The Story Midwife

Happy Birthday Week to ME!

Trish, age three, Burt and Ernie birthday cake - made by Aunt Beth, my mother's sister.

__________________

Yep - it's birthday week!  Wahoo!  I love my birthday week and drink it all in with feisty joy.  I'm an Aquarius, born January 22, 1975.  For those of you who aren't math geniuses, that makes me 32 years old on Monday.

In our house, the birthday girl or boy gets the whole week. Richard and Sammy have sweetly gifted me with a present each morning before Sammy hops aboard the bus. Monday it was a recipe book (handcrafted by Sammy and Daddy with LOTS of tape) full of recibes for just one item: the mango lassi! Ooh, I love Indian food, in particular the traditional Indian mango drink. The boys got a whole pile of mangoes and accompanying ingredients and Sammy and I whipped them up for dinner on Monday night. Tuesday I got a new orange (favorite color) folding toothbrush. Today it was the new Stephanie Plum mystery by Janet Evocovich, Twelve Sharp. (I'm a sucker for a quirky murder mystery, and Stephanie Plum takes the cake. No pun intended...) Last night Sammy took me out for pizza, and tonight we'll do something special, too. (Richard's at the Big City Church both nights.) This weekend friends are taking us out for pasta and the theater. I think it'll be a great birthday week for me.

This photo above of me at my 3rd birthday party is tender for me. Each time I really look at it - and into the eyes of my three-year-old self - I tear up. In the midst of preparing our house for sale, I recently re-discovered my baby book with photos from my early childhood. Many find me with a strained smile or no smile at all. Here though, at age three, I have a spontaneous smile - maybe even a precursor to a giggle? It 's both sad and heartwarming to see my/her face. I want to scoop her up as I have so often scooped up my son and ask her what she knows. To tickle her and snuggle with her and sing her to sleep. To love her like she's never been loved before.

Over the last several weeks, I've been exploring EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), an energy-based, self-healing method based on the meridians, as well as "mind training" methods that integrate prayer, meditation, EFT and hypnosis. As a contemplative who leans deeply into Buddhist Insight Meditation and treasures the journey of life (including the rich folds of the soul that darkness, sorrow, and grief lend), I am reluctant to try and am skeptical of ultra "light-based", instantaneous, "change-your-mind-and-change-your-life" recipes for success, happiness and manifestation. 

In his book Original Self, author, musician, psychotherapist, and former monk (now there's a combo I love!) Thomas Moore offers that when we are "chronically trying to be someone other than [our] original self, persuaded that we are not adequate and should fit some norm of health or correctness, we may find a cool distance gradually separating us from the deep and eternal person, that God-given personality, and we may forget both who we were and who we might be."

Three more quotes from Original Self:

   "The soul has its own set of rules; the events of the soul are cyclic and repetitive. Familiar themes come round and round. The past is more important than the future. The living and the dead have equal roles. Pleasures are deep, and pain can reach the very foundations of our existence."

   "The soul doesn't evolve or grow, it cycles and twists, repeats and reprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. Its odyssey is a drifting at sea, a floating toward home, not an evolution toward perfection."

   "To be modern is to worship at the altar of health. We look forward to the day when we will be fully balanced and adjusted. We believe we will have arrived there when trouble vanishes and we feel chronically carefree... Behind this attitude lies a salvational fantasy... Once in a group discussion James Hillman was celebrating the soul's pathologies. I supported his stance by saying how important it is to safeguard our symptoms. A man in the group came up to me afterward and said, 'Did I hear you right? Did you speak in favor of preserving our symptoms? How could a therapist, of all people, make such an odd remark?'
   Our neuroses are the raw material out of which an interesting personality may be crafted. They are sometimes dangerous and debilitating but nonetheless valuable...
   Not wallowing in our limitations by creatively dealing with them as resources for a vital life - the prima materia of the alchemists - we arrive not at shallow self-acceptance but at profound love of the soul, which, with its rich mixture of the good and the bad, is the starting point of a creative life."

Whew - this is the sort of stuff that makes my mystic soul come alive! It's also very much in tune with my experience of breath-centered meditation. And, to me anyway, it seems that the hypes of EFT, positive affirmations, and hypnotherapy blatantly contradict this more soul-nurturance view. A 'salvational fantasy', if you will. Yet there are many individuals dear to me that claim the personal and life-altering power of these tools and methods. The movie The Secret is big news in many spiritual circles, as are books by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which contain messages on the laws of abundance and attraction brought forth by the entity Abraham, whom they channel.

As much as the contemplative in me may initially bristle at this sort of language, it has been my experience that where I place my thoughts my attention follows. And I love my readings in the intersection of faith and science, of quantum physics and faith/theology/spirituality, which is at play in EFT, affirmation work, The Secret, and other "mind tools". AND I'm also a Big Fan of the incredibly rich diversity of God.

So - what do I do with all this that initally feels like discord? I'm sitting with it. Exploring it. Opening my mind to the ways these seemingly different world/spirituality views might find stands of similarity, even compatability.

