tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-335988502024-03-19T06:07:27.669-07:00A Friend in NeedStriving to be faithful to the lightHeather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14822864657970530172noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-13085922674867609642018-03-21T10:36:00.000-07:002018-03-21T10:36:00.308-07:00Living Woke<div style="color: #454545; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Wake up, raise your level of awareness. It’s a real, physical thing you can do. How do we do that? Why do we do that? </div>
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We wake up when we pay attention to what's going on in the present moment. When we wake up, we experience our lives completely, through all of our senses, with all of our beings.</div>
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When we’re sleepwalking, we’re still paying attention, but we’re spending it carelessly. We’re not paying attention to the effects of our thoughts and actions. We’re playing along, but we’re not aligned with our purposes and values. We’re only using parts of ourselves and letting the rest go along for the ride.</div>
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Attention is all we have. How do we want to spend it?</div>
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That is the question. Whether in quotidian concerns or in the development of a grand vision, we spend it. When we spend it on activities, we become better at them. We shape our physical realities by what we pay attention to (and what we don't). We take care of the things we pay attention to and neglect the things we ignore.</div>
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I play the viola episodically. Most of the time it sits ignored on the top of the piano. I spend my attention elsewhere. I get better at other things, and my viola-playing hangs out at the barely literate level. If I wanted to play the viola publicly, I'd need to step up my game.</div>
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The dreamer imagines success at something, but doesn't spend attention actually doing the thing. The dreaming takes attention, but it's not the kind of attention that actualizes anything. </div>
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I’m not happy with some of the things I’ve spent vast amounts of attention on. My attention went nowhere or it fed an end I didn’t want to realize.</div>
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It’s hard to wake up! It takes effort and energy, a willingness to question and shake things up. It risks much, and doesn’t let us hide behind our facades.</div>
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Waking up, recognizing the truth of our actions, how they actually affect ourselves and the world around us, is hard work! Paying attention to meta issues both makes us pay more attention to our daily existence and analyze it. Analysis always requires paying attention. Whatever issues we choose to work on get the juice. They grow and progress.</div>
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What will I spend my attention on today? What thoughts and endeavors do I most want to realize?</div>
Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-21719134605245156562018-03-20T10:34:00.000-07:002018-03-20T10:34:15.452-07:00Humility is EndlessI was doing some stretching and mild exercise. My body told me
to get down on the floor and crawl around. As soon as I did it, my body
reminded me that it's really good to crawl around on and sit on the
floor. Stretches things out, limbers things up, gets the juices flowing,
uses muscles in different ways.
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<br />I did a lot of that when I had young kids (and I had young kids for a
long time). My back loved it. Worked my leg and butt and belly muscles
in all sorts of useful ways.
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<br />I want a tatami mat room set up like an adult play space. Come to think
of it, I want an adult sized jungle gym to go with it. Why aren't there
play grounds and play spaces for adults where we can just hang out and
do physical things with our bodies?
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<br />Be humble. Get low. Maybe it's as much about the postures as the social or spiritual meaning.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-34828873706826101582018-01-29T12:18:00.001-08:002018-01-29T12:18:54.992-08:00turtles all the way down<div style="color: #454545; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a child, I was taught to face adversity head-on, to be brave and cheerful and do the best I can. If I was brave enough, and maintained a positive outlook, and meticulously did what I could, I would be given enough strength and faith to face whatever life dished out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My grandmother told me that, matter-of-factly, with a Depression-era story of her mother patching the family's shoes with construction paper.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My grandmother came from a long line of strong, capable women. Her niece eulogized her sister by saying that she did the best she could. She faced up to her life with courage and a smile, gave her daughters a good start in life, and took care of the work before her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That particular teaching holds the core of my faith. It's what makes it possible to do the best I can and trust God (or whoever's on duty that night) to take care of the rest.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many times, facing some dark night of the soul, I've scraped the bottom of the barrel for the dregs of my faith. Sometimes, I can't come up with much, but there is always just enough. Just enough to get through the night. Just enough to see me through to the next helping hand, the next oasis, the next spiritual pit stop.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Broken-foot nights can be bleak. Dark thoughts of my uselessness, my restlessness, my intense boredom cross over and tinge other areas of my life with despair. As I try to get my body comfortable, my heart tosses and turns as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, the dark nights have gifts, if I wrestle long enough with them. After I've traveled through the alleys of despair, I discover that I've carried my faith and my courage with me all this way. They're what kept me going at my bleakest moments, what wiped the tears from my eyes and the snot from my nose and told me to get on with it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Suddenly, a flash of gold in the gloom: the grandmotherly kindness that insisted I learn to be brave and cheerful and do my best.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When you are down to what you can carry in your heart, it's good to know you have something that can carry you through the night.</span></div>
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Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-45543557634061723212017-07-06T12:56:00.000-07:002017-07-06T12:56:41.129-07:00Spiritual Clutter<div style="color: #454545; font-family: '.SF UI Display'; font-size: 21px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">My tai chi teacher used to say that we all collect tension in our bodies. She said there was nothing wrong with this, but when we let it accumulate and become stagnant, it impacts our health in various ways.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">Going through my life, I encounter all sorts of moral and spiritual puzzles. I play with them for a minute, scratch my head, and stick them up in the attic so I can work on them later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">Sometimes a sudden "aha" sends me scampering to the attic to dust off the puzzle and solve it. Sometimes, one sobering little piece comes to hand and I fit it in place before sticking the still-unsolved puzzle back on its shelf. Sometimes I grind at the puzzle in odd moments before eventually coming up with a solution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">I speak lightly of these puzzles, but whatever illumination they contain comes in dark clothing made of anxiety, fear, shame, anger, disappointment and guilt.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">My life has been busier and more stressful these past few years, and the unsolved puzzles have spilled out of the attic and into my daily walkways. I can't get through the day without stumbling over them, and I can't sleep without telling them a bedtime story first.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">I've fallen out-of-touch with the flow of Love in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: '.SFUIDisplay'; font-size: 21pt;">So it's time to tie a rag over my head and climb into the attic to see what's going on.</span></div>
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Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-77887108446783401902014-12-30T11:59:00.003-08:002015-05-12T22:18:59.005-07:00Facing the DarknessAnother Christmas has passed.<br />
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When I was a child, my mother was a consummate Christmas magician. Her decorations sparkled with promise. Her holiday table groaned with delicious treats. The pretty packages under the tree contained carefully chosen signs of her love. I wanted to taste this magic so badly that I once burnt my tongue on one of the colored lights on the tree.<br />
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I grew up, the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw things differently. The Christmas tableau now seemed like an exercise in excess: too much food, too much drink, too much stress, too many presents filled with too many things that people didn't need. No one in the family was a practicing Christian.<br />
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What was it all for?<br />
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My mother's explanation that Christmas was about family failed to satisfy me.<br />
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I was reading a lot of Pagan thought at the time, including James Frazer's amazing work <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough">The Golden Bough</a>. One of the things that amazed/amused me most about Frazer's work was that he devoted his enormous tome to the universality of the sacrificed god of vegetation without once mentioning how the Christian myth is an instantiation of the same blood sacrifice. I guess Frazer's work was scandalous enough in 1890 without thumbing his nose at the establishment religion.<br />
