Home is where the Heart is

Posted on May 21, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

what a view we didn't see

Good Day, God!

This morning was invested in Centering Prayer with a monthly group sponsored by the Contemplative Outreach of Hawaii. I sat with 20-30 other folks for three sessions of 30 minutes each. WONDERFUL. I am feeling peaceful and a bit more aligned and a lot less fearful. I’m smiling, God. Maybe even ready for another trip?

I was chatting with a dear friend afterwards and she asked me if that wasn’t HARD to do? Oh YES! It is Hard for me . . . .I’m active and chatty . .. full of Words! But, in a group — even a small group — I find it easy. I feel like I am carried by the prayers of the others.

And, I need carrying these days, God. I too — like everyone — am buffeted by diverse fears. My big Fear is that as our species hovers on the brink of a Double of Nothing choice — we will choose nothing. We all either seek Your Help — seek to rise to full Human Status — or we will fall back into Reptilian Behavior.

Ah, and now I am smiling ruefully. I need to seek Your Help. I need to pray FOR people. I have been careening downhill into a Pit of Dark Judgments. Dark, Stinky, Sticky Judgments. Like calling folks Zombies. Ick! I am projecting my darkness on to others. Most folks are good or at least see themselves as good. Wanting to serve You, even. But Fear has a frightful way of yanking us out of our higher level human brain and down into our Old Reptilian Brain.

Now, I need to start praying for You to help ME!

Posted in connecting

Loving Our Whole Self

Posted on May 1, 2016 by a moment with god — 2 Comments

top of stone barn housing car collection

Good Morning, God!

I love this photo of the very top of a restoration of an old stone barn designed by the Shakers. Their not being interested in sex, I guess they had a lot of time and energy to put into Really GOOD Design. The barn was designed so the cows were in the middle level, hay was carted up to the top level and the manure was dumped into the bottom level where it, too, could be carted away. All the chores were simplified by building the barn on the side of a hill!

But, looking up at the top one can see that aesthetics were important, too. And since I wanted to talk to You about the enneagram and Father Richard Rohr’s blogs about it, I chose this image to picture the Complete Self. And yes, God, now I see that the Light at the Center is symbolic, too.

Fr. Rohr quoted Teresa of Ávila, who said that “the sinner is actually one who does not love himself or herself enough. We do not see or admire the whole self; so we split and try to love the good self and reject the bad self.”

I’m smiling because I think what I have been doing is RENAMING my sins. For example, my enneagram type is mostly (or often) a Seven. Which means my root sin is GLUTTONY. Yikes! One pictures corpulent drunkards lolling about. Distasteful! So, I have chosen to describe my Sin as ENTHUSIASM! A charming euphemism . . . I thought.

But, several weeks after reading about my root sin, I actually realized that Gluttony sort of explained my problems of Over-packing, Over-scheduling, and — not last or least — Over-eating. Hmm.

Well, God, I am not sure if renaming is better or worse than rejecting and ignoring parts of myself. Oh? It is just On The Continuum? Sigh, I can sort of see that. And Now I am reflecting on how IF I AM UPSET BY A BEHAVIOR in someone else — it might well be a SHADOW part of myself.

Sigh. Thank You God for Richard Rohr and insights. . . especially for the Unwanted Ones.

Tagged with: Enneagram, Father Richard Rohr, gluttony, shadow selves, Shakers, stone barns
Posted in accepting my ability to REDESIGN, Caring, Choosing to respond, connecting, Light, LOVE

A CHANGE IN OUR OIL continued

Posted on April 26, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

A Fresnel lighthouse lens, in the Nantucket (Mass.) Museum

Good Morning, God!

This is an old Fresnel lighthouse lens that has been replaced by better and brighter lights. But the need for lighthouses remains. We need to be warned when we are too close to rocky shores AND we need to be helped to locate where we are.

Right now our Civilization seems short of Lighthouse equivalents. So here I go . . .trying.

The production of Very Cheap Grain following WWII has had tremendous unintended and largely unseen consequences. One is the overwhelming use of CHEAP vegetable (grain) oils. It turns out that the oils in grains are meant to be stable for LONG periods of time. So they are primarily composed of slow reacting Omega 6s.

