Innocence – Thorns Have Roses

I told a lie. That was bad enough, but to think that my kids heard me. It was the kind of lie that adults call white, but a seven year old is color blind when it comes to her parents’ actions. I was paying for tickets and children under 7 were free. She had only JUST turned seven. It seemed harmless enough to me. When I turned around and saw them standing there listening, I was devastated. I could see a reflection of the apple dropping out of the tree of good and evil in their wide eyes. Innocence was lost.

It’s a look I’d seen before, like when I had to hold down my two year old son for a lumbar puncture and he looked at me with betrayal in his eyes. I wanted to tell him what Atticus Finch told Jem in To Kill a Mockingbird, “There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible." We all go through it at some point. The garden paradise we had expected turns out to be overrun with weeds. Circumstances can be cruel, nature can strike without warning, people in positions of trust are abusive, and parents lie.

Comedian, George Carlin, was less patient than Atticus Finch. He said, “I'm tired of hearing about innocent victims; this is an outmoded idea. There are no innocent victims. If you're born in this world you're guilty, period. Your birth certificate is proof of guilt.”

What about victims of rape and war? Are they guilty? This seems very harsh. Maybe Carlin was suggesting that to live is to be involved in the messy confusion of life. Each moment happens whether you are ready or not. Things happen, awful things happen, and even if you suffer innocently there are parts of you that can never be anyone’s victim. They remain within your choice and power – things such as your attitude and your thoughts. This is not to say it’s easy, because it’s certainly not, but it is possible to rise about trauma and regain lost innocence.

Is it wrong to expect innocence to last? Is innocence just a childlike quality that we grow out of? As the old proverb says, “Innocence plays in the backyard of ignorance.” You can’t live your life with blinkers on. Maybe innocence is like an evolutionary bubble-wrap that keeps you optimistic for long enough to find your way in the world – before the rot sets in.

What is the alternative to innocence? A life of bitterness or loneliness where you can’t forgive, can’t trust your own judgment, can’t believe in your own dreams? Is that living? It’s no accident that the Hebrew word for innocence is “Tam”. When Tam is spelled in reverse, it forms the word for death. The loss of innocence is the beginning of death.

Call me naive, but I still believe that innocence is possible. For me, innocence is neither a childlike faith that needs to be protected from reality nor is it an adult realism that is blunted by life experience. It is mature innocence, sharpened by experience and shaped by reality. Innocence is at least one half of wisdom. It is the half of wisdom that refuses to follow fear’s lead. Fear turns experience into unchanging beliefs about yourself and the world. Innocence is the gateway to love and optimism that manifest in ever changing ways.

In a sense, innocence is the essence of your inner sense that all there is is love. There is nothing to defend, nothing to protect, nothing to fear and nothing to lose. It’s so easy to forget this along the way. Love exists despite overwhelming evidence – thorns have roses, tears have heart and trauma has wisdom.

This sort of innocence doesn’t expect perfection. Even the people you trust most will hurt you greatly. Trauma will strike somebody, somewhere, if not you. Parents will lie. Life will be hard. But underneath it all, you have a spirit that remains open and peaceful. It connects you to the Source of life that is resilient enough to withstand any hardship and gentle enough to cradle your innocence like a new born baby. This innocence can never be fully lost. Only forgotten.

What's In a Name?

Naming someone or something is a powerful experience. We go to great trouble to select names for babies, hoping to choose something that a child can feel proud of throughout their life. There are other reasons too, such as a parent’s personal preference. It’s one of the first and last things a parent gets to decide for their kids without any kick-back.

There is a great episode in Seinfeld about naming a baby. It involves George Costanza who wants to name his future baby “7” because Mickey Mantle wore the number 7.

He shares it with some friends who steal the name for their baby who is about to be born.

George is devastated. Even as he drives them to the hospital, he’s still trying to convince them not to use his name. In the middle of a contraction, as they wheel the poor woman along the corridors of the hospital, George harasses the woman begging her not to use the name “7”. Eventually the husband gets fed up and says, “George! She’s in labor!” George shouts back as only George can do, “So am I!”

Whether it’s a baby or a business, an invention or an idea, choosing a name is important. It’s a stamp of recognition. It’s the precursor to letting a new creation loose in the world. It’s like one of those parties from last century when a butler presents each arriving guest as they walk downstairs, with all eyes on them. May I present to you… my new baby, my new idea, my new thought, my new identity.

