.

what i am drawn to, what i love, is a message to my life. life is a mirror and our work is to see our reflections and discover our truth within. everything, absolutely everything, is a message.

i am drawn to sanctuaries not because i am in need of a sactuary, a place for God to reside. i am drawn to sanctuaries because i have a sanctuary, a place where God resides. this is my reflection. my time inside a sanctuary brings me in touch with my own Sanctuary.

i have a Sanctuary.

and if what i have is a reflection of what i am, what i have is what i am.

i have a Sanctuary...

i am a Sanctuary...

longing to be more

not long ago i walked into a restroom and surprised a cleaning lady working in the middle of the afternoon. she looked directly at me until i met her gaze, then quickly looked away. from that point on she kept her eyes focused on the floor. she apologized to me. she kept apologizing as if she were inconveniencing me and as if her presence were somehow improper.

i was the featured speaker in a conference being held in the building and this woman was not expecting me to be outside the meeting room or inside her ladies’ room. she was deferential and treated me as though my value exceeded hers. i could not speak her language but wished i could let her know the work she does, the service she provides, is just as important as that of my own. even if she knew my english, i was uncertain how i could have conveyed that same message. she just kept apologizing. it felt very strange for me.

i used to be the cleaning lady. while it has been quite some years back, in a lot of ways it feels to me it was not so long ago. i entered the business world with a broom. i cleaned executive offices and wondered what it would be like to wear a suit, to be the one behind the big desk and work on issues that make a contribution to the world. and i wondered what it would be like to have people need what i have to give. i longed to be more.

now i am wearing a linen suit; i have addressed audiences across this country and also another. people hire me for what i can teach them. but i struggle to be successful in my work. i am sometimes uncertain. i work hard and often stumble. i long to be more.

until i am reminded there are those who see who i am and dream of the gift in my hands. there are those who long for the position i hold. even when i held a broom, there were those who did not have a job and envied my gift. how careless of me to spend any time outside that of appreciation for who i am and for the work i do. my friend ehj2 once wrote to me of his own meditations, “to want to be further along my own path is a form of greed. it's placing a goal above the process of achieving the goal. if i do not love the Path, if i am not following my Bliss, i will never make the destination. to think i am not enough for this moment is a form of self-pity, a belief in insufficiency and want. to think that doing more is an answer turns spiritual practice into a form of athletics..."

my work, the cleaning lady's work, your work, we all have holy work in our hands. and we have a holy gift of who we are. any time spent longing for more is time wasting our gift. and precious time away from our own holiness.

let it rain

last night i fell asleep during a storm that knocked out power in much of my neighborhood. i slept without air conditioning with my windows open, and through the night the storm continued. the rain fell for hours. as the rain fell on the metal of the porch roof, the closeness of the sound made me feel the rain was upon me and around me and within me. i could hear, and feel, and taste the rain. i hardly could have felt it closer if i were lying on the open ground.

i awakened in the early morning hours to the sound of crickets and to rain dripping from the rooftops and from the trees. long before the rest of the neighborhood awakened, the world's silence intensified the sound of the crickets and the drip…drip…drip.

i knew i was on holy ground.

i got out of bed and did the only thing there was to do.

i found one more window to open.

the sound of silence

several weeks ago i wrote, “i am being called to greater stillness...and fewer things...and more quiet.”

while i was absent from writing i remembered those words and began to pursue a place of quiescence.

i turned off the television.

i turned off the surround-sound cd stereo.

i turned off the radio even in my car.

i turned time alone into time of silence. how very different from my customary world of constant commotion.

i began to limit the number of things around me. i created space around my events.

i stopped constant excitation--sugar and chocolates and coffees (even decaffeinated ones) and various stimulations.

at first it was unfamiliar and disconcerting. i felt noticeably alone. but as i allowed silence to settle around me, my world began to transform. i had no idea how noise and other stimulants had interrupted and altered my body's natural rhythm, confused my knowing when to sleep and how long and when to eat and how much.

initially i found it challenging when business obligations demanded long hours and i refused to use anything artificial to keep up my pace. no chocolates to stimulate and no coffees or colas. i didn't even use music to stir or alter my energy, and i struggled to manage a bloated calendar without artificial means. how do i pull an all-nighter without something to keep me going? but as i pursued my new practice my energy began to level out and i was further quieted by not having to "use" to compensate for having "used." too much stimulation leads to trouble sleeping, and using something to sleep (even non-prescription) leads to the need to stimulate. this becomes a very slippery slope and its acceptance makes the problem invisible.

i actually started this practice long before i wrote the words in my blog (writing them from the call to pursue deeper quiet than i was already experiencing). for several years i frequently used benadryl to help me sleep but you know, for the life of me, i cannot remember the last time i even had it in the house. my new practices have been making a difference.

constant food and drink stimulation had been one kind of noise but now i was called to greater silence around me, not only within me. i turned off music and television to discover more quietude. no more voices to fill the silence in my empty house. this felt different, strange and unnerving. in my home it was just me, fumbling around in the quiet. at first i thought the silence made me feel alone. but as i began to acclimate to the silence it seemed to me it was not the feeling of being alone that was so strange to me but it was the feeling of my own presence. i had thought the hugeness of silence made one feel small but i discovered it is noise that makes one small and even lost. silence affords one the opportunity to discover her own being. i began to hear my own voice. hearing my own voice is the most solid ground i have known. i love my own becoming.

