February 1, 2010 by Eleanor
I don’t read much about football as I’m not a sporty girl. However, this article in today’s New York Times spoke to me. It’s about a group of middle-aged friends and their Sunday pickup games; it reveals what I love about men.
“People say, ‘Why do you spend so much time in the huddle?’ ” Mr. Lupo said. “By the time you tell the seventh guy what to do, the first guy forgot what he’s supposed to do.”
I love when men are confident enough to be humble. I love men who are kind and good. Many men are of course. Yet growing up in a household of six women, I didn’t know a lot of them.
My Dad was the guy who rode me on his back in the pool, brought home chocolate footballs from Rip’s Cigarettes, and held me when my kitten John died in a shoebox, yet I didn’t know really know him when I was young. Now, looking back at photos of a 30-year-old with five little girls surrounding him, I see the man. Doing the best he could to provide for and protect us. Imperfectly, he freely admitted, yet trying.
I came to know and respect my Dad’s humility, his goodness, the love behind his anger, his effort to do the right thing, and to right what had gone wrong.
I’ve spent a lot of time “learning” about men. Books. Classes. Dinners with girlfriends. What I’ve really absorbed though has come through my brothers-in-law, my friends’ husbands, a fair boss, an octogenarian mentor, a funny colleague, and …. a special few.
The few who are committed, honorable, humble and real, and whose paths, I’m grateful, have crossed mine. I look at men with more admiration and wonder now. Nothing melts my heart more than a man speaking from his.
I facilitate workshops and coach the Women’s Circle so that we may feel ourselves as women, fully. I’m inspired by the men in my life to explore even more what that means.
Tags: men
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January 26, 2010 by Eleanor
As a former fundraising professional, I feel compelled to give you – my investors of the heart – a progress report on my Year of Love as there have been some fabulous first quarter results! Here’s how things are stacking up:
1. “Contribute love to my community”: Launching 150 girls on 15 GFC Girl Action Teams next week!
2. “Create love through my work”: Come to WomanKind, the Women’s Circle or the GRCC Pink Bag Seminar to let me know how I’m doing!
3. “Love my body”: Continuing my hurt-so-good, hip-opening yogic pursuit!
4. “Express and experience fabulous love with a man”: In a Q2 report perhaps…
5. “Channel love to family and friends”: Gladly, this is an ongoing practice.
You know what though? The most impactful Q1 outcome was not part of the original proposal. I do indeed have a new love… God. I know; I know you were rooting for a real, live, in-the-flesh man. (And I know some of you may think I’ve gone off the deep end.) There may indeed be a he; however, what I’m writing about is He. The He that had to (and for me, has to) come first.
My God is a combo of Divine Masculine, Feminine and That-Which-Can’t-Be-Defined. For this Year of Love, it was God in masculine form that I needed. Unbeknownst to me, this is what I have hungered for, a hunger that no mere mortal could satisfy (and isn’t meant to.)
Going alone to my sister’s for Christmas one more time had brought me to my spiritual knees. I was offered a hand and I surrendered. I leaned in and against. I trusted. I had no other choice.
Sure enough, when I yearn to be held, I feel His arms. When I need to talk, He’s completely there. To this Being, I open my heart. I’ve fallen in love.
I thought I had “let go and let God” before (oh, about 500 million times!) Yet this is different. I knew it immediately. For the first time, I feel free from the pursuit of perfection. For the first real time, I’ve let go of the reins.
With each passing day, I trust more. When I start grasping onto the earthly good this reordering has brought, I remember the wise words of a friend: “Palms Up”. With palms up, I release that which isn’t mine and I receive that which is.
Many of you wrote me of your own proclamations including “The Year of Financial Security” and “The Year of Healthy, Happy Family.” What I offer for your quest is simply, “palms up, my friends, palms up.”
Tags: confidence, enough, God, love, opening, perfection, receiving
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January 19, 2010 by Eleanor
On Saturday, my sister asked why I thought God allowed the Haiti earthquake to happen, especially to a people who are already so acquainted with suffering. Many have asked this question.
Of course I do not have the answer. A wise mentor recently cautioned me against creating a “theology of Eleanor”. What I think she meant is to distinguish between sharing my evolving beliefs about God based on study, prayer, questioning and personal experience versus promoting my conclusions as truth for others. (Henceforth, dear reader, please check me on this!)
I come to you as a fellow spiritual seeker not as an expert. What I’m inspired by is the conversation. I’m interested in what you hold true. What do you question? How do you reconcile tragedy in the world and in your life? I’m moved by people digging deep and becoming willing to reveal their discoveries. For some, faith is a private matter. For me, with innumerable sorrows occurring around the globe and in our own communities, I find it healing to talk.
So, to answer my sister’s question and to open the conversation, this is where I am today and I’m curious about you…
I don’t believe God had any involvement in the earthquake happening; I believe God created the natural world to do what it does. (I’m not knowledgeable enough to discuss the politics of poverty or civil infrastructure here though I acknowledge their impact on the extent of the toll.) I believe the rescue and relief teams are sharing the love of God though I don’t believe God chooses whom to save and not. I am humbled by the surviving faith of Haiti’s people. I don’t know how to reconcile my belief that God has a hand in creating good, yet not, what I consider, the bad. I believe God is with us through it all: the whole, at times agonizing, at times glorious, human experience on Earth and beyond.