I remember choosing a name for the first youth group I ran. We discussed it as a group and came up with the name “Nostrils”. I don’t remember why, but that was the name. It was my task to report back to the leadership the theological reason for the name. That was easy. The Hebrew creation story says that God created the first people from dust of the earth and breathed life into them through their nostrils. I always thought that was a great detail to include. Presumably a force powerful enough to create the earth could do it with a simple thought, but instead chose to do it through the one of the oddest looking parts of the human anatomy. So the name “Nostrils” indicates new life and a breath of fresh air.

Next in the story Adam was given the power to name all the animals. This was an important detail. Presumably God could have zapped names straight into human heads, but instead the story says that people had the responsibility of naming other species. There are a couple of reasons why I think this is significant.

1. Names are an important part of the creative act. They aren’t the same as the creative act, but they follow soon after. A name is not the person or thing itself. It’s just the best attempt of humans to portray the unique identity of a person or thing that is ultimately beyond words or description.

2. When you name something, you feel your connection to it. You grow to understand its complexities and character. With this connection, you feel some ownership and responsibility for its health and future.

3. Names don’t last forever. They often change to match an evolving identity. The Bible is full of name changes. I like to think that this is an ancient intuitive understanding of evolution. Everything and everyone is always changing, and our names change to reflect the natural evolution of things.

Names Are Intentional

What has been your experience of naming people or things? Do you feel the privilege and responsibility? Do you feel the connection? How did the names arise for you? Did it happen in sudden moments of clarity or after a long period of discernment?

Some names seem to be plucked out of thin air. Pringles potato chips were named by a marketing team who, in desperation, opened up the telephone book and pointed a finger. Steve Jobs told his small start up staff that if they didn’t come up with a name by 5 pm that day, he would name the company Apple. Apparently, they failed.

Most names emerge with more planning and precision. Whether a name arises out of a long process or a spontaneous moment, there is often a convergence of ideas.

Here at C3, we have been in a naming discernment process for close to a year. The first step was to collect the feedback from a wide variety of sources that said we need a new name. Then we put a team of marketers in place to collect and collate the community’s suggestions. This team worked hard to find the common themes and synergy in the suggestions. The incredible thing about our new name process is that at one point, over the course of a week, close to a dozen people came forward with variations on a theme that ended up being our proposed name. I’m a great believer in convergence. Ideas come together in a context of openness and creativity.

Like Adam in the Hebrew story, we are about to let our new creation loose in the world. It’s as if we are standing at the bottom of a grand spiral staircase, and presenting our community to the world. The excitement and good energy are palpable. But I will make you wait a little longer to reveal the new name.

When Names are Misleading

First, a thought about name changes. Sometimes names have to be changed because they no longer accurately convey the essence of what they are naming. There are some famous examples of names that are lost in translation.

The Electrolux Vacuum was manufactured in Sweden. They created a slogan that didn’t translate so well in America. The slogan was, “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.” We’ve all heard of truth in advertising, but that’s going too far. Then there’s Pepsi. In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” came out as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.” That’s a bold claim. The baby food, Gerber, translates in French as vomit. They withdrew from France. The German makers of backpacks called them “Body Bags.” This is only slightly less confusing than the use of the American term “Fanny Pack” to an Australian. The telecom company Orange had to change its ads in Northern Ireland. “The future’s bright … the future’s Orange” was lost in translation in Northern Ireland where the term Orange indicates protestant. The implied message that the future is bright, the future is Protestant, didn’t sit well with the Catholic Irish population.

Lastly, when Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what’s inside, since so many people can’t read. The picture of the chubby baby didn’t look so cute to the African market.

Christ Community Church is a name that served this community well for over 30 years, but in recent years has been lost in translation. This has happened in two almost opposite ways.

1. It has prevented people from finding us who would otherwise LOVE what this community does and stands for. People have reported that it took many years to come through the doors because the name made them think it would be a traditional church.

2. It misled some who did come through the doors. Some thought they would be attending a traditional church and felt deceived by the name.

Either way it has become clear that the name Christ Community Church has become an impediment to this community evolving into what it needs to become. The time has come for a name change.

From Particular to Inclusive

After discerning that a name change was in order, the next question we had to ask was what to call the community.

Most of the community submissions expressed the need to move from a narrow Christian name to something more universal and inclusive.

In recent years, the community has become spiritual home to people of all spiritual paths.

Interestingly, so many of the name changes in the Bible reflect the same movement from particular to universal. Abram, which means ‘father’, was changed to Abraham, which means ‘father of multitudes.’ Jacob was changed to Israel to signify the change from a man with twelve sons (and a daughter) to a nation consisting of twelve tribes. The twelve tribes eventually came to signify all the earth in the New Testament.

The distinctively Jewish name Saul was changed to Paul to indicate the shift in focus to include gentiles. The phrase Jew and Gentile indicates all people. So many names in the Bible were changed to indicate this movement from one person, one tribe, one religion, to all humanity.