But, it seems that our brains and nervous systems prefer — in fact NEED a FASTER FAT . . . a more highly chemically reactive fat. One that is primarily composed of fast reacting Omega 3 fats found in butter, grass fed animal fats, cold water fish and flaxseed oil. That oil is used not just in our brains and neurological systems but in the very membrane of our cells.

So, what have some of the unintended consequences been? One major change, caused by the overconsumption of omega 6 fats, is an upsurge in inflammation. And inflammation is now getting attention as perhaps a root cause for all sorts of health problems. Hmm.

Years ago I heard Dr. Michael Greger talk about our overuse of omega 6 oils. He said “GO HOME AND TOSS OUT ALL OILS EXCEPT OLIVE OIL.” I did so! No more margarine for us. No store-bought salad dressings. Plus I made the addition of fish oils. Why keep olive oil? Olive and coconut oils contain omega 9s. Very little omega 6 comes into our systems with them.

But, one fish oil pill a day doesn’t help much. We have an enzyme that is necessary to use of oil. If we consume omega 6 oil first, it uses up that enzyme. So it isn’t just amount of each oil (preferably one-to-one) but the TIMING.

So? Have you heard this all before? Probably. Did you make a dramatic shift? Not so easy if you eat the Standard American Diet. More on that later.

Tagged with: a moment with God, Knowing vs Changing, Omega 3, omega 6, SAD the Standard American Diet, the FAST fat, the SLOW fat
Posted in a hand up, adjusting, asking for help for myself, connecting, the joy of sharing

A CHANGE of OIL

Posted on April 26, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

pushing back at CHANGE

Good Morning, God!

I think it was King Canute who pointed out that he could not “hold back the sea.” How true that is on Cape Cod. Rising Oceans, Warming Seas, Stronger Storms.

The erosion here is CHANGE made VISIBLE! Or maybe only visible to those who can SEE over TIME. Most of us humans have real trouble with that, God. Often it isn’t so much that facts aren’t known as that they are not CONNECTED to other facts.

As a wannabe synthesizing thinker I am delighted when I suddenly see a Connection. That happened yesterday as my wonderful husband Kit and I toured the Whaling Museum on Nantucket Island. There we learned about the SUPERIOR qualities of Sperm Whale Oil. So superior that it was a BIG contributor to the Industrial Revolution. Hmm. Right! Machines don’t run well — or at all? — without oil. And Sperm Whale oil was perfect. It didn’t gum up, go rancid or whatever it is that inferior oils do. And the supply of Sperm Oil came along — in the late 1700s — just as the mechanical age got going.

I had assumed that petroleum could do just as well — until I found an article online that said that when whale oil was made illegal (around 1972?) the rate of car transmission failures rose from one million in 1972 to eight million in 1975. Sperm Whale oil in Transmission Fluid? Really?

Well, who knows BUT it did connect dots that hadn’t been connected before.

Another CHANGE in OIL took place in the years after WWII when the munitions factories turned to making artificial fertilizers. As a result grain production SOARED!!! We had so much grain that we figured out how to make food oil out of it . . .and then figured out how to tell folks how much better that (polyunsaturated) oil was for us. And then on to how awful ANY fat was for us.

Only, of course, it wasn’t true. More later . . .

Tagged with: Connecting the Dots, Industrial Revolution, omega 3 oil, Omega 6 oil, Sperm Whale Oil
Posted in connecting

Mr. Intrepid FINISHES Boston Marathon

Posted on April 18, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

Kit about to join a line of buses.jpg

Here is Kit ready to board the bus to go out 26.2 miles to the start of the Boston Marathon in Hopkinton. Happy . . . smiling and off to a GREAT first half at 2:28.

Then his gas gave out and we (me plus four faithful friends who brought lunch and helped me watch) saw him at mile 21 walking up Heartbreak Hill(s). So BEAT! I made my way through the barricade and gave him a big hug, a bottle of water and got him to chew on a shot block. We waved him on . . .

. . .only to find out when I met him after the race — that maybe a mile or so after we saw him he fell. . . he says a barricade fell as he leaned on it. He was in a medical tent for 15 minutes while they checked his vitals and then when he promised to walk they let him go back on the course. Being Kit all he could tell me was HOW NICE EVERYONE WAS!!!! I asked if he told them he was 81? He had. Because biased as I am I don’t think he LOOKS 81.