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The subtext was very clear to me in the 1980s. The Jesus myth was another instance enacting a blood sacrifice of the god of vegetation in order to bring the Sun back from its winter darkness and restore the fecundity of the Earth. We animals shivering in cold as the days grow darker need to believe that Spring will come again. We need to believe in the return of the Light and Warmth to keep us from despair in our darkest days.<br />
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So. The Christian myth was relevant to me after all. Change the spelling of Son to Sun, shift the celebration from Christmas to Solstice, and we're good to go. The tree and the lights and the presents and the music and the treats can all stay.<br />
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This would have worked except for the inexorable insistence of the rest of my world (including my extended family) to keep the Christmas celebration on the 24th and 25th. Adding in a Solstice celebration just increased the stress.<br />
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I next read the book <a href="http://simpleliving.startlogic.com/indexoth.php?place=archives/Articles/UnplugLG.php">Unplug the Christmas Machine</a> in an attempt to tame the Stressmas holidaze. This helped me prioritize the aspects of the winter holidays that mattered the most to me and my loved ones, and to strike a balance between Christmas minimalism and Christmas excess.<br />
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Then I became a Quaker. To my somewhat uneasy truce with the Christmas holiday, I now added the Quaker opinion that Christmas oughtn't to be celebrated at all. I had a lot of sympathy with this viewpoint, but it wasn't going to fly. I received no leading during worship to eschew the celebration of Christmas. I was left to work it out for myself.<br />
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My mostly minimalist approach worked pretty well except for a few things. Members of my immediate family, still tended to have meltdowns around the holidays. I struggled with a deep depression between Christmas and New Year's most years. This annual battle with the darkness discouraged and exhausted me.<br />
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Over the past several years, I've spent more time thinking about what religion is for. Why do humans all over the world engage in religious practices? What deep human needs does religion fill?<br />
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It's hard to be a warm-blooded animal in a big, cold, sharp, hard, and indifferent universe. We need a Light to shine within and around us, leading us through the dark nights of our souls. We need to believe that things will be alright, that we will make it, that we can do it.<br />
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The celebration of Christmas, right after the darkest time, is a way of laughing in the face of the forces of darkness and cold and stillness. It's a way of asserting our animal warmth and movement and noise, our ability to light a candle against the darkness. It's an annual act of courage.<br />
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My mother has always been full of that kind of courage. She makes merry in the face of despair, and has often stalked her own depression with laughter and love and gatherings of loved ones.<br />
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I have a greater peace with Christmas this year. I look around at all the people frenetically trying to make merry. I see the courageous souls behind their eyes, struggling against the darkness. Every hackneyed Christmas card inscription can be a prayer held in the heart, a counter to all the messages of anger, greed, and despair.<br />
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I will not give in to the darkness. I will stand in the path of darkness, sing Christmas carols, quaff ridiculous holiday drinks, decorate trees, light candles, boil sugar syrup into magical concoctions, and fill my family's stockings with hope and wishes for a good future.<br />
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When the darkness triumphs, as it does sometimes, I will have the courage to laugh at it. I will acknowledge the annual Christmas meltdowns, the forays into depression and despair, the deep sadness that can well up in the darkest part of the year. There is a place at the table for the darkness. Perhaps it would like a cup of cocoa?Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-51582707103319552172013-04-23T11:00:00.002-07:002013-04-23T11:02:06.505-07:00facing in and outPrayers to be going on with:<br />
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<i>Make me a strong vessel for Thy work.</i><br />
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<i>Let me be a Light to everyone I meet.</i>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-43274797591522643622013-04-18T11:37:00.002-07:002013-04-18T11:37:44.530-07:00is it supposed to be hard?At midweek worship, we often read the words of weighty Friends. The words are usually weighty, too, and often the writers make it sound like this business of being a Quaker is hard. Much of what they write is wisdom, and yet the words <i>Does it really have to be that hard?</i> often flit across my mind.<br />
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There is much in life that IS hard. There's plenty of suffering to go around, and we all have our struggles, our roadblocks, and our limitations.<br />
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Living in the Spirit, though, how can that be hard? The Spirit giveth life and truth and guidance and all good things. It is the Spirit to which I turn when I don't know what to do, and the Spirit that speaks Truth into my soul, and the Spirit that gives me more wisdom than I possess. It is the Spirit that buoys me up when I am afraid, and that strengthens me to face what I must.<br />
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Sure, I fall short all the time. I do things that would have been better undone and fail to do things that were required.<br />
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On the whole, though, I think I do a pretty good job.<br />
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I am not often a Friend who will rise and talk about what a miserable worm I am, lost in sin and darkness. (Are there still Friends who do that?) More often, my mistakes amuse me. Oh, Heather, you are so incorrigibly human! What an odd duck you are! How often do you keep needing to fall into that hole before you learn better?<br />
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I did my best to avoid accolades when I passed on that clerkly mantle. I do want to know, honestly, how people think that I served so that I can grow. The words that were spoken when accolades could no longer be avoided, however, surprised me.<br />
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My former co-Clerk talked at length about my courage in truly naming whatever we were facing.<br />
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Now, I do not consider myself particularly brave. I tend to think of the trait that my former co-Clerk described as clarity (when I am feeling good about it) or my charming habit of going for the jugular (when I am aware how uncomfortable my plain speaking makes others).<br />
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I have my father to thank for the practice of facing facts squarely. All his life, he did just that. He did his best to make an accurate assessment of every situation he faced. While my mother gave vent to her feelings, he would say, <i>Now Dee, this is the situation. And what we must do is....</i><br />
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He taught me that an accurate assessment of problems carries with it the design of the solution. My life problems, no less than my programming and calculus problems, could be solved by careful attention to what I know about the situation and what I can derive from it.<br />
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My former co-Clerk called that wisdom. In my dad, it often looked like wisdom, but I think he would have said it was simple common sense. It was an economical approach to problem-solving, one that avoided a lot of wasted effort.<br />
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She also seemed to think that I was foolishly optimistic about how well those solutions would work. She didn't use the word <i>foolishly</i>, but I could tell. My optimism, in the face of all the ways that things can go wrong, is foolish. I believe that, if we move forward with honesty and love and tenderness and compassion, that we will get to the place that is right for us.<br />
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So if I have courage or wisdom, it is by not minding too much if I appear foolish. I don't have to worry about how things will turn out, or about whether I know enough to do this, I simply need to take the next step that is before my foot.<br />
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And that is not hard at all.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-29085593285923642932013-04-18T10:53:00.002-07:002013-04-18T10:58:24.984-07:00i have been released<i>i feel the light come shining</i><br />
<i>from the west down to the east</i><br />
<i>any day now</i><br />
<i>any way now</i><br />
<i>i shall be released</i><br />
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— Bob Dylan<br />
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I found it difficult to continue this blog while I was serving as co-Clerk of my monthly Meeting. So much of my focus during worship and in life was concerned with holding the Meeting that it didn't feel proper to share it.<br />
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I learned much serving as Clerk. For me, there was no better way to learn to let go and let God. To trust that small voice within to guide me. To trust my Meeting to act as motive and curb and brake as I learned what we needed to do, together. To trust that I could share my bit of Light, spoken plainly, and that others would bring their bits of Light to bear and that we would get through this. Together.<br />
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During that time, the Friends with whom I served as co-Clerk often felt like the other half of me. We worked together so harmoniously that I frequently joked that we were not two co-Clerks, but one Clerk that just happened to occupy two bodies.<br />