So let me break the tension and tell you the new name. After collecting the community’s responses and taking the advice of the marketing committee, the board of trustees selected a name that both honors the history of the community and points us forward to a more inclusive future. The new name celebrates diversity and the open exchange of ideas that arises from a diverse group of people. The new name honors the grounding in the Christian tradition but says that this community is part of a universal movement that is so much larger than Christianity.

Is the community still a Christian church? The community includes Christianity but is now intentionally an inclusive spiritual community. The community welcomes people of all backgrounds and spiritual perspective.

Here it is – drum roll please… The new name is C3 Exchange, an inclusive spiritual community.

What do the 3 “C”s stand for? Here is what we want to ask you to do. The 3 Cs don’t stand for anything official and unchanging. They are a connection to the past, and also an opportunity to create many resonant words. So the board would like to receive your submissions for C words that resonate with your experience of this community, and they will all be used in various contexts. We will collect all the C3 responses and use them in many different ways.

Beyond Names

There is an old saying that a person has three names: the name he inherits, the name his parents give him, and the name he makes for himself. C3 Exchange, An Inclusive Spiritual Community is our new name. C3 is the name we inherit. C3 Exchange is the name the current parents of the community give it. However, it’s what we do as a community that will create the lasting name.

As we join with others in building a global community marked by one love, we will make a name for ourselves that we can be proud of. As we do our part to create a global consciousness that we are all related and that the way we treat each other matters more than what we believe, we will make a name for ourselves. As we live in harmony with the earth, we will make a name for ourselves. As we pursue wellness that is not the absence of disease but the presence of all that makes life whole, we will make a name for ourselves. As we cultivate a spirit of mindfulness and unity, we will make a name for ourselves.

Where Are You Going on Sunday?

1181506_19612778Let me reference one last name change. Istanbul has a long history of name changes. When the Greeks settled there, it was named Byzantium after the Greek King of the time. When Constantine took Byzantium on behalf of the Romans in the third century, it became Constantinople. In 1930 it was changed to Istanbul which means “in the city”. Istanbul is truly a cosmopolitan city, a centre for people of all religions to mix and exchange ideas.


The story of Istanbul and her name changes is inspirational for us. As we move beyond the type of religious approach that divides and conquers, we branch out as a cosmopolitan community where people of all spiritual paths mix and exchange ideas.

The Indie Rock band, They Might Be Giants revived the classic song Istanbul-

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you’ve a date in Constantinople
She’ll be waiting in Istanbul

You’ve got a date here on Sunday mornings. If you want a date with like-minded and diverse people, they’ll be waiting here at C3 Exchange, YOUR inclusive spiritual community.

As a fellow spiritual seeker on the journey of life, I welcome and honor you. I celebrate your unique spiritual path, and the open exchange of ideas and spirit, the coming of unity in diversity. Namaste.

Control and Inner Peace

Do you ever wonder if your experience is wildly different from other people? If I could just get inside someone else’s head, I would know where I land on a scale of anxious to peaceful. Do other people have the same inner dialogue that goes on in my head? I see people who give the impression of having it all together. Everything seems to come easily for them. But does it? I suspect we all have our struggles in different areas. Some of us just do a better job of keeping it private.

You have your own inner control panel. If you push its buttons, it can generate daytime drama to rival any soap opera. Some of the panelists on your control panel are there at your invitation, like the protector who reminds you to look before you cross the street and the chair of social etiquette who tells you to wear clothes to work and not blurt out whatever comes into your head at a given moment.

Aside from these elected trustees, there are some interlopers who turn up at meetings uninvited. Fear is a classic snoop, circling the tables of your consciousness and interjecting old business at will throughout proceedings. Fear is crafty, demanding that you take control for all the wrong reasons. Anxiety is another intruder. Anxiety is running an agenda two months ahead of where you are now. She wants control too, and will form an alliance with fear to justify her seat at the table.

Fear and anxiety are the obnoxious ones who monopolize the meeting with their rants. These are the consciousness crashers. You find yourself asking them, “Who invited you to the meeting?” or “Whose interests are you representing here?”

Caution is one of your invited panelists. He’s important. He works closely with mindfulness. He makes the group lean in to hear his slow and measured comments, sometimes lulling you into a false sense of security. Of course you feel in control if you build a tiny world with high fences all around it. But others on the panel demand more than this. Caution needs to be stretched by the research and development of possibility. Possibility usually waits for the small talk to end, before interjecting her large vision in to the conversation.