How, you may be begging to know, does this relate to my birthday week? I often find myself claiming themes rather than resolutions for a year, and as my birthday is so close to the new year it is often the marker for such thematic turns around the sun. Lately I feel a rumbling in my belly as I relate to my past. This is not new, and Lord knows I've done a shit load of inner work, therapy, journaling and spiritual direction as I bring healing and peace to my Story. But as my son ages, it becomes more important to me to live "cleanly" from my Story. I'm not sure what I mean by that, exactly. Just that I don't want to bring all the tangles from my family of origin into so many of my encounters with my son. I'm sensing that all of the above - from Thomas Moore to EFT to affirmative mantras - have pieces to contribute to a new layer of healing might occur in my life. Thus, we have a theme for Birthday Year 32. (Incidentally, in numerology the number 32 is broken down to the number 5. Here's what one resource says about the energies of 5. Right in line with child-hearted-ness, I think!)

This is a long post, I know. And full of diverse ideas and thoughts and explorations. If you've stuck with me this far, I'd love to know your thoughts on this. I know some of you personally, and know that you are mystic-contemplative minded folks. How do you integrate (or not) some of these ideas? If you feel yourself more in-line with positive visualization, the laws of attraction and abundance, and other new thought modalities, what do you think of Thomas Moore's assertions? You Buddhists, too - what's your take? I'm interested in creative dialogue here, so be real and be kind.

Okay. I'm off to slather on another coat of paint on some doors on my second floor. When will we ever be done with this house tending so we can get this baby on the market? 

Hmmmm.... Maybe I can harness this law of attraction.  I'm visualizing it now.... The doors are painted, the clutter is gone, the floors are so shiny I can see my face in them... The plumber is on his way to install the new shower... I can see the sale coming...

:-)

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The Story Midwife gets a little press

Church Marks Winter Solstice:
People light candles and walk through a labyrinth to represent the soul's journey out of darkness. 

Iowa's largest newspaper, the Des Moines Register, did a nice little write up about the Winter Solstice concert/ritual I did last week. One little tidbit that did not make it to press: just after the candlelit spiral labyrinth walk and just before the closing song the altar, home to 70-some tealight candles, caught fire. Thankfully there were just a few flames with no harm done and no one hurt.  Exciting, though. And a rather memorable way to end a darkness and light-returning celebration, me thinks.

How did you spend your evening?

A Feather on the Breath of God

The Best Thing About Wind

The best thing about the wind
is the way it plays around. How wind
toys with the dust and drops it, waltzes shirts
hanging out to dry, so they dance,
like goofy scarecrow ghosts.

How it lifts the hems
of green things, high-fives the pineconed crowns
of spruce.

The wind is always switching,
dropping off, coming up, dying down.
We fall for it every time. . . .

For frivolous wind,
we open our windows, forgive
everything. We wait,
like lonesome candles,
for a spark from the wind
on its way somewhere else.

-- Susan Steger Welsh from Rafting on the Water Table

The wind is whipping through Strawberry Point today. Displaying its frivolity in laughing leaves, in dancing curtains, on the faces of relieved survivors of the weekend heat. It's like the whole town is taking a deep breath.

If someone interviewing me for a large, international magazine said I must declare in one word for their millions of readers the heart of my spiritual life I would offer the word Breath. (It's never happened, but who knows?) As one who practices sitting meditation the breath is my companion. Without deep inhalation and rationing the breath, every song I sing would fizzle out and fall flat. It's the breath that gives a singer her oomph.  Oojai breathing in yoga creates heat in the body, brings oxygen-rich blood to the internal organs and muscles, and provides focus in challenging asanas. As a spiritual director it has been my continual experience that most women would give almost anything to feel that they had a few more moments each day for a deep breath in solitude, for wider spaciousness and expansiveness in their lives.  When sitting with one in spiritual direction, my calling with a new client is often to simply remind her to breathe. As a retreat leader, worship leader, and maker of ritual and song this theme appears over and over again from within me and from those whom I serve. It's like we just can't get enough. Even my email address quietly proclaims this love and longing: BreathingSpaces.

To me, breath is the center point of the Sacred. I am ever breathing in the absolute essence of all that is Holy. I cannot escape it. Even when my mind is feeling anything but still and my heart is all a-flutter, my breath continues. It sustains me and gives me life. It does not come and go with my attention.  It is steadfast and constant.

Hildegard of Bingen, a kick-ass healer-singer-mystic woman ahead of her time, knew about breath. She likens us to a feather on the breath of God. Such a lovely image: our lives floating on the grace of God's sustaining wind. God: a singer singing her most passionate, most life-giving, most celebratory song. Us: the feathers dancing on the strains of her melody.

Oh, let us open our windows to this frivolous wind that blows where it will! Let us lift our hems a little higher to feel her breath caressing the tiny hairs of our skin. Let the curtains veiling our hearts flap, flap, flap and part to make way for the peace flags within to kick up their heels, high and rowdy and whipping in the breeze. Let us fall back into the breath of God and let our lives float in release and grace. Let us finally invite in forgiveness.

Let us, let us, let us.