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There came a time when the work of Clerk felt not like a challenge, but like my own skin. Where I felt myself slipping from Serving as Clerk to Being the Clerk. When that happened, I knew it was time to let someone else sit in that seat for a while.<br />
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That decision felt clean and clear. I was able to finish my term joyfully and at full strength, and to pass the baton to a Friend who will serve excellently.<br />
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I am enjoying the release of that responsibility and authority.<br />
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And I feel freer to share my faith and practice than I did.<br />
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<br />Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-48635471876248197342013-03-30T22:20:00.001-07:002013-03-30T22:20:08.968-07:00still becomingA friend I hadn't heard from in years contacted me a few days ago. At
the end of his note, he wrote "How are you? It's been a long time."<br />
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It has been a long time. I thought about the person he knew and the
person I am now. Our children, his as well as mine, have grown up.<br />
<br />
So how am I?<br />
<br />
I am well. We are getting to a time in life when health can no longer be
taken for granted. In recent years, my body has been under siege by
surgery, injury, and illness. At times, I wondered whether something was
seriously wrong with me, whether I might not live very much longer. Now
I am exuberantly well, focused on building my strength and fitness. I
dance gladly most mornings. I bought body fat calipers and entered an
online bodybuilding challenge. <br />
<br />
Does that tell how I am?<br />
<br />
For the past several years, the word "clergy" has defined my occupation
better than most. I have served as Clerk of our Quaker Meeting, and much
of what I have done has been to tend the Meeting community. During that
time, I have seen how valiantly human beings struggle with the burdens
they bear. I have come to believe that everybody is an ordinary hero,
soldiering on through the challenges of life. What courage and
resilience we humans have!<br />
<br />
I look in the mirror for hints of how to tell this person, or any
person, how I have changed. Who I have become. Where my life and my
choices have taken me.<br />
<br />
The face in the mirror is finer boned than I imagined I'd be. More
severe. Much more fragile. Warier. Still warm, still cheerful, but with a
firm determination that does not quite mask the underlying well of
suffering and compassion. Still restless, still quick to joke, still
seeking to learn and discover. Still patient, but the patience is
sharper and thinner than it was.<br />
<br />
I think back to who I was, the years unreeling behind me.<br />
<br />
When I met my husband, I was 19. I had been shaped, but was still
malleable. I saw myself as strong, earthy, vivid, dynamic. The tiger was
my totem, and I moved through the world with a tiger's confidence. If I
saw myself as a pot, it would have been an earthenware vessel -- strong
and capacious.<br />
<br />
The years and my own choices have whittled and hardened me. <br />
<br />
I have breathed 400 million breaths and taken 50 million steps in my
lifetime. I have changed 12,000 diapers. I have lugged over 10,000 bags
of groceries home. I've prepared 30,000 meals. I've read thousands of
books, sung and danced to thousands of songs. I have raised four
children. I have cared for my father as he died of cancer. I have been
deeply hurt by people I loved. I have been lightly cast aside by a
culture focused on youth and maleness. I have sat with people in deep
pain, knowing that I had nothing to offer them but my compassion. I have
told computers what to do and how
to do it. I have mastered cookery. I have pumped iron. I have walked
cheerfully over the earth answering that of God in everyone. I have
studied the art of shibori dyeing, the art of haiku. I have developed a
system for designing knitwear that fits.<br />
<br />
I've been married to the same man for 28 years.<br />
<br />
I have been shattered. I have performed the Japanese art of kintsugi on
myself, fitting the broken bits of myself back together in a way that
celebrates the beauty of both the shattering and of the continued work
that I do to live up to my potential.<br />
<br />
Looking in the mirror, I find that I am no longer a tiger. The years
have shaped me to become a bird instead. I am not a strong earthenware
vessel. I am more like a ceremonial porcelain chalice. I can't carry
heavy loads, but with a little grace, perhaps I can create brief oases
of light and cheer in the darkness.<br />
<br />
Looking in the mirror, I see that I have become a porcelain bird. I bow
my head a little, shocked by this discovery but not disappointed by it.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-7226534005905517222011-09-25T23:06:00.000-07:002011-09-25T23:06:05.796-07:00bridge of birds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This morning, I decided to wear my bird necklace to Meeting. The necklace has six strands of tiny abalone birds. My grandmother gave it to me over 25 years ago, and so it has special meaning for me.</div>
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Through a process I don't understand, the strands of the necklace become tangled around one another. Every so often, I have to untangle them as best I can. I hold the necklace by one clasp and gently work the strands smooth. The birds catch on one another, and the necklace is somewhat delicate, so I have to work slowly and carefully. Working one end free tangles the end by the other clasp, so I have to turn the necklace upside-down and repeat the process. Which tangles the first side again, although not so badly as it was originally. After several repeats, the necklace is almost tangle-free. I've never managed to work all of the tangles out, but it gets close.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr9AWGlXAAQum_KSBe66evIHggjIZPndzMgAUIlY9TugcIk26hCQzRTqlcXzrxVwzplr_WsVxaGjXVEZzXQ0OjzClyTPQJn6cDNjboMOEJfYyLakxM0UVJuOnXgVnPaOxV6BVCxA/s1600/necklace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr9AWGlXAAQum_KSBe66evIHggjIZPndzMgAUIlY9TugcIk26hCQzRTqlcXzrxVwzplr_WsVxaGjXVEZzXQ0OjzClyTPQJn6cDNjboMOEJfYyLakxM0UVJuOnXgVnPaOxV6BVCxA/s400/necklace.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So, necklace mostly untangled, I headed off to Meeting.<br />
<br />
There are many knotty problems before me, both in Meeting and in my personal life.<br />
<br />
I put these problems before God as I settled into worship and waited for guidance.<br />
<br />
The image of a long strand of the necklace working free came to my mind. Each of the problems I faced, I suddenly saw, would benefit from the slow, gentle approach that I use to untangle the necklace. I would have to work the strands of these problems free slowly, one bit at a time. Likely there would be other snags in the process of working through the problems, and I might have to turn things upside-down a few times before I could work things out. Even then, the problems probably wouldn't be fully solved. There would still be a few small tangles in them.<br />
<br />
Once solved, however, I'd have a bridge of birds to hang around my neck, a tangible link between the past and the future, a lovely thing worthy of the care it demands.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-76573442215940662722011-09-06T13:08:00.000-07:002011-09-06T13:08:43.735-07:00fitness witness: weight-liftingI recently resolved to attend to this blog more faithfully.<br />
<br />
I thought perhaps I would record a few thoughts about worship each First Day. <br />
<br />
This last First Day, for example, a Friend read the advices and queries on Integrity. Several Friends spoke on Integrity, and I also felt moved to speak of this testimony that is the dearest and truest of all the Quaker testimonies to me. It flitted through my thoughts that I might blog about Integrity, that it is a good weighty subject to which I have devoted much thought.<br />
<br />
But no.<br />
<br />
What I feel called to write about is weight-lifting.<br />
<br />
I have been doing strength training all of my adult life. The kind that I have found easiest to stick to and most beneficial is high intensity, super slow strength training. Work each muscle to exhaustion in a set of 8-12 repetitions, with care to do each repetition slowly and carefully.<br />
<br />
I had my appendix out in February, and I have found getting back into shape to be slow going. Some of this is due to lingering effects of the surgery, but much of it is simple laziness and self-deception.<br />
<br />
I went back to dance as soon as I could. I worked back in slowly (although probably not slowly enough). During this time, my knees ached abominably.<br />
<br />
I wondered if perhaps I was past my ability to do this kind of dance. Maybe my knees had suddenly, over the course of my surgery, gotten old. Perhaps I should find an easier, less stressful type of exercise.<br />
<br />
That was a possibility, but it seemed more likely that my muscles had gotten soft, that they were no longer doing the work that protected my knees while I danced.<br />
<br />
I told the instructor about the type of pain I was having and asked if she knew of anything I could do to strengthen my muscles so I could dance without pain. She was able, without any apparent thought, to identify the weak muscles that were causing the problem and to suggest exercises that would help.<br />
<br />
A few weeks later, my legs felt as good as they've ever felt.<br />
<br />
I was slower getting back into the weight-lifting, however. I couldn't seem to remember to do it or find time for it, either.<br />
<br />
At the end of June, I wrenched my shoulder. I rested it for a few weeks hoping it would get better. It didn't really get better, but it didn't get worse either.<br />
<br />
I'd had shoulder pain before, but I hadn't had problems with my neck or shoulders for many years. Posture work that I'd done in tai chi, as well as my strength training, had kept that part of my body healthy.<br />
<br />
After a while, a small still voice whispered “Maybe you're having this pain because you haven't been doing your weight routine. The antagonistic muscles have gotten weak, and the pain won't go away until you strengthen them again.”