Meanwhile the chair of the board sits slightly back from the table and observes all of the conversational hustle and bustle. At just the right time, her head tilted down, she leans forward, looks over the top of her bifocals and a hush falls over the group. Everyone waits with bated breath for her pearls of wisdom. She goes by many names, the chair of your panel – inner peace, stillness, wisdom, serenity…….
She says, “May we have the serenity to accept the things that cannot be changed right now, the courage to change what can and should be changed immediately, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The panel members pause and listen attentively. All of them feel affirmed and valuable. They enjoy a moment of silent unity. Then fear breaks the stillness, “You fools. Don’t you remember what happened last time we listened to her?” Anxiety continues, “If we change, we will be doomed….”

The conversation sparks in every direction. And serenity rests back in her chair and smiles. She loves it all. She loves them all. All things happen at the right time, not a moment before and not a moment too soon. She doesn’t fight reality. She shifts her perspective so that it fits reality like lovers spooning in the still of the night. She is the ultimate trustee. They all trust her. They just can’t get out of their own way to listen to her. That too is okay. She waits and watches and will be there whenever they are ready.

Seed of Peace
First order of business? Accept the minutes all of previous meetings. Do it now. It was what it was. Accept the past and let it go. Now you can move on to business at hand. You don’t need to deal with next month’s agenda. Stay in the present moment as it invites you to love all that arises. Take a moment to tune in to the calm wisdom within you. It is leading you to peace.

Say to yourself: I have the peace of mind to stay calm in all circumstances.

Risk Taking and Inner Peace

It was a simple human interest story in the back pages of a New York newspaper, but it really captured my imagination. A train pulls up at a subway platform at New York’s Grand Central Station. A well dressed woman exits the train. She realizes that she only has one glove, and the other is on the train. She can see it on the seat where she was sitting. But the doors of the train are closing. In the quickest of flashes she realizes that she won’t be able to get back on the train in time, so she shrugs her shoulders and throws the remaining glove through the doors just before they close. The train pulls out of the station and the woman shuffles on with the crowds towards the escalators.

The article didn’t say any more than that. I don’t know what she was thinking. Maybe she thought that whoever finds her glove might as well have both of them. Maybe it was an act of resignation. I don’t know. The reason I like the image is because it’s a great metaphor for letting go. After spending so much energy trying not to lose things, gloves and relationships and beliefs, there come certain times when you just have to stretch your arm out and toss your remaining ideals onto a moving train. And I love that it’s a glove. Once you have removed both gloves your hands are free to let go of all sorts of things.

It doesn’t come naturally, does it? We are clingers, not Maxwell Klinger from M*A*S*H with cross-dressing flair but clingers with a “c”. We cling to our gloves as if our lives depended on them. We cling to our children as if our children couldn’t possibly survive without us. We cling to our beliefs as if we are nothing without them.

The challenge is that the train’s about to leave, the doors are closing and you have to decide. Clutch on to the last vestige of the way things were, or release your grip, take a risk and live in the moment. Sometimes you have to toss a glove onto a departing train just to feel the exhilaration of being alive, to remind yourself to loosen up and take a risk. Live a little. It’s all changing anyway. You might as well enjoy the ride.

The freedom of letting go is that you feel lighter, you move more easily, you have less baggage and you discover that most of what you let go comes back to you in some other form anyway if you are open. Why would I be talking about this on Mother’s Day?

Because mothers learn the ultimate lesson in letting go, usually after some struggle. Imagine having to let go of a human life that you carried in your body and still carry in your heart! It must be terrifying. Your five year old son wants to use the men’s restroom by himself for the first time. He’s getting embarrassed about going into the women’s room with you. You are torn between his desire for independence and the dangers that lurk inside. So you stand at the door and talk to him the whole time through the door. It doesn’t matter that everyone in the restaurant thinks you’re crazy. Your protective instinct is stronger than vanity. Your thirteen year old daughter wants to go on her first date, alone with a boy. She’s getting embarrassed about being seen in public with her parents. You are torn between her desire for independence and your understanding of sixteen year old boys. So you send her off with a cell phone GPS tracker and wait by the front door in a rocking chair. Your eighteen year old son wants to join the military. Your twenty year old daughter wants to get married. Your adult children want to move across the other side of the world, taking your grandchildren with them. Now you see why you need to practice on easy things like gloves and beliefs. You have to prepare yourself for life’s big surrenders.

Mothers and Gods

Here is an idea to think about. Gods and goddesses through the centuries have been created in the image of mothers. Mothers have had their creative and protective instincts in all cultures, so religions created goddesses to match.

Do you know the three proofs that Jesus was Jewish?