So, I did manage to see him a second time JUST before he turned the corner on to Boylston St. and the finish line. It isn’t a good shot because I spent most of my time YELLING KIT KIT KIT. . . and waving my hat! He is FOCUSED. As he told me, “THERE WAS NO WAY I WASN’T GOING TO FINISH! And he did in 6:08.

Kit about to turn on to Boylston.jpg

Tagged with: Boston Marathon
Posted in connecting

Earth, we have a Problem here

Posted on April 11, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

Aquafers

Good Evening, God

I keep thinking “Water water EVERYWHERE but not a drop to drink.” And I give a rueful snort. Here we are on Planet Earth — the oceans are rising and we are depleting our ancient aquifers way too fast. This maps shows our Earth’s 37 largest aquifers and the orange and red ones are depleted. . . having little or no replenishment.

Not too surprisingly folks are ANGRY in these areas. Yemen for example has tap water available one day in four. A great way to have revolutions and terrorists.

This information was stumbled upon a few weeks ago in the Princeton Alumni Magazine March 16, 2016 issue. I really didn’t want to know this. I’ve heard about drought. I know about ground water and aquifers. What I did NOT know was that the California central valley aquifers were formed during the Pleistocene Epoch. We are not forming them now. And a few good wet years isn’t going to fix things.

At first I was overwhelmed by hopelessness. As in Duh! Why wouldn’t I be. But, God, you have made me a Biological Optimist. Like it or not, I tug at problems. Hm. What can we do? Why haven’t we started? Oh? Australia HAS started. And they are trying to encourage California. Meanwhile, Turkey as damed the Euphrates River and cut the water to farmers in Syria and Iraq. Hm. Is that related to problems there?

Like most folks I want to blame someone . . . blame leaders . . . blame media (for not helping me “GET” this). Blame all the “people in charge” . . . I want to blame SOMEONE.

Sigh. What about me? What am I doing? And what are World Leaders Doing? Hmm. World Leaders? Thank You, God, for Pope Francis’ book The Name of God is Mercy and for June saying that Your Middle Name is HOPE. I need that. . .

Tagged with: ancient aquifers, drought, leadership, water problems, water shortages
Posted in accepting my need for help, Books, connecting

How about HOPE?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

Flower of the Autograph Tree

Good Evening God,

I think this is only the second time I’ve the flower of the autograph tree. The trees are everywhere and I often see the round hard fruit . . . but the actual flower? Hardly ever! The first time I saw one . . . I looked for others for days afterwards . . . checking each tree. But, as time went on I gave up looking. I stopped HOPING to see one. And without hope, I stopped looking.

So, how did I see THIS one? I parked right in front of it! I was in sight through my windshield. It was A Gift!

All of this makes me think about Hope. Vaclav Havel said “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” I like that. It reminds me of how when our daughter Patty was in the hospital at Stanford — so long ago, but it seems like yesterday — I told the doctor, “The battle is not between Life and Death, we all die. The real battle is between Meaning and Meaninglessness.”

Meaning is the way into our Hearts and Minds, isn’t it God. You designed us that way. And I think it was Viktor Frankel who observed that then we don’t have Meaning we turn to Power or Pleasure.

As I look around me . . . well, yes, at myself, too . . . I can see that most of us here in the West are motivated by pleasure . . . or power. Thankfully a fair number of us ARE motivated by Meaning. The trouble is we humans do get discouraged. We don’t understand that it isn’t about outcomes. It is about keeping on and on and on with those things that Do Make Sense!

Tagged with: hope, Keeping on, Meaning, persisting
Posted in Faith, Faithfulness, hope, Meaning, Persistence

The blessings of being Tattered

Posted on March 31, 2016 by a moment with god — 2 Comments

Good Day, God!

I hadn’t ever thought of being a bit “tattered” as being a blessing. But, yesterday sitting outside in the backyard of my Spiritual Director’s Makiki Heights home I glanced over at her clothesline and saw varied colored cloth squares. Oh, cocktail napkins, I said.