<br />
<br />
My stubborn and lazy self argued. Maybe weight-lifting would make the pain worse. Besides, weight-lifting was too much trouble and took too much time. I should let the shoulder get better first and worry about weight-lifting, you know, like, later.<br />
<br />
Finally, something clicked in me and I said, “Fine. I'll start weight-lifting again with absurdly light weights and I'll do all the opposing muscle groups.”<br />
<br />
After a mere two sessions, I know it's working. I can feel the shoulder moving more easily and I can feel the weak areas getting stronger.<br />
<br />
I could turn this into a message about listening to our guidance or about overcoming our own lazy, selfish, stubborn, misguided natures or about the need for balance in one's life or about how we need to strengthen our spiritual muscles in order to live lives that are healthy in the spirit.<br />
<br />
But no.<br />
<br />
What I feel called to write about is weight-lifting.<br />
<br />
Our physical strength operates on a use-it-or-lose-it principle. When we exercise our muscles faithfully, we are strong. We can more easily do our ordinary activities, and we enjoy being active.<br />
<br />
When we let our muscles atrophy, we become weak. Our muscles no longer do the work they were designed to do, and this puts strain on our joints. We fall prey to aches and pains, leading us to become less active, leading to more weakness and more pain.<br />
<br />
Miriam Nelson, a researcher at Tufts University and the author of the <a href="http://www.strongwomen.com/">Strong Women</a> books, determined that our bone and muscle strength declines as we age, and also that we can completely reverse this process with regular strength training. Many of the ills that we attribute to age are nothing more than the ills of inactivity.<br />
<br />
So, Friends, this is my public service announcement to you all. If you want to do the work you are called to do in the world, you need to take good care of your body. Aerobic exercise and a healthy diet are important, of course, but strength-training is an often-overlooked piece of the puzzle, especially for women.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-59769204036404910952011-08-16T10:25:00.000-07:002011-08-16T11:20:37.349-07:00the unbearable lightness of beingThis last First Day, I was feeling like I was sliding into a deep blue funk. My griefs were at the front of my mind. I'd been fending them off by keeping busy, but I could feel them all gathering, ready to settle.<div>
<br /></div><div>I'd been wondering whether I should just surrender, slide down into the grief and let it have its due. Or whether it was better to keep fending just a little longer.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I got to worship early and slid into my seat, but I didn't find it so easy to slide into worship. It seemed to me that I'd been treating worship lightly, just skimming the surface. I thirsted for something deeper, something more connected, something that would fill me and feed me and give me strength for what is to come.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I made some false starts, got distracted a few times, started over.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>I have my own Lord's Prayer ritual that often works to sink me into worship. First comes gratitude for all that is of worth in my life (not just the things that I like, but also the challenges and griefs that teach me and take me deeper). Next comes my regrets for the mistakes I've made recently (<i>Father, forgive me...</i>). Then I set my troubles and burdens and worries before God.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>After I've done those bits of spiritual housekeeping, I feel ready to open to worship. To open to whatever God has for me that day.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>This last First Day, however, I was so snowed in that all I could do was to lay my griefs before God.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><i>I'm sorry</i>, I said,<i> I have to start from here today. All I have to set before you is my burdens.</i></div><div>
<br /></div><div>I heard a deep chuckle.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><i>I will take your burdens, your light, insignificant burdens, if you will take on mine.</i></div><div>
<br /></div><div>I thought that was absurd, but was curious to see what would happen if I accepted.</div><div>
<br /></div><div><i>Okay</i>, I said, <i>I'll try</i>.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Suddenly, I was swept up into a great lightness and airiness. It was as though God was a great hawk flying through the heavens and I was on his back, clinging to his feathers. It was wonderful and terrifying and very very funny.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>A half an hour later, I wondered irreverently if I was some sort of parasite, if God might try to pry me loose from his feathers with a great hooked beak.</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-33797530509459364332011-04-17T17:47:00.001-07:002011-04-18T10:42:01.424-07:00a spiritual pruning<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><i><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">My father's death threw me into a mid-life review of my life.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">I'm happy with a lot of the choices that I've made, particularly the ones to do with family and children.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Any life, though, has areas of damage and failure. I have acknowledged those areas. I've felt the pain and regret associated with them, but I haven't known what to do about it. In many cases, these areas are things that I must simply accept. It's either too late to change them, or they're not the sorts of things that I have the ability to change.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Okay then: I'll have to accept them.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div>But it was by accepting them that I allowed the wounding to happen in the first place. And if I go on accepting them, I'll just end up with more of the same kind of wounding.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So what do I do then? If I can't change them and I can't accept them, what can I do?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">I kept running into this same dead end. I looked for an exit, some way out of this dilemma, but I couldn't find one. I felt like a fly caught in amber, struggling vainly to escape but only sinking deeper into the sticky mass.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Friday night, I lay awake in prayer and tears, sinking deeper into the situation until I had no tears and no words left.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">I slept at last, around dawn, and woke up with these words in my heart:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>The Net interprets </i><em>censorship </em><i>as </i><em>damage</em><i> and routes around it.</i></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>– John Gilmore</i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;">There was a third option, and it had been right under my nose all the time.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;">My dad was a very smart guy. He started working as a programmer in 1961, and he was one of the most skilled problem solvers I've ever known. His problem-solving skills extended far beyond his work. Even while he was dying of brain cancer (and his short term memory was shot full of holes), he was able to focus on relevant facts, ignore red herrings, and optimize his remaining life from the ever-decreasing options available to him.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;">In other words, like the skilled network programmer he was, he identified the damaged areas of his brain and routed around them. He couldn't change the damage. He accepted the damage as fact and went to work busily figuring how he could work around the disabilities that the damage imposed.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Maybe it's possible to route around emotional damage as well.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">In worship on Sunday, I was sitting with this new thought. As I sat, I had an image of myself focusing on this one stem with a flower that wouldn't bloom. The scene zoomed out, and I saw myself as a vibrant shrub with the potential to flower in many different ways. Yes, that one flower was blighted and refused to open, but the rest of my buds were healthy and ready to open, if I'd just transfer my energy from the blighted bloom to the rest of my life.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">And, suddenly, it was as if I had been pruned of the dead wood and the failed buds. I felt clearer and lighter than I'd felt in a good long time. I felt like I could move on, instead of staying stuck in the amber of my failure.