1. He lived at home until he was 33.
2. He was sure his Mother was a virgin.
3. His Mother was sure he was God.

A group of second graders were asked some questions about mothers.

What ingredients are mothers made of? 
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice in the world and one dab of mean. 
2. They had to get their start from men’s bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

It seems to me that it’s no accident that religions have always described gods and goddesses with parent imagery. Gods and Goddesses model the same balance between holding on and letting go that parents learn.

In The Hebrew Prophets, God is described as being like a mother bear protecting the cubs she has just fed. “Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open.”- Hosea 13;8

No matter how calm and forgiving you think you are, when you see your child getting hurt, you will be become a warrior on the warpath taking no prisoners. Comedian Dave Barry once said, “If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.” A parent’s passionate opposition to war and drink driving will multiply after having children. The protective instinct is so strong.

My Mum was always my most loyal supporter on the sports field. She was known to pace the sidelines while I played football, calling out “reminders” to referees and shall we say “suggestions” to opponents. When I was knocked unconscious one day, she had to be restrained from running onto the field. One of my teammates was Julian McMahon who is now famous as the Nip/Tuck Doctor. His father was the Prime Minister of Australia in the 1970’s. My Mum almost came to blows with the former Prime Minister because he was in her way on the sideline. My Mum was cut in the mold of the God of the Hebrew Prophets. Don’t be fooled by her size and gentle demeanor. She is incredibly nurturing, and also a mother bear protecting her cubs.

In the 8th century BCE Israel was at a crossroads. The northern and southern kingdoms had split. There was political unrest and scandal. Jon and Kate plus 8 is a walk in the park compared to Israel at this time. Israel had six kings in twenty years and four of them assassinated their predecessors. Israel was like a rebellious teenager, experimenting with a lot of different religions and lifestyles desperate for peace in the midst of so much change.

Hosea himself, at the command of God, married a pagan temple prostitute who eventually left him for another man. Life was confusing. God is described as being like a mother who uses all her guile to keep her teen on the straight and narrow. Hosea puts some words in God’s mouth that sound like a speech you would hear from any parent. “After all I’ve done for you! I named you and fed you, and then you go and do this! Don’t you forget that I brought you into the world and I can take you out of the world!”

What is your image of God? Many of us have left behind the wrathful, war like God. That doesn’t mean you need to leave behind a God who has passion and feels the pain of the world as if it was her own. Many of us have left behind the interventionist God. That doesn’t mean it’s easy for God to see us at the brink of independence and NOT intervene. It’s no accident that God is described with mother imagery. It’s the nature of creative living and loving to seek the balance between holding on and letting go.

The ultimate risk of all time is captured in the Hebrew creation story. Imagine creating the world and then giving people free will. Imagine raising children to the brink of independence, then setting them loose to make their own mistakes and find their way in the world.

Spiritual Risk Taking

Mothers learn about risk taking the hard way. But it’s a lesson we all learn one way or another. It ultimately comes down to your expectations. Do you expect guarantees or are you in this for the adventure of being alive? Is spirituality an exercise in risk assessment or a fearless freefall into the rabbit hole of what is? One of my favorite American philosophers, William James, said “It is only by risking that we really ever live at all.”

Without risk, you would never escape from the prison of who you think you have to be to satisfy the critics into the fullness of your true self that always was. The irony is that you need to take risks in order to move beyond the small self that keeps itself alive by believing there is too much at stake. There isn’t. There is more of substance in a single glove than in the ego’s delusions of permanence. At your essence you know that it is worth the risk because on the other side of the risk lies freedom.

In your quietest moments you know that it is no contest. As Anais Nin said, “The risk to remain tight in a bud is more painful than the risk to blossom.”

As you blossom, you realize that there are no risks because there are no mistakes. When you are grounded in inner peace, whatever you do is appropriate and if you have to adjust your course, you do that and move on without self blame or judgment.

Risk Taking and Mother Earth

Now relate this issue of risk taking to the massive oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico? Was that a mistake? Did BP fail in their risk assessment? Has offshore drilling finally been shown to be too costly? Is this another illustration that mindless human consumption is the greatest mistake of all time, and to continue unabated would be to risk our very survival as a species?

A spiritual perspective on the oil spill cuts to the heart of the issue – which is misplaced human desire. As long as we pad our lives with rapidly disintegrating and elusive comforts, we will create an over eager oil industry which will in turn be forced to take risks to meet demand and make profit. Whether it is Chernobyl in 1986 or Chandeleur Island off Louisiana’s coast in 2010, industry will take risks to meet insatiable human demand. Let’s not be naïve. Why would we expect BP to tell us to stop being so needy? The oil spill is a greasy indictment on human greediness. Every one of us should hang our heads in shame at the devastation WE are a part of. The deaths of eleven people, the threat to the fishing industry and the devastation to wildlife and beaches all rest squarely on our heads just as much as BP’s.