What do you believe? What has come up for you in the last week? If you’d like to share your thoughts, please, I’d love to hear them.
Tags: God, healing, changing the world, faith
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January 10, 2010 by Eleanor
As you can imagine, I’m a big believer in the potential of aches and pains to reveal more than physical ailments. It’s no surprise that my sister thinks I do a lot of navel gazing. I’m trying to figure out what’s in there! What am I storing in that tight, lower left back of mine? I’m quite sure my body is trying to speak (sometimes scream!) some fabulously useful information to my heart and mind. I, for one, think it’s imperative (and fascinating) to listen.
And let me tell you, my hips have been doing some talking lately. Despite regular yoga classes, I haven’t been able to discern on my own what they were saying. So yesterday I had the great fortune to experience the gifts of Bev Johnson, a practitioner-in-training of Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy (PRYT). “Through assisted yoga postures and non-directive dialogue, PRYT guides clients to experience the connection of their physical and emotional selves.” (Contact Bev this month for a half-priced session!)
Boy did that little right hip flexor have a lot to say! In 90 minutes, out came pouring a virtual storehouse of vision, emotion and deep knowledge about who I am, what I’m becoming, and what I need to leave behind.
I’m sure you know by now that I’m also a big believer in the transformative power of tears. Let that river flow, I say! So many women try to tamp down their sensitivity. They apologize for their emotions. Perhaps you are one of them. Perhaps you believe your God-given, feminine, feeling self is an unwelcome burden on loved ones, colleagues, and pets (I’m no dog expert, but the few I’ve come to know are pretty amazing in the face of a crying human.)
You may believe that others are not interested in the depths of your heart. Well, I am! Your body is! And I’m quite sure God is. I’d venture to guess that those who love you most are too – even if they’re unsure of their own capacity to be your witness.
In the online dating world, there are some men who profess rather loudly that they want “NO DRAMA” (and they usually capitalize it!) To that, I respond with a DELETE! I believe these men would be better off dating their own kind for a while. In my opinion, an evolved man has grown his ability to hold space for a woman’s emotions. While he might not understand or even like her in that state, he honors the part of her that feels deeply, the same part that has the capacity to love him without end. Stuff one; you stuff the other.
I’m not advocating reckless wielding of the emotional torch; yet, I am encouraging all women to feel. It is just fine to do so. Really, you were made this way. Who cares if it is PMS induced? Open the flood gates! We can do our best to consciously minimize the impact of our darker emotions on others, yet by some means, we must let them out. Otherwise, they get stored. We’re going to feel them one way or another.
I used to cry a lot more. My Colorado friends lasted through many a tear-streamed hike up and down Arbaney Kittle Trail. There are pews across America soaked because I was moved by words, ritual, and the coaxing open of my heart by a power greater than I. Nowadays, I can predictably count on at least one massive bawl-my-eyes-out session per month. It usually happens in the car. Sometimes mildly prompted by the day’s events; more often brought on by a good country song like Keith Urban’s “Thank You“. Sometimes I think I’m losing it; until two days later when I remember it is part of the territory of me as a woman. Part of the territory of me as woman.
Being a woman is not something to be contained, altered, fixed, or managed. In the words of our esteemed 43rd President, bring ’em on! Bring on the PMS tears, the church tears, the weeping at family goodbyes and the moving realizations of greater truth. Trust their capacity to cleanse and inform. Trust that your rawest self is a grace and power to behold.
Tags: crying, feminine, God, healing, intuition, men, opening, wisdom of our bodies
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January 4, 2010 by Eleanor
“Can you be still and just feel?” said my yoga teacher Karen Hansen during savasana on New Year’s Day.
“Be still and know,” (Psalm 46:10) quoted the priest during contemplative prayer at St. James’s.
Thousands of years apart, the same gentle invitation.
Be still… feel… know.
Be still… feel… know.
Be still… feel… know.
What more needs to be said?
Here’s to being profoundly still in 2010.
Tags: feel, knowing, stillness
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December 28, 2009 by Eleanor
I wasn’t going to write this week. I’ve been in a bad way and wanted to hide. I didn’t want to dump my downward spiral on you, especially at the holidays. Then I remembered a friend saying she liked that I didn’t have it all together because it gave her permission to not have it all together either.
So here you go, Merry Christmas! You hereby have permission to be a total mess!
I’ve been feeling like
Ally McBeal in a dream she once had where a surgeon cracks open her chest, looks into the cavity at her scar-covered heart and says, “This heart’s been broken! This heart’s been broken a thousand times!”
Broken with regret, healed by forgiveness; broken with disappointment, healed by acceptance; broken with impatience, healed by trust. Does it ever stop? I think only when we’re six feet under.