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">And I looked around at the Meeting, and thought of the shrub of our corporate being, the paradox of its incredible health and vibrancy in contrast to its dead wood, failed buds, and spent flowers that had failed to fruit.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Okay then. We start from where we are, here and now, and work with the parts of us that are still alive and growing. If there are places that are damaged and can't be repaired, we route around the damage. New branches will grow to fill the open spots, and to take over the job left by the fallen branches.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">There is life, there is hope, and it's time to stop being stuck in the past.</span></span></div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-86785262557328608852010-05-18T11:21:00.000-07:002010-05-18T12:56:35.032-07:00What If It's All True?In worship, the prayer “Make me a strong vessel for Thy work” often bubbles up in my heart. I ask for the ongoing guidance of the Spirit in living my life, and for the strength and humility to follow the guidance I receive.<div><br /></div><div>It is one thing to make this sort of prayer. It's easy and comforting to pray for guidance and to strive to follow the Light I am given.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's a completely different thing to surrender myself to that guidance and that Light, to allow myself to be used as an instrument of the Holy Spirit, to feel that power guiding and sustaining me.</div><div><br /></div><div>In worship a few weeks ago, I received a message that what we are striving for in worship is to read the future. We can only look to the comforting familiarity of the past so far. At some point, we have to stand on the edge of the continent and look ahead to the challenges that face us. We are not the Quakers of the past few centuries and we are not meant to follow where the Spirit led them. We are alive now, and the Spirit guides us now, in the present, to the work we are meant to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>Those words <i>reading the future</i> stuck with me over the next several days. The next day, a quiet little voice inside me said, “Reading the future? Isn't that prophecy? Does that mean that Friends are called to prophetic witness?”</div><div><br /></div><div>The universe stopped for a moment at that thought, and my ego strode forward to take the helm.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Don't be silly,” it informed me briskly, “How can you possibly think that you might be called to prophesy? Spiritual gifts like that are for the great, not for such as you. Confine yourself to your proper sphere, why don't you?”</div><div><br /></div><div>I dropped my head then, remembering how buoyed by Spirit I had felt while clerking the last Meeting for worship for business. How clearly I had felt the Spirit guiding my words during that meeting. How I had been able to draw on the calmness and love and light of the Spirit in doing that work. How clearly I had been shown the course of our work. How good and right and beautiful it had all felt, and how sure I had felt that I am meant to do that job for my Meeting.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suddenly, I was deeply afraid. What if it's all true? What if the Holy Spirit does work through me? What if I have received certain gifts and I am called to use them? Can I be completely sane, to believe that might be happening? Can I speak of it, even to fellow Quakers, without being taken for someone a few slices short of a loaf? Will others look at me and see me puffed up with my own vanity? Worse yet, will I get puffed up with my own vanity and see the gifts as mine rather than on loan to me from God?</div><div><br /></div><div>And what if I turn my face away from the guidance of Spirit, continuing my willful way in my own safe life? What if I confine myself to my sphere as wife and mother and daughter? What if I stick to my knitting and my dye pots and safe committee work? What if I refuse to open myself to that spiritual union? What if I go through the motions of clerking without committing myself to the Living Spirit that makes it all true?</div><div><br /></div><div>At worship the next week, I made confession to my Meeting. I was not sure it was ministry, but I stood and confessed my fear and confusion anyway. It was, perhaps, more a clerk's report to her Meeting than it was ministry, but I couldn't remain silent.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wisdom bubbled up through the Meeting in response. I felt buoyed by the gathered Meeting, deep in the heart of love, with a clear sense that I do not face the Unknowable alone. The Meeting is with me, and I do my work for it and as a vessel for it. I felt reassured and humbled and still deeply, deeply afraid.</div><div><br /></div><div>God has never been domesticated. God is a force that is great and terrible, the most awesome of the awesome. It has never been comfortable to stand naked before Spirit, to channel it, to be the subject of its scrutiny. </div><div><br /></div><div>After worship, two elders came to me and gave me gentle counsel. I continued my confession, feeling their sure presence and their own connection with the Spirit.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we got up to go, one of them held my eyes with her penetrating gaze.</div><div><br /></div><div>“I feel the Spirit working through you, when you clerk,” she affirmed, “Do you enjoy it?”</div><div><br /></div><div>Yes. I love it. It is not safe or comfortable, but it feels good and right and holy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Still my feet drag on the path. I feel frightened, unworthy, perhaps unable to meet the challenges I might be called to face.</div><div><br /></div><div>And yet, as I find the faith to follow the guidance of the Spirit, I am led blind through the trials of my life. I do not know why I am led to do what I am led to do, or whether it will be effective, or enough. Over time, I see in hindsight what I couldn't see when I was reading the future. My part is small, but it is essential. It might be more than I think I can bear, but I have done it.</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-18018585947725337042010-04-04T13:30:00.000-07:002010-04-04T13:48:42.665-07:00Empty Tombwhen i woke up this morning<div>the tomb of my heart</div><div>was empty</div><div><br /></div><div>my heart was outside</div><div>sunning itself</div><div>in the warmth of your love</div><div><br /></div><div>the fear that had held it bound</div><div>lay in tatters on the cold ground</div><div>of the tomb</div><div><br /></div><div>with the stone rolled back</div><div>the tomb was just a small cave</div><div>in the faint light</div><div><br /></div><div>it's no place for a heart to live</div><div>closed up </div><div>away from the light</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-60409006875831267992009-10-26T10:30:00.000-07:002009-10-26T10:58:53.228-07:00Leadings from the EdgeI ran across an article in the New York Times talking about interference from the future preventing the creation of a Higgs boson. It's a crazy idea, but it's a <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/">good kind of crazy</a>: visionary, improbable, out on the edge, pushing the envelope of the possible.<div><br /></div><div>Last week at Meeting, we were visited by a woman with a vibrant smile, badly tie-dyed halter top, and bubbly baby boy. Looking into her eyes in worship, I saw how vividly alive she was, how deeply steeped in Light.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had an appointment after worship. The dear Friend in our Meeting who leads sacred circle dancing for us was going to be out of town for our autumn retreat, and I needed to learn a few dances so that I could try to fill her shoes for the day.</div><div><br /></div><div>Worship followed by this special kind of dance filled my soul and made me buoyant. I floated out to the fellowship hall, where I decided to engage this woman in conversation. We chatted easily about motherhood, discovering our mutual belief in homebirth, extended breastfeeding, attachment parenting, and homeschooling. Her baby fell asleep at the breast, and she slipped him into the car seat of the van where they were obviously both living.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we talked, her whole life opened out. She had been a street kid at 15, married young, had three sons with an emotionally abusive man, left him and lost her sons, had a daughter who was currently with relatives, and then had the baby. A tough life, but one that seemed not to have dented her spirit much.</div><div><br /></div><div>She told me that she was meant to roam the Earth, not to settle in one place. She had a vision of a traveling village, a commune that lived in many vehicles and moved from place to place. She spoke of going from town to town, collecting the street kids and making a safe space for them. She spoke of a fleet of school buses with different functions for the community.