We need an inner and an outer resolution. The outer resolution will include a risk assessment that matches human desires. We can’t have the lifestyle without the risk. Whether its nuclear plants or drilling sites, there will be risks. Our risk assessments need to include damage to habitats and cultures as well as workers and markets. It’s all related. We are all related.

The inner resolution has its own risk assessment. When we learn to skate on the perfect imperfection of the present moment, then human desire will slide into the ice grooves of what is. We will bend our desires until nothing but reality will satisfy them. The oil slick will be cleaned up from the inside out – our insides. We will drill deep into our inner resources and realize that nothing of any significance is lacking in our lives, and then the BP’s of the world will follow suit and adjust their obsessive drilling into earth’s resources.

Once we realize that nothing of any significance is lacking, then we will realize that there is nothing of any significance to lose and risk will find its rightful place once again.

Taking Action

Let me tie this all together – mothers, risks, and eco activism.

Another image that is used of God in the Bible is that of a parent who wipes the tears from their children’s faces. You will remember that Jesus had an encounter with a woman who bathed his feet with her tears and wiped them dry with her hair. Relate this to the suffering of the earth.

As well as inner and outer awareness, we should DO something practical about the oil spill as well – something that only a mother or a god would think of, something that involves our bodies. If the oil on the gulf is the tears of the earth, then use your hair to mop up her tears. You can actually send hair to help clean up the oil. Check out this organization-

http://matteroftrust.org/

What a great way to be the change. Make an inner resolve to stay open to the adventure of life. Put the desires of your small self in their rightful place. Adjust your lifestyle according to your new consciousness. Put your body where your heart is the way a mother does, Respond to the desecration of the earth by all of us like a mother bear protecting her cubs.

All of life is a delicate balance between holding on and letting go. Toss a glove in a train this week just as practice so you are ready for big things like sending your kids off to college and surrendering the limited beliefs of your ego. It will be worth the risk.

Glove tossing warrior in me greets glove tossing warrior in you. Namaste.


For Further Reflection-
How do you find the balance between holding on and letting go?
Do you agree that people create Gods and Goddesses in the image of people/ mothers?
How do you find inner peace in the midst of chaos and change?

Do you think our consumption and lifestyles bears any responsibility for the gulf oil spill?

Change and Inner Peace

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow morning and forgot about your most stubborn habit? Went to bed a nail biter, and woke up without the slightest urge to nibble! Or went to bed a procrastinator and woke up making snap decisions left and right. Not because you did anything to conquer your habit, just because you forgot. Clean as a whistle.

Now imagine if you could apply the same magical cure to a more destructive habit. A friend developed Alzheimer’s Disease. After being a heavy smoker for over 30 years, she woke up one morning and forgot that she was a smoker. She never smoked again. Her health improved in so many ways, and she became a very peaceful person. I wouldn’t wish Alzheimer’s on anyone, and after watching my grandfather suffer the humiliation of forgetting his own wife I am mindful of its damage. But my friend’s experience offers a beautiful reminder of the power of memory and the ability to develop inner peace while so much is changing inside and out.

Granted there are many downsides of losing your memory, but the upside is that you can enjoy things as if for the first time. You are fully present to the moment at hand. Life is so full of surprises when you approach life without assumptions. Imagine forgetting all your enemies and having no recollection of any complaints. That would be liberating. Imagine how fearless and focused you would be if you had absolutely no memory of your worries and limitations. You would live every moment with curiosity and intensity.

Memory is overrated and often inaccurate. Mark Twain once said, “When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.” So much memory is built around a story that may have very little truth to it and may no longer be serving any purpose in your life. Take habits for example. You continue in the words of St Paul “to do the very thing you hate.” Why?

It’s time to change the auto responder on some of your memories and habits. Turn a habit into a choice by bathing it in the light of awareness, revealing its lies for what they are and moving beyond it.

Awareness is the mother of all choices. She is like a mother who leads her children to the brink of independence, then lets them go. Awareness can’t make the change for you, but it can remind you that you are stronger than any habit and so much larger than any circumstance.

There is a condition called “pleasant dementia” which up to 50% of people with dementia enjoy. The great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson began to experience dementia in his 60’s. When a friend asked how he was, Emerson is reported to have said, "Quite well. I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well."

When I reach my twilight years, no matter what my mental state, I want to feel peaceful in body, mind and spirit. I will start preparing now – practicing peace. I will only give my memory so much power, and will give my awareness veto power to choose what serves me and makes the world a kinder place.