Now, dear reader, beware, for what I’m about to admit, I would be kicked out of every workshop I’ve ever taken, flunked by every coach I’ve ever worked with, and deemed a prime “DON’T” in every self-help book I’ve ever read. For this is the strategy I decided to take on Christmas:
In order to take a break from heartache, I will no longer continue to hope that my dearest dreams are going to come true someday. Yes, they may still be possible, yet with all the time, money, and complete mind, body and soul energy I’ve put into creating my dreams, my heart is worn out and it just doesn’t seem up to me any way.
And wouldn’t you know that despite this valiant, multi-day effort at negativity, self-pity and resignation, a new kind of hope is being born in me. Hope that when I finally let go of trying to make it happen, I’ll be shown what I’m really meant to experience, express and give in this lifetime. Hope that when I take a break from trying to get it right, I’ll get to just be me and let the chips fall where they may. They may just be beautiful.
Last night I listened to a Rob Bell sermon on those who hunger. In it he conveys that we are blessed IN the confusion, screw-ups and pain of our lives, not just when we finally “get it all together.”
I hope it is not the case, but if your heart is hurting this holiday season and your dreams are taking a whole lot longer than you’d like, I hope you’ll hang in there and let the ache transform you.
The mess is blessed. It’s ok to be here. Something good is happening.
Tags: being, doubt, dreams
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December 21, 2009 by Eleanor
I confess… I didn’t get a Christmas tree. I intended to on Saturday, but got snowed in. So instead, I wrapped lights around my ZZ plant (Zamioculcas Zamiifolia to be exact!) The lights are my favorite part anyway. I love Christmas; I love Christmas trees; and I love all of my ornaments and each of their stories, yet something in me is feeling drawn to a more simple expression this year.
I want to feel what’s underneath the tinsel of Christmas. The quieter, more contemplative side. I don’t have children of my own yet, so it’s easier to be outside the rush of those who are anxious to “do Santa” for their little ones and to do it perfectly.
When I hear people totally stressed about the holiday, I have to check myself. Where am I rushing to “do something” and do it “right” – something that is meant to be so fun and beautiful? My life! I’ve constructed such a huge tree decorated with all my hopes and dreams and strewn with all my regrets, mistakes, successes and gifts. Constantly trying to avoid doing something wrong and causing the whole thing to come crashing down.
So what am I without all my ornamentation? Without the layered on tinsel of being this, becoming that, giving this, and wanting that? What’s left at the core? What is it that the light of my eyes illuminates?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sparkly earrings, lip gloss and world-saving aspirations yet only after being sure of what’s underneath. What’s real about me?
What’s real about you? Who are you underneath your tinsel? I want to know you. Not the self-critical you who is always trying to do it better or perfectly. I want to know the pure, flawed, adorable you.
In that place, there is no worry about the tree crashing. There is no care of whether the neighbors have a bigger Santa in the yard. There’s just us. And love.
Unadorned. Lit up from the inside.
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December 14, 2009 by Eleanor
Yesterday was the first anniversary of my father’s death. Those who have been through the loss of a loved one (or perhaps a cherished pet) know that in the last few weeks, days and minutes, you feel completely powerless. There is nothing you can do to keep them here and little you can do to ease their suffering… except to love. Unabashedly and for once, unconditionally.
It’s of course quite human that it takes death to lead us to that purest and simplest of all acts.
Gone are the all the years of trying to get your parent, sibling or dog to do what you want and to be in some way different than how they are. All those “I wish you would…’s” don’t matter anymore. When you realize that the unfathomable is near, love is all that’s left. It’s effortless then.
Yet here we are, back on Earth, in the middle of the holidays. Sometimes, even though it’s what this season is about, pure love isn’t so easy when the potential for family dinner table chaos is just around the corner. We dread being off center, away from our routine and plunged into old dynamics we thought we’d outgrown. It is easy then to begin focusing on the shortcomings of our loved ones. Easy, when we think they’ll be around forever.
This morning in yoga I thought, “How I would love someone if he or she were holy?” As if he were perfect just as he is. As if I were in complete awe of his presence and felt deep respect for what he had come here to be and to do. There would be no expectation. No holding on. No tweaking.
And what would it be like to love as if I were holy. I imagined that I would look upon this person with an open heart, compassion for her soul and genuine yearning for her happiness. I believe it would be a feeling of unconditional love.
The thing is, we are holy. Maybe not saint like and certainly not perfect, but I believe we do have a bit (more than a bit) of the holy inside us. I believe it is possible to love like that. Not consistently or flawlessly mind you, and definitely not without commitment and practice.
If you try it – holding someone who really matters to you as if he or she were holy – I bet you will feel it. Even for just a fleeting moment.
For me it is most possible to do when I first take time to come home to myself, to the place that is really and deeply me. In this place, I don’t need someone else to be a certain way so that I can feel whole, safe or at peace. I am already whole, already safe and I’ve created my own peace.
When the holidays get busy and the party wine starts flowing, feeling grounded in ourselves may take a bit more attention and effort – perhaps a slightly longer workout or a few more minutes of meditation. Our growing ability to love another unconditionally and to be witness to their holiness is worth it.
I invite you to give this gift this year to those you love. You never know how many more chances you’ll have.
Tags: holy, love, open heart
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