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Whoa,” I thought, “this is starting to sound a little crazy.”</div><div><br /></div><div>As I continued to listen to her vision, though, I wanted to believe in it. I wanted her to be able to build her traveling village. I wanted her to be able to mother the street kids that she felt a call to care for. I wanted her to be able to honor the calling of her soul, to find a way to live her vision.</div><div><br /></div><div>Much of the vision was crazy, impractical. Many of the details clearly wouldn't work, but the heart of her vision was pure, clear, and full of Divine Light.</div><div><br /></div><div>I told her I believed in her vision. I told her I have been called to be a tree, to dig my roots into one place, to intimately know one small space on the surface of the Earth. I told her I would pray for her vision, that she could find a way to make it real, that I would pray for her and her children as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>She met my gaze, and it was as if the two of us were completely open there, open to one another and open to the Divine Light bathing both of us. We stood a minute in wordless prayer.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly, “You need a token.”</div><div><br /></div><div>She reached her hand into the chaos of the van and drew out a tiny object. My sense was that she had no idea what she was choosing, that she was letting God guide her hand, that she let God guide her actions. She was a child of faith, living in trust of her own vision of the Divine.</div><div><br /></div><div>She handed me a tiny object, hard and cool to my touch. I held it in my closed hand, not wanting to break contact with her amazing eyes.</div><div><br /></div><div>“Thank you,” I said.</div><div><br /></div><div>We took our leave a few minutes later. Only when I got the object back to my car did I look at it.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was a tiny glass angel. Every time I see it, it reminds me to send a prayer for Sunny Jean and her vision.</div><div><br /></div><div>I felt good the rest of the day. It's good to know that there are people like her in the world, people who see a vision, no matter if it is crazy and impractical, and act on it. People who honor the dream in their hearts. We need those people, and we need to let go a little and become more like them ourselves. To trust that small, still, perhaps a bit crazy, voice within us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sunny Jean, wherever you are, you are still in my thoughts and prayers. </div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-19762384016492382382009-09-29T16:31:00.000-07:002009-09-29T16:44:08.818-07:00Doing the Work of the MeetingA couple of years ago, our Meeting embarked on the Jubilee Year by laboring over the structure of our Meeting. Since that time, we've done a lot of work to simplify the structure and lighten the load.<div><br /></div><div>Sunday, we had a threshing session to consider the changes that we've made and whether they're working or not.</div><div><br /></div><div>I put on my Assistant Clerk hat and sat next to the Clerk to support her work in the threshing session. I expected that we'd hear many things and that I myself would say that we've made a lot of progress towards simplifying and lightening the workload, but that we need to continue our work so that things can work more smoothly.</div><div><br /></div><div>Almost immediately, the threshing session took a sharp turn towards the unexpected. I could feel the Clerk next to me struggling with letting go and letting God. I silently supported her in this, and turned my attention to what it was that our Meeting was trying to express.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I was moved to speak, what I said was only tangentially related to our stated purpose that day. I spoke deep from the place of Not-Knowing, of admitting that I do not know how to do the work of our Meeting that I am called to do as Assistant Clerk and as clerk of Worship & Ministry. I affirmed my love and commitment to the Meeting, however, as well as my feeling of certainty that together, with the help of God, we can do what we are called to do.</div><div><br /></div><div>I wondered the rest of the day and most of the next whether I had spoken appropriately or not. It certainly felt like Spirit moved me to say what I said, and the sense of being a channel was strong while I was speaking. It felt unruly, however, and I had the wry thought that we just ought to stop inviting Spirit to these meetings, that Spirit again and again throws a monkey wrench into our best laid plans.</div><div><br /></div><div>The next day, I had a ministry/eldering/support meeting with a member of the Meeting who is struggling. I did not know what I was supposed to do, what was called for. I sat down earlier in the day to prepare for it, and ended up feeling that my Unknowing, my expectant waiting, was the best thing that I can bring to my work in the Meeting.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can't pretend to be in control. I can't pretend that I know what I'm doing when I don't. All I can do is prepare the best I can, and show up open to whatever happens. All I can do is hold that tiny bit of Light that I have been given and shine for all I am worth.</div><div><br /></div><div>That Unknowing is feeling very important to me. I don't know how to do this. I don't know what God wants of me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have to believe that is okay, and that I will be led as needed.</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-51535784299347195232009-09-18T13:31:00.000-07:002009-09-18T13:45:07.582-07:00The Cheerfulness TestimonyI read recently that happiness is contagious, a conclusion of a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1092192/Happiness-contagious-spreads-quickly-friends-family-say-scientists.html">Harvard Medical School heart study</a>.<div><br /></div><div>I've often thought of George Fox's advice to walk <i>cheerfully</i> over the earth, answering that of God in everyone. There have been times when I've quipped that I've got the “cheerful” part down pat; if only the “answering that of God in everyone” was so simple!</div><div><br /></div><div>These past few months, I haven't been as cheerful as I usually am. The cares of the world have seemed especially heavy in recent months, and I've been on an emotional rollercoaster that pulled me away from my center, time and again. </div><div><br /></div><div>Just get back on the horse that threw you, Heather. No matter how many times you end up flat on the ground, you need to get up, dust off your fanny, and give it your best shot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Okay, so I have here a vial of undiluted <i>relentless unconditional happiness</i>, and I want to infect as many people as possible with its contents.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>makes Cheerfulness Fairy motions of sprinkling the contents of the vial everywhere that my influence can reach</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Pass it on.</div><div><br /></div><div>And two quotes that seem especially apt to me right now:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>If we're not having fun, we're not doing it right.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.</i></div><div><br /></div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-78897435584191414882009-09-09T11:50:00.000-07:002009-09-09T11:58:41.548-07:00Integral calculusIntegrity is probably the traditional Quaker value that resonates most deeply with me, and the one that I think about the most.<div><br /></div><div>It's also the name of my computer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Integrity, to me, means wholeness. It means being all of one piece. It means walking your talk, living your values, embodying what is truest in you. It's deeper and purer than honesty.</div><div><br /></div><div>In calculus, taking an integral means finding the area under a curve. All of it, all the bits and pieces. Finding the whole from the sum of its parts.</div><div><br /></div><div>A set of data has integrity if it's complete, correct, and an accurate snapshot of the state of the data at a particular time.</div><div><br /></div><div>So. Living in integrity means being all of one piece, living in harmony with my deepest values, expressing what is truest in me. It means living from my center, acting from that of God within me, flowing with what is best and purest and truest in me. It also means living passionately from that center, trusting my gut and my guide and living fully into my faith.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's all.