June, who probably has NEVER owned cocktail napkins, laughed and said, “Those are Tibetan Prayer Flags. Well, yes, God, I have heard of those — the wind blows and the words on them are “prayed” . . . not a bad idea. Hmm. I was wrong. Apparently, the idea is that “they will be blown by the wind to spread the good will and compassion into all pervading space. Therefore, prayer flags are thought to bring benefit to all.”

As I went for a closer look, I noticed some flags are becoming “tattered” as edges fray and strands are pulled loose and flutter back and forth.

Ah, God, it was as if You said to me that the tattered flags spread blessings even more effectively than the pristine whole flags. More surface area or activity? I loved the thought. Then, standing there looking at the tattered prayer flag I thought of myself. I’m definitely more tattered than I used to be. And a soft thought blew through me . . . yes, my being “tattered” does help my prayers. Thanks, God!

Tagged with: blessings, Prayer, prayer flags, Tattered, Tibetan Prayer Flags
Posted in Being a Blessing, Blessing, connecting, gratitude, Prayer

What would St. Francis do?

Posted on March 24, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

St Francis

Good Morning, God

We are always asking ourselves . . . well we try, God . . . What would Jesus do? The answer, of course, varies on who is asking the question. Then it came to me. We CAN ask what would St. Francis do — because we know historically what he DID do!

In 1219 — during the Fifth Crusade — St. Francis crossed enemy lines to gain an audience with Malik al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt. The two discussed war, peace and faith.

I have bought the book — The Saint and the Sultan, by Paul Moses — and have started reading. But haven’t gotten very far yet. Did St. Francis end the Fifth Crusade? Well God, the pope at that time was promising “instant” access to heaven to all “Christian” fighters. Gosh, that sounds familiar. So, probably not a “successful” outcome.

But, that isn’t the point is it, God.

We are called to do the right thing . . . to pray FOR those who persecute us . . . to Bless, Bless and not to curse. We are called to do them! We are not told to analyze them to see if it might succeed or make a difference and if so, then do them.

Jesus has said, Blessed are the Peacemakers.

Peace begins in our hearts. It begins with respect for one another. It moves on to hearing all the diverse voices and peoples of our time. Hearing their hearts and their hurts and their hopes.

Hm. How now to do this, God? How to reach out in hope?

Tagged with: compassion, hearing, hope, humility, Love, peace, Peacemakers, St. Francis, What would St. Francis do
Posted in connecting, hope, Hope as a gift from God, Peace, power and peace and gentleness, respect, the essential nature of hope

A Magical Moment

Posted on March 19, 2016 by a moment with god — Leave a comment

solar eclipse diamond ring Good Evening God,

My wonderful husband Kit and I were privileged to see the March 9, 2016 solar eclipse live! It was our third solar eclipse . . . but the magic had not faded . . . if anything it was more miraculous. How is it, God, that the moon is sized and positioned such that it completely covers our sun? That is Your doing. And to see it happen is to be enfolded in the Great Mystery. Thank You!

We are, of course, vastly privileged in so many other ways, God. As we toured sites in Indonesia Kit would say, “It just isn’t fair that we have so much!” And I agreed . . . but wanted to change the subject . . . as I don’t know what to do about it. I do know that vast gaps between the top and bottom make for instability. The French revolution of 1789 is clear in my mind. Sigh. I put it in Your Hands, God.

But back to the solar eclipse! This photo was taken by the ship’s photographer — not me. It is a BRIEF moment before Totality when the sun looks like a Diamond Ring. It is breathtaking. Then the moon moves and we entered into the Calm of Totality. It was two minutes and 45 seconds of a sort of darkness falling over us. No, not darkness . . . more of a diminution of the Light. It had a gentle peaceful quality about it. As if the Mighty Sun was staying its hand for a moment.

Aaah. I am grateful . . . thankful . . . and humbled.

How fortunate we are to live in a time when scientists can predict eclipses . . . and how fortunate that we can go with dear friends to observe an Opening into Your Magical Universe. . . an awesome glimpse into Your Handiwork.

Tagged with: a solar eclipse, diamond ring, March 9th 2016
Posted in a matter of scale, connecting, God as an Ongoing Gift, gratitude, thankfulness