Emerson wrote the poem “Terminus” when he was 63.
Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.

I can’t help wondering if his late life peace grew out of many years of awareness and choice. It certainly can’t hurt. Check back in thirty years for an update.

Seed of Awareness
Awareness is the mother of all choices. She is like a mother who leads her children to the brink of independence, then lets them go. Awareness can’t make the change for you, but it can remind you that you are stronger than any habit and peaceful through all life’s changes.

Say to yourself: I inhale the precious breath of each moment; I have peace in body, mind, and spirit.

Finding Inner Peace on Holy Ground

I recently bought a new pair of running shoes. I decided to buy top of the range shoes to save my back and knees some wear and tear. These things have so much padding in them that every step is like a foot massage. When I add in my orthotics it makes me about a foot taller. I’ve been bumping into equipment at the gym all week. The lime green laces close the deal on what are definitely the shoes of the century.

So you would think I would be all set to become the marathon runner I’ve never been. Think again. Not two weeks into my new shoes, I discover that barefoot running is making a comeback. Research suggests that all the padding might make the shoes more comfortable, but it may not be good for your body. Fully loaded shoes may take the soul out of running, when it would be much better to strip a few layers of cushion out of the shoe and get back to basics.

Do you see where I’m heading with this? If feet are what we use to stand on holy ground, then shoes are a metaphor for protecting yourself against the experience. To take your shoes off is to remove all the barriers to a complete and direct engagement with the moment. Your soul doesn’t need to be cushioned or protected, even if your soles do. What are some of the common and subtle ways you cushion your soul against a direct experience of life? Maybe you rationalize and keep conversations at a theoretical level like whether there is a God or not. That can be a subtle way of avoiding a direct experience. Maybe you get tripped up on language rather than focusing on the experience itself. Maybe you are mistrustful and skeptical and put barriers up between you and other people. Maybe you have self critical voices that tell you that you aren’t good enough or spiritual enough to experience inner peace.

There are so many subtle ways that we keep our shoes on and create an unnecessary buffer between ourselves and a direct experience of peace.

Removing your shoes is a common practice in many cultures. It generally represents humility and respect. It also signifies that you wish peace and goodwill on the home you visit. Remember that it was an ancient custom to wash feet, which implied sandals off. Foot washing is a radical act of intimacy. Finally, it is a mark of respect to the earth. If you leave your shoes at the door, you leave behind the toxins and also save on cleaning costs and the resulting costs to the environment.

There are multiple reasons why shoes off is a great policy for any home. If you don’t do it, think about it starting. It creates a culture of mindfulness and respect.

In 1999, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave a speech (National Press Club October 6, 1999) where he reflected on the courage of those who had testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Many of them had been treated grievously. They had every right to be angry and seek revenge. Instead they came and told their stories in the hopes of building peace and moving on. Archbishop Tutu said in this speech that he had such respect for their courage and humanity that he wanted to take off his shoes. It was as if “he was standing on holy ground.”

This morning I remove my shoes for today I am standing on holy ground. It’s not holy because it’s in a church. You could say it’s holy in spite of being in a church. So much of what religion stands for is divisive and elitist. As comedian George Carlin once said – “Religion is sort of like a lift in your shoes. If it makes you feel better, fine. Just don’t ask me to wear your shoes.” Tragically, Christianity has too often betrayed its roots as a religion based in mutual love and concern and claimed exclusive rights to the truth. This ground is not holy because it’s in a church. It’s holy because you’re here. I remove my shoes in honor of you, for in your presence I experience what many people call God. It’s holy because of our shared stories and our vision for universal love and healing in the world. We know that the world will know no peace until there is peace in our homes, and that there will be no peace in our homes until there is peace within. So I remove my shoes to bring me closer to the soul of life as Moses did when he stood before the burning bush. May I discover some of the inner peace that Moses found despite his limitations and his self critical inner voice. He had a job to do, and his motivation was grounded in the experience of what he called Yahweh.

Inner Peace and Nature

Taking your shoes off is a mark of respect for the place you are standing, and it seems that a connection with location builds a sense of inner peace. Where and when do you most often experience inner peace? Have you experienced it recently? Would you like more of it? Inner peace is something you recognize when you see it, like a burning bush. You see someone you may not even know and their peace is almost blinding. You find yourself saying, “I want what she’s having.” Or else “give me some of what he’s got.”