</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-45771805129278641302009-03-07T14:54:00.000-08:002009-03-07T15:28:04.928-08:00Found Ministry<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">or Gospel Truth</span><div><br /></div><div>I love our Meetinghouse. It's like a small, upside-down ark in the spiritual ocean, a shelter against the storm and a beacon of light. It's simply but well-built, with caring and craftsmanship showing in many small details.</div><div><br /></div><div>Quakers didn't build our Meetinghouse. Before we bought it, it was a neighborhood church. There's a disused immersion baptistry behind what used to be the altar, and faint crosses spray-painted on the light fixtures in the worship room.</div><div><br /></div><div>I feel gratitude and warmth for the people who built our Meetinghouse, a connection that transcends time and creed. Their work shelters us now, and the spirit that went into the construction of the building still feeds us.</div><div><br /></div><div>About a month ago, I was hanging out with the children in the small yard behind the worship room. There's a small play structure there under liquid amber trees, and an even smaller patio with a few benches and chairs for supervising adults.</div><div><br /></div><div>Suddenly, I noticed what looked like some letters carved in the concrete near the building. I went closer, scraped away the leaf mould with my foot, and tried to read the words.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">For it is God</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I scraped some more, and moved the bench out of the way.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">For it is God who works in you</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I was getting excited. What Quakerly words were these, left for us by the founders of the neighborhood church?</div><div><br /></div><div>I found a broom and swept the mud off the next section of the letters.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">For it is God who works in you to will and to act</span></div><div><br /></div><div>“Spirit-led, spirit-led,” my heart was singing. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had run out of letters. I shifted back to the left and used my broom to free the next line.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">according to his good purpose. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Philippians 2:13</span></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Oh wow. </div><div><br /></div><div>No Bible verse had ever struck me with more force, or seemed more appropriate to the circumstances.</div><div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Philippians 2:13</span></div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-5638937454060187722008-11-11T20:22:00.000-08:002008-11-11T20:42:06.194-08:00Pain, Prayer, People and the Presence of GodAt the end of August, my dad was diagnosed with a new brain tumor. Happily, that tumor was operable. Unhappily, another tumor was discovered 23 days after his surgery.<div><br /></div><div>This news threw me into a darker space than I have been since he was originally diagnosed. I wanted to crawl into a cave and hide. I wanted to be alone with my pain. I so hated the way I was feeling that I didn't want to share it with anyone.</div><div><br /></div><div>For weeks, I held everyone, with the exception of my husband, at arm's length. I struggled with my pain alone and in the dark.</div><div><br /></div><div>After three weeks of this, I bestirred myself to go to a Worship & Ministry meeting. We opened with a query about how we were holding onto our centers during this election cycle.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The election isn't ruffling my serenity much," I said slowly. "What's blowing my serenity out of the water is my father's struggle with cancer. My heart is breaking for my mother, for him, for my children, myself, our extended family, and his friends. I can't find any comfort. I pull back from people, because the pain is too raw to impose on anyone else, even second-hand. Nothing helps, not even prayer."</div><div><br /></div><div>A Friend started talking about how pain in itself is a prayer. I sat bolt upright and asked her to talk more about that. I needed to know how my pain could possibly ever function as a prayer.</div><div><br /></div><div>She talked about opening to God and sharing our pain with him, about allowing God and God's compassion in our hearts along with the pain. As she spoke, I begin to see a glimmer of what she meant.</div><div><br /></div><div>I went into prayerful worship then and saw how, when I hold people at arm's length, I am, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">at the same time</span>, holding God at arm's length. When I close my heart to other human beings, I also close my heart to God.</div><div><br /></div><div>This reminded me of my old tai chi master's words: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">You have to open your heart to get your head on straight.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>I sat there in grateful prayer with tears spilling out of my eyes. For a short time, I saw how deep the commandment <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Love your neighbor as yourself</span> goes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I bow my life in humble prayer.</div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-42516164303375976902008-07-01T21:19:00.000-07:002008-07-01T21:56:26.801-07:00Eldering: a ParableI've had a lot of beautiful eldering in my Meeting. Many of my Friends have brought me along, a little bit at a time, with a well-placed comment or sharing. They've educated me lovingly, patiently, and with humor. I've been grateful for this gentle eldering, and imagine that other Friends also welcome it.<div><br /></div><div>To my surprise, however, many Friends seem to think of eldering not as teaching or guidance, but rather admonishment. When I suggest that someone might welcome a little gentle eldering, I run into a wall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh surely, say my Friends, we don't need to tell this Friend that they're doing something wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, no, I certainly wasn't suggesting that. Just that we might share our own insights and approaches to different situations, plant a few seeds with what wisdom we've been given, and perhaps encourage the Friend to think about things a little differently.</div><div><br /></div><div>I eldered a weighty Friend in this manner a few weeks ago. He has a habit of delivering deep, thoughtful, spiritual ministry. Unfortunately, in the preamble to this ministry, he also often delivers a slight or a barb directed at a subset of the Meeting.</div><div><br /></div><div>After Meeting, I told him about reading a parenting book that suggested that, when we give our children instruction, we leave off the insults. If, for example, we are telling our child to pick up his socks, we don't need to tack on a "you filthy slob" or "you'll never learn, will you?" to the end.</div><div><br /></div><div>This Friend didn't seem to understand what I was driving at (although another Friend, listening, did). I left it there, however, having planted my seed. Perhaps it will germinate or perhaps it will die in barren ground. I've done what I was led to do, and now I'm led to wait.</div><div><br /></div><div>The current Worship & Ministry committee is staffed by Friends who believe in the slow and subtle approach to nurturing the Meeting and the spiritual lives of Friends. We stay in contact with Friends, plant our small seeds, and wait to see what happens. Some Friends see our role as too passive, and have suggested that we might do more, manage things more vigorously, and be a lot more visible about what we are doing.</div><div><br /></div><div>After Meeting, I was chatting with the incoming clerk. I shared something about how the committee had handled a particular issue, and how, once again, the issue was resolved without it looking like Worship & Ministry had done anything about it.</div><div>To me, this is a sign that we're doing our job well, but not everyone sees it that way.</div><div><br /></div><div>That Saturday, my two sons had a disagreement that ended in my younger son telling my older son that he was not going to share his birthday-gift books with him. My older son and my 15-year-old daughter were incensed about this, and insisted that I do something about my younger son's refusal to share.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I have done something," I said, "He doesn't have to share his books if he doesn't want to. I've told him that I think that families work better when people share, but it's important that he comes to that decision on his own."</div><div><br /></div><div>My daughter was particularly steamed at this. She wanted me to make my son share his books, to lay down the law, to punish him for his selfishness.