My Private Pilot

I wanted to watch. I wanted to be there when she returned with her best friend. Taking him up in the plane for the first time as a young, 17 year old, female pilot. Knowing the level of trust that came from her friend's parents, was constantly on my mind.
To fly around St. Paul in the Cessna, in the stillness of the experience. you see things from a different perspective. Awake, finally, to your surroundings. No final destination today. Just an experience.
I watched them take off. I watched them come back, land and take off again. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, sun shining, a few white clouds, blue sky, the river lying there luring a spectator to see. On their final landing, I knew she had given him the ride of his life... his life, so far. I was so thankful for their deep friendship.
They came and found me in the lobby of the Holman Field airport and his face could not have been brighter. Laughing that big full laugh, showing all of his straight, white teeth! He couldn't sit still as he described the flight and what it was like to leave his house that morning - his mom burning the memory of his face onto her mind forever.... "I love you."
I later asked my daughter, 'what did you like best about flying this morning?' Pause, more pause. She replied, "Giving someone else this incredible experience." Her deep generosity shining through. Her encouragement to those around her to live a Big Life. See something differently. Explore the edges. Welcome mystery through the miracle of flying.
I invite you to watch this slide show, listen to the music, see what happens in your body as you do. Be curious about your own mystery, your own generosity of experience making.

Gentle Persistence

One morning I found a photocopied text that a former colleague had given me back when we worked together at Luther Seminary. I'm guessing it was sometime in early 2008 when I was so incredibly broken and in pain, knowing that I needed to attend to my dear Self, dear Soul. I remember hardly being able to read these words at the time. It was as if the reading of it would somehow threaten to destroy me. And yet, this friend, colleague persisted day after day to share truth, to share scary words, to open doorways for me to breathe life. I cannot thank her enough. The short writings she shared were entitled, "The Discerning Voice" and "The Inner Voice of the Soul"by John O'Donohue.

"The quest for the truth of things is never ending. To be human is to be ambivalent. We never see a thing completely. In sure anticipation, our eyes have always already altered what awaits our gaze. The search for truth is difficult and uncomfortable. Because the mystery is too much for us, we opt to settle for the surface of things. Comfort becomes more important than true presence. Yet, somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice. This voice distrusts the status quo. It sounds out the falsity in things and encourages dissent from the images things tend to assume. This voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person's qualities. This faithful voice can illuminate the dark lands of despair. It can also reveal a different voice lurking about in our psyche as well; the harsh and unrelenting voice that finds fault with everything. Even when unexpected acknowledgement or recognition comes your way, this voice will claw at you and make you feel you are unworthy.

Having just returned from co-leading a retreat called "Sacred Earth: Body and Soul Connection", I reaffirm the necessity of community when one is walking through the greater unknown. The Soul was never meant to travel by itself. I have had friends, therapists, spiritual directors, and my spouse and daughter traveling with me for some time now. Each of them, in their own unique way, gently persisting that I stay on this larger, more expansive path than the narrow one I had been on. I'll never go back to what was inauthentic to my Soul, no matter what the cost. For the pain of abandoning myself earlier in my life was unbearable. I would much rather live in the presence of my deepest Self, my deepest desires, even if faced with the unknown. There, in the middle of the unknown, is where life is truly lived for me.

Soul as a River

Elizabeth Lesser writes in her book, Broken Open, “…often we resist the pull of the river. Perhaps if we quieted down and asked the soul for direction, we would be moved to make a change. Maybe that wild river of energy with its longing for joy and freedom, would capsize our more prudent plans, our ambitions, our very survival. I have shut down to my soul enough times to know what it feels like when the river is dammed. I know the feeling of deadness; I know how the river diverts itself and breaks through in other ways – as desire to blame, as physical illness, as restlessness, or weariness, or self-destruction. The soul always speaks, and sometimes it speaks the loudest when we block its flow, when we live only half of a life, when we stay on the surface. If we don’t go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.”

At first, we don't recognize the uncomfortable rub from the Soul as something helpful. We try to cover it up, deny it, implement a righteous rejection of our deepest experience, calling it selfish. We think its time to "get away." But the Soul will continue to flow, sometimes so rapidly and forcefully that we feel like we are being carried over the waterfall. Other times, the Soul is just a trickle of water passing over boulders in the stream. Staying with our experiences without judgment and finding compassion instead, honors the Soul. Let the river flow. Be curious about its movements and the path it is taking. Be present, fully present to the journey.

Contour Drawing and the Soul

Contour drawing is a style used by the artist who studies, with her eyes, the edges of the object. Never looking away to cheat by looking down at her paper. She slowly makes marks on the page as she truly follows the lines, the curves, the angles, and the details of the object. 

Starting in the middle of the paper, I drew one flower from the center of the dried arrangement, then another and another. “Let your eyes go slowly around the outside lines. Don’t lift your pencil and don’t look down at your progress. Watch each flower deeply with the intention to truly see what is there not what you think should be there. Let go of your need to make sure it looks right or even looks recognizable.”

There is a trusting of the senses that is necessary for this kind of art. I trust what I see. I trust what I sense in the movements of my hand. I trust not to look down and that if I loose that trust momentarily, I actually start creating what isn’t there. I catch that tendency to not trust myself and start again.

