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.
Stillness
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.
A Blessed Mess
December 28, 2009 by EleanorI’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:
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.
Under the Tinsel
December 21, 2009 by EleanorI 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.
How would you love if…
December 14, 2009 by EleanorYesterday 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.
The Year of Love!
December 6, 2009 by EleanorWhen my sister and her husband were starting to create their family, she declared to him, “This is going to be the year of sex!” (It worked!)
So, on my 41st birthday, I’m declaring that the year ahead is going to be the year of LOVE! And since love always works (even in those mysterious ways that we don’t quite understand at the time), I know it’s going to be a super-powered, super-fun, super-fabulous year!
I commit to you today that I will make good on my declaration by: contributing love to my community by sharing what I have… discovering and creating love through my work in myriad forms… loving my body and taking care of my heart… expressing selfless love for and experiencing fabulous love with a man (whoever he may be!)… and channeling love to my family and friends through prayer, encouragement, laughter and acceptance.
In yoga this morning, my teacher Kyra read a poignant story* about Mother Teresa’s choice to start serving the West and her reasoning that while we may not be starving for actual bread on any comparable level to the people of Calcutta or Bombay, we are starving for the spiritual food of love.
When she received the Nobel Prize, Mother Teresa was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.”
So, today, this little missive will be shorter than usual because a) love – generating it within yourself and sharing it with others – is all you need, and b) I have to go get a birthday pedicure (lovin’ my toes!)
xo for your own coming year!
Experiencing Life Through You and Me
November 30, 2009 by EleanorHow could this be? Me? Writing about God all the time? I’m no God expert – I’ve got a million questions! Won’t I scare away potential clients? Shouldn’t I be talking about attracting true love, creating a fabulous career or manifesting the sexy, red, stretchy dress I want for Christmas?
Is this authentic? How could I be so into God? Yikes… that makes me a little different than I thought I was going to be. You see, I grew up feeling shocked and mad that kids in my high school said I would go to hell if I didn’t believe what they did. “Well,” I thought, “That’s not too fair now is it? I’m 16! I’m not perfect, but I try to be a good person. What kind of God would send me and my loved ones to hell just because we didn’t go to your church?”
More importantly, why would I want anything to do with that kind of judgment and exclusion? No way! I had enough heartache to deal with as a teenager much less worrying about going to hell.
So here I am 25 years later… not totally sure I fit within the Christian church, not really matching the low-key vibration of a Buddhist path, loving the gorgeous Hindu goddesses while knowing nothing about Hinduism, and coming from a family who finds spiritual grandeur and truth in nature. Yet lately, when I sit to write this weekly email about what is on my mind and heart (that I hope will be of some use for others), it keeps coming back to something about God.
(Note: if this ever gets too preachy for you or I start sounding like the high school people I just dissed, you are always welcome to send me a note or to simply unsubscribe.)
The thing is… it’s all God for me. This whole exploration of the depth and breadth of self, the fullness of life, and the sweetness and heartache of love is completely intertwined with the spiritual aspect of living as a human in the world and on the Earth.
This weekend I watched a simple, little, funny movie called “The Answer Man” about a renowned spiritual “guru” who is also a cranky, foul-mouthed, lonely guy. People come to him for the answers that he himself is seeking. It is in an unexpected love for a woman and her son that he begins to feel his authenticity and his connection to God again.
From that place, he offers to his girlfriend this beautiful line, “You are here so God can experience the world through your eyes…Through you, He falls in love with the world all over again.”
That’s the little nugget I’d love to offer you this week. It reminded me that there is a reason for our being here in exactly our unique form – so God can experience the world through our eyes, our skin, our breath, and our hearts.
For every yummy glass of buttery Chardonnay God gets to taste through my lips, you may share a cold Heineken. For every new crush that makes my heart skip a beat, you may allow God to experience a mother’s wide-open love for her precious new baby. And for every ounce of human anger and sorrow God can feel through the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof’s description of injustice (ala this young man’s health care travesty), your passions may ignite a thousand different responses.
This week, I invite you (and myself!) to try this practice on for size: Let God feel what it is like to be human through you, your love, your body, your emotions and your actions. Notice if and how life feels different and whether little things seem a bit more magical and sacred. I’d love to hear how it goes.
Who Speaks to You?
November 24, 2009 by EleanorYesterday, I was introduced to Rob Bell by way of his Open video. I then proceeded to watch Flame, Whirlwind and She. (see NOOMA for downloadable full length versions.) I may be the last person in America to have heard about this hip and controversial Christian thinker. Let me say, it was instant wow and deep regard. Perhaps even infatuation (I admit I have a weakness for big thinking, cool-glasses-wearing, idealistic guys.)
He’s the evangelical pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and… a graduate of Wheaton College (note: they don’t dance there.) Hoo boy! Bible church, no dancing, and evangelical… that trifecta is more like “lions, tigers and bears” for liberal, pole dancing, multi-faith me!
Yet I took it as a good sign that conservative bloggers blast him. In a Boston Globe interview he says the word “evangelical” has been ”hijacked” by the political right. He offers instead, ”I embrace the term evangelical, if by that we mean a belief that we together can actually work for change in the world, caring for the environment, extending to the poor generosity and kindness.”
He’s written a book called Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality; he honors the feminine qualities in God (that alone makes me want to move to Michigan) and he likens God’s care to that of a mother’s fierce, lay-down-her-life love for her children. He speaks with palpable commitment, yearning and gentleness. And most importantly for doubters like me, he struggles with having no answers to unanswerable questions.
I’m not writing about him so you too will think he’s great. I bring him up simply to say that this unexpected “evangelical” voice went straight to the heart of someone who feels closer to God on a yoga mat than dressed up in a pew.
Who does that for you? Whose integrity inspires you? Whose passion speaks to the deepest questions in your heart? Whose values make you feel ah, yes, there is hope?
As you can tell, I love people who speak up about what they believe. People who say, “This is what I stand for. This is what I suffer. This is how I yearn to love and live.” By letting you know exactly who they are, they give you permission to take or leave them.
Richmond yoga teacher Aimee Yowell is another one who really goes for it. She is pure embodiment of what she teaches. With the spirit she exudes and the devotion to something greater that she brings to her teaching, each 1 hour and 15 minute class feels like a 3-hour journey to the core of it all. She is unabashed in moving as if the life of her soul depended on it. It’s infectious and it is an invitation to discover what frees my own soul. I love her willingness to put out there exactly who she is and the gift she offers.
Tell me, who turns you on to life? Who inspires you to rise up and participate with all you have in this magical, mystical ride? Tell me. Tell them. Tell others.