</div><div><br /></div><div>Within a few hours, my sons had worked things out, and my younger son decided to share his books. I was still, however, a bad parent in my daughter's eyes, because I had not taken a more direct approach. I think we have a better outcome than we would have had if I had enforced sharing. My son came to the decision, under his own power, that it was better to share and to have his brother share with him. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's eldering, to me, in a nutshell. Planting little seeds and then giving people time and space to come to their own insights, their own solutions, their own decisions. And, while planting those seeds, being humble enough to realize that we don't ourselves have all of the pieces of the puzzle, and that bits of the solution come from all sorts of different places.</div><div><br /></div><div>We just toss our pebble into the pond and wait for the ripples to do whatever ripples do.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09663768419522391410noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-59959657196608581162008-05-29T17:29:00.000-07:002008-05-30T16:02:24.286-07:00Nineteen Minutes to FiveOkay, so once a month, it is my job to hold the container for worship and close Meeting at the end of the hour. This seemingly simple job has created a number of issues for me, which I have <a href="http://friend-in-need.blogspot.com/2006/12/in-gods-time.html">blogged about</a> <a href="http://friend-in-need.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-life-as-spiritual-clam.html">before</a>.<br /><br />For a time, I deliberately went to Meeting without a watch and trusted in the promptings of Spirit as to when to close Meeting. At first this worked well, but then I realized that it took too much of my attention. So much energy went into discerning how long worship should go that I didn't feel like I had enough left to monitor the pulse of the Meeting or tend my own worship.<br /><br />So I started bringing a watch.<br /><br />The next problem was that I don't ordinarily wear or carry a watch. In the midst of getting the family ready for Meeting, I needed to remember to scoop my watch out of my jewelry box and put it in my purse.<br /><br />Fortunately, my husband carries a pocket watch, so he could act as my back up.<br /><br />When I last came to close Meeting, I forgot my watch. As we were pulling into the Meetinghouse, I remembered, and asked to borrow my husband's. I slipped it into my pocket, slid into my chair, and fell into worship.<br /><br />Some time later, I checked the time. The hands of the watch were frozen at nineteen minutes to five. Meeting for worship runs from 10:30 to 11:30.<br /><br />I went back into worship and asked God to tell me when it was time to end Meeting.<br /><br />Worship continued in fullness and beauty, and I imagined myself holding it open all day. Several individuals gave heartfelt ministry, and we sat there in the peace of deep worship.<br /><br />Finally, I rose. "Friends," I said, "it's my job to close worship today. My watch says that it's nineteen minutes to five, and that seems about right to me. I have no idea when we should close worship."<br /><br />Friends started shaking one another's hands and wishing one another good morning. Later evidence suggests that I was 10 to 15 minutes late closing worship, but I really have no idea.<br /><br />As we rose, I thought that perhaps I am not meant to close worship. Perhaps my struggles with the clock, and with speaking at all after worship, mean that I should do different jobs for the Meeting.<br /><br />A record number of Friends came up to tell me how much they enjoy it when I close worship. "You're so light and funny," they said, "you have such a wonderful spirit about it."<br /><br />Indeed. On the mornings I close Meetings, there is always laughter and lightness of spirit as I try to find the words to welcome everyone to Meeting. My struggles to rise from worship and speak from a script are a continual source of entertainment to my Friends.<br /><br />Ah. I have missed my calling. I am meant to be a Quaker stand-up comic, playing at the Meetinghouse on First Day mornings. Don't miss my "I seem to have forgotten my name and what I'm meant to be doing here" act followed by "I'm delighted to be with you all. Let's just beam at one another for a moment while I try to remember how to do this."<br /><br />And, the truth is that I am delighted to stand there, blinking, and welcome everyone. I'm happy to invite newcomers to our Meeting and tell them how wonderful it is that they shared worship with us. I am filled with joy at the opportunity to facilitate announcements. After worship, I am so happy to be in the heart of the gathered Meeting that it doesn't matter that I stumble over the words I'm meant to speak.<br /><br />It's even okay with me that God sees fit to tell me that it's nineteen minutes to five, whatever that means.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14822864657970530172noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-72732519511057333002008-05-29T17:23:00.000-07:002008-05-29T17:29:43.572-07:00HeartstoneI dreamed I was visiting God's garden. God and I had a long walk through the garden, admiring the plants and the changes since my last visit. We came to an apricot tree, and I reached up to touch a blossom.<br /><br />"I remember when you gave me an apricot from this tree," I said, "I still have the stone."<br /><br />"You still have the stone?" asked God, "Do you have it with you?"<br /><br />I reached into a pouch, took out the stone, and held it out in my hand to see.<br /><br />"Give it to the gardeners!" God commanded.<br /><br />I handed the apricot stone to one of God's gardeners. The gardeners took it to a prepared bed and gently slipped it into the rich soil. One of them watered it deeply.<br /><br />When I woke, I held the dream lightly. I didn't want to read too much into it, to decide the meaning of the apricot, the stone, and God's gardeners.<br /><br />All I know is that I feel very good about having given the apricot stone to God's gardeners and seeing it find its rightful place.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14822864657970530172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33598850.post-69549471102467627662008-05-18T15:00:00.000-07:002008-05-18T15:15:59.540-07:00Testing LeadingsI'm going to lift up something that Richard wrote in a comment to my post before last:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><blockquote>At this point it's good to look outside yourself for signs to help you discern. When you mention the possibility of doing this to weighty Friends what is there reaction? Do they caution you to reflect more deeply on it or do they brighten at the thought of you doing this? Have you detected any signs of Way opening for this project? For example did some other responsibility that was taking up some of your time and energy suddenly lifted from your shoulders to make space for the new project? Did something or someone that would help you with the project suddenly appear in your life unexpectedly? <br /><br />If weighty Friends do not discourage this and if signs of Way opening appear, then don't hold back from following the leading just because you think you might like it!</blockquote></span><br /><br />Sometimes I feel like a blind person tapping in front of me with my white cane, trying to discern my next step. Part of my leading has been to take the next step and trust that God will continue to guide my feet. I can't see the end of the path from here.<br /><br />It's good to be reminded to check in with weighty Friends and spiritual buddies about our leadings. My Friends did, somewhat to my amazement, respond very enthusiastically to my leading and encourage me to relax and enjoy it. It is a little like working with the children during our Meeting retreat. I might have felt like I was goofing off and having a good time, but the Meeting appreciated the work I was doing anyway.<br /><br />I also continued to pray about the leading, continually, and to wait for confirmation before taking each step. This is not something I always do, and I think I sometimes might have a tendency or out-run my Inner Guide. Part of my discipline in this event, however, has been to go no further than guided by Spirit.<br /><br />I am forced to admit that God was right again. There were times along the way that weren't as easy and pleasant as I anticipated, and events took a few twists and turns that underscored the wisdom of my care and attention to this seemingly simple and pleasant activity. I needed my Guide on this trip, and I needed to be on the trip to do work that needs to be done.<br /><br />And perhaps I also needed to know that sometimes God calls us to go with our strengths, to refresh our spirits, and to do what we love.Heather Madronehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14822864657970530172noreply@blogger.com2