The inner workings of my Soul are much the same. When I look away at something outside of myself for acceptance, reassurance, or the right answer, then I momentarily loose the trust I have in the movements of my Soul. The moment I stop noticing and watching, truly seeing the lines, the contour, the depth of who I am, I get lost in what isn’t there, what isn’t truly me. Sometimes I have to risk that what others see might not be recognizable to them. Ultimately, it is necessary to trust what I sense in me, my Soul, or I become unrecognizable to myself.

FLYING

Renee (17 year old student pilot) and Matt (instructor)

Twin Cities Aviation

Today, while out on a run, I watched two young girls out on the front steps of their house. They were standing on the top step and jumping onto the landing at the bottom of three, maybe four, steps. Luckily, their father was mowing the lawn or I bet he would have told them to stop. They were having a blast, rolling the landings to soften their falls, getting up, and doing it again.

As I continued on my run, I thought, it is such a natural part of our make-up that we should desire to experience the moment of decision to jump, the flight itself, and the impact of landing. It’s in our bodies to want to do that. It’s in our Soul’s to want to do that. Imagine and remember yourself for a moment, readying to jump, maybe jump off of the spinning merry-go-round, the jungle gym, or a huge rock. What is the experience like of anticipation and then deciding when you go?

The flight. Even if just for a brief moment, you’re flying through the air, feeling the gravitational pull but also the wind on your face. You’re watching the earth, watching your landing. Then, you experience the impact. Yes, indeed, you are still human. You assess any damages, get up, and do it again and again.

Somewhere in the developmental years, we stop flying. We stop jumping. We stop readying ourselves for the unpredictable moment of letting go, jumping off, being in the moment of flight. This natural desire and need goes underground most likely because we skinned our knees, bumped an elbow, or experienced loss of some kind. In this normal human experience of jumping off, we decide to never do that again.

Tolerance for pain, for the unpredictable, or of what someone titled “failure,” disappears. Fear sets in as a familiar guest. In fact, so familiar, we hardly notice that we are responding from a place of protection. We stopped flying long ago and didn’t even notice it.

We stop living the life that our bodies and souls yearn to live. Instead, we stay attached to the safety of the ground, the same job, the same activities, the same neighborhood, even if it doesn’t fit anymore. We unknowingly wait for an event in life to push us off, so unexpectedly that it takes our breath away. This sets in the notion that yes, indeed, life cannot be trusted. See. See what happens?

Our bodies and souls yearn to fly but fear ties them down. They will rebel for a while. You might experience the dis-ease and not know where it came from, override it, get busy with consuming and denial. But you want to fly. You really do. It’s in your nature. Try it. Try it on the front steps first and see what happens.

Human Paradox

The Soul is always moving, causing change, newness, friction, energy, and life. We are reminded that friction is necessary for energy to be created. Wind creates friction, causing movement in places on the earth so as to produce life. Human Paradox is friction and we want to choose the easy side of a duality and ignore,  resist, or bypass the difficult. To welcome both sides of the paradox means we will experience friction and life. The neglected side of paradox or one's shadow will make itself known and experienced whether we are conscious of it or unconscious of it. To bring it to the conscious level we can reap its benefit in our journey toward wholeness.

Beauty from the Dark

Beauty from the Light

We can become so ashamed of our humanness and yet it is our humanness that creates the needed friction, energy, and life. So should we not soften our responses to our humanness? And acknowledge our humanness, both sides of paradox and the Shadow? For there in the middle lies that which is whole, that which is Holy. How do we find the middle way? We get a glimpse of the middle way by practicing compassion. Robert Johnson speaks of The Miracle of Paradox, "To transfer our energy from opposition to paradox is a very large leap in evolution. To engage in opposition is to be ground to bits by the insolubility of life's problems and events. ... To transform opposition into paradox is to allow both sides of an issue, both pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth. ... If I can stay with my conflicting impulses long enough, [through compassion] the two opposing forces will teach each other something and produce an insight that serves them both" (pg. 85-86,Owning Your Own Shadow). Johnson goes on to say, "... there can be no paradox - that sublime place of reconciliation - until one has owned one's own shadow... To own one's own shadow is to prepare the ground for spiritual experience." Any time we have the discomfort of the opposites living together, simultaneously within us, we can know that something greater than the ego is moving us, causing life through friction. Something needs our attention. To ignore or think it possible to wrestle the uncomfortable impulse to the ground will cause a split of the self. Here is where the real danger lies. The ego will unsuccessfully try to conquer over the uncomfortable only causing it to work even harder at getting our attention. Sometimes people come to Spiritual Direction or therapy wanting, begging for quick resolution but as Johnson writes, "... they would have something even greater if they could ask for the consciousness to bear the paradox." A young woman who could no longer stand the clash of opposites within herself came to a Jungian therapist from Zurich. "She burst into tears and cried out that she could stand it no longer. "Ja, gut," replied Dr. Meyer. "Now something will happen." Jung wrote, "Find out what a person fears most and that is where he (she) will develop next" (pg. 92, Johnson). What do you fear most? What change do you fear most? How compassionate are you today with your human clash of opposites, your own Holy place of paradox? Search for the middle way, the place where all of you is welcomed and loved; where you do not split yourself and abandon parts of her/him. For there, in the middle where the friction and energy live, is a direct experience of the Holy, something beyond what your ego can control. Your creator made you human, how exciting!