as i felt called to "greater stillness...and fewer things...and more quiet” i began to find more than the awareness of my own being and the sound of my own voice. deeper still i found a Presence in the silence, something more than merely the absence of sound. silence became not emptiness but fullness, a wealth usually displaced by noise. this silence and its Presence became a place of healing for me, a place of refuge, a place of restoration. of course, one can be surrounded by silence and never notice (having noise inside)...for fully experiencing silence means actually stepping into it.

my tendency toward noise became my tool. every time i felt the urge to turn on the music (sometimes reaching for it almost unconsciously) i used that urge to take a moment to step into the silence, if only for a fraction of a minute. again and again and again during my day my habit to reach for the dial meant another conscious moment of stepping into the silence. my habit toward noise became my incredible awareness of the silence.

i live in a world filled with noise--tools and construction, advertising and branding, billboards and bumper stickers, conversations and confusion, foods and smells--but as often as i am able and in increasing amounts, i go to my place of refuge and find myself in the silence...

vapor

sometimes when i awaken from a dream i can’t quite remember what it was. i almost can but i can’t. i feel an image but can’t quite see it. or it appears for a fraction of a second but just as i reach out to touch it, it vanishes between my fingers. i almost remember it but the dream is no longer there.

yet it feels so close, as close as if i had just walked out of a room and the door closed behind me and that closed door now prevents my seeing what i’ve just walked out of. so close and yet not there.

that’s how my life feels sometimes, that i am so close to its making sense to me, and then it doesn’t.

and then sometimes i’m not even close.

knowing

i am
without knowing
until i know
that i don't know

then knowing
that i don't know
puts me in a place
where now i know

until knowing
that i know
puts me back
into not knowing
because knowing that i know
means really i don't know

so my purpose is to know
without knowing that i know
or to not know and hold onto
that it is that i don't know

noise

i have been noisy...

my life has been noise and movement and stimulation.

as i have come to experience moments of stillness, i am aware of how constantly stimulated i have been.

with movement . with taste. with sugar or chocolates or caffeines. with music. with talking. with something new and different. with exuberance. with confusion. with longing. with obligation. with hope. and with constant taking in (even many times without regard to what i was taking).

i am not suggesting it has all been bad. much of it has been noble and generous and loving. it has been about nurturing or giving or helping or working hard or achieving or accomplishing. much of it has brought me forward.

but as i have had longer and longer moments without stimulation or have had moments with complete quiet, and then returned to noise, the difference has become far more clear to me.

i am now called to greater stillness.

it isn't easy.

in spite of the rewards of deeper life, it isn't easy. as stressful as noise and frenetic activity might be, silence can be more difficult. initially for me silence felt huge and i suddenly seemed lost in an abyss. i felt incredibly small. but i began to see that in my noisy world i am perhaps not present at all, so feeling small in the silence makes me far more aware of myself than i am in the noise.

silence and stillness can be huge and overwhelming. but there is also a place in the quiet where i find mySelf, an existence that isn't found anywhere else.

i am being called to greater stillness.

and fewer things.

and more quiet.

i wonder why it seems so scary. and so hard.

when it feels so good...

action re-action

holding you
or being held by you
when i step deeply into one
that one seems to become
the other
so much so
that what i give to you
becomes
what i'm receiving too
and what you give to me
becomes
the thing that's serving you

but look beyond
this curious phenomenon
between two lovers
and we begin to see
a true philosophy
that resonates
through all the universe
that what we're giving out
becomes
what we are taking in
and what we do
becomes
what's being done to us

Holy...

Sometimes I am overwhelmed by so much to do and so much to learn...

When my learning and moving are large I find it harder to be here and write it all...

In truth I cannot write it all...

A message was given to me several days ago that our work is to do what is doable. This is where I need to be...doing what is doable. Not doing everything or even doing the biggest thing. But doing what is doable. And when we do what is doable, we change everything...

I do not hear every message. I struggle in trying to remember every one that I do hear. But what is doable is to pause each day and write a message I am given, a truth attempting to penetrate my consciousness. This I can do.

~ ~ ~
I am holy.

You...are...holy.

Sacred.

Belonging to or coming from God.

Holy.

We are holy.

And when we lose sight of our own holiness, our behavior forgets to reflect that we are holy.

This is my message today. This is my meditation today.

I am holy...

becoming conscious

drawn to the light
i struggle
to become conscious
and wrestle more
to remain so

coming into consciousness
is an eden
and yet how easy it is
to slip into unconscious ways

my efforts
not only to progress
are to hold dear
what has been opened unto me

i am saddened sometimes
when my mirror reflects
a moment of too little awareness
and yet that moment of recognizing
my own unconscious ways
seems in itself to make me less so

perhaps consciousness
like humility
the more i realize i don't have
the more i begin to have

then, too
the question begs an answer
how conscious is conscious
to be considered such

upon awakening
with consciousness stirring
can one be called so
or only fully into being
is one to claim his place

(am i become a swimmer
when i barely know one stroke
am i only so when i know all there is to know
…or is it somewhere in between)

it seems to me
my own consciousness
is not about how long i have been here
or how much of it i might possess
but that i am here this moment
and that i do it again
each moment in time