Studies have shown that nature is the most likely setting for an experience of inner peace. The second most likely time to experience peace is while viewing nature art. Almost half of all people who report having mystical experiences have them in nature. (For more information, see this book written by an atheist author Ecstasy; A study of some Secular and Religious Experiences by Marghanita Laski)

This has been a common theme in many spiritual traditions. A Zen Buddhist monk asks, “How may I enter into enlightenment?” His master points to a mountain steam and says, “Do you hear the murmur of the stream? There you may enter.”

The preeminent mythologist, Joseph Campbell, once said God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!” I can see what he means, can’t you?

One of the early American wilderness preservationists, John Muir, described his experience of the Sierras, “Oh, these vast, calm measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.”

Possibly my favorite expression of inner peace through nature comes from Wendell Berry-

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not
tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

There are so many examples of people who find inner peace in nature. Maybe you have your own experience of nature and peace.

There is a danger in thinking that inner peace comes only through the water fall moments of serenity. The Hebrew story of the burning bush offers a challenge. How do you maintain inner peace in the face of fear and struggle? Moses was so frightened that he had to close his eyes.

I woke up this morning to a really nasty and judgmental email. I had to pause for a few moments. After so many years in my role, I have learnt to separate out other people’s projections and frustrations from what is helpful feedback. I had to ground myself to put the message in perspective. Maybe you have had the same experience when someone else’s issues threaten your own sense of peace. How do you respond? Do you respond, or do you let it go and move on? There are no black and white answers to this question. But this I know for sure- if you are grounded in peace within, then whatever you do, whether you withdraw or engage, will be appropriate. On the other hand, if you are out of balance yourself then your words and actions will likely have a lot of projection and inappropriate reactions.

Inner Peace and Eco-Activism

This leads to a related question. What difference does the experience of inner peace make to the way you live your life? Does it make you retreat from life, or engage it more fully?

The eco-visionary and spiritual activist, Satish Kumar, initially thought that spirituality was a retreat from the world but he then grew into a new understanding. He grew up in India according to the Jain religion which is a very eco-friendly religion. At the age of 4 his father died and he questioned the meaning of life and death. At age 9 he was so moved by this experience that he left home. He spent 9 years just walking around the forest and the villages barefoot so that he didn’t leave too firm an imprint on the earth and with a cloth around his face so that he didn’t unconsciously inhale a living creature. He took his duty very seriously to live apart from the world, to renounce the ways of the world and to live in communion with nature. When he was 18 he had an encounter with Ghandi that changed his whole outlook on spirituality.

Ghandi told him that his spirituality should make him more involved in the world. Kumar set out on another walking pilgrimage. This time he walked 8,000 miles to visit each of the leaders of the four nuclear nations at the time. He took a tea bag as a gift for each of the leaders. As he arrived at each of the leaders he presented the tea bag and said to them “at the point where you attempt to launch nuclear war, I invite you to pause and drink a cup of tea.”

Aha! Drinking tea in some cultures is like taking your shoes off. It’s a sacred act to be undertaken mindfully. Inner peace that withdraws from the needs of the world is a pointless peace. Outer activism that is undertaken without inner peace will be ineffective. The inner and the outer go together. The approach that Kumar took with the world leaders was summed up with the Sanskrit phrase, “So Hum” which translates as “You are, therefore I am.” This relates to the earth as well.
You are, therefore I am. Wasn’t this the lesson that Moses learnt at the burning bush? In the face of an experience of the great I am, he simply said, “Here I am.” This is all that inner peace asks of you. Just be present.

Your Experience of Inner Peace

You don’t need to go to any special places to experience inner peace. You can do it in any moment that you are fully present and open to surprise. It might be in nature, or else it might be in a room full of people. Where do you experience inner peace in a special way? The incredible truth is that it can be anywhere and anytime. There are no limits to the possibilities.

Joseph Campbell made this point in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He tells of an ancient Hindu holy man who propped his feet on a sacred symbol by the Ganges. A Sikh passing by asked him how he dared to profane the religious symbol. “Good sir,” he replied, “I am sorry; but will you kindly take my feet and place them where there is no such sacred symbol.” The offended Sikh roughly grasped the man’s ankles and moved his feet first to the right, then to the left, but — to his amazement — in every place that the feet touched, a new symbol sprang from the ground. Finally he understood. There is no place that is not holy.

groundThere is no place that is not holy, if you are prepared to remove your shoes and open your mind. Peace isn’t present in some places and not others. Peace is present wherever you remove some of the layers of unnecessary protection and judgment and let your vulnerability touch the beauty of life.

With my shoes off and my soul laid bare, I greet you without pretense or defense. Namaste.

For Further Reflection-

Do you think that all places are holy?

Do you experience some places as particularly sacred?
What experiences bring you back to inner peace?
In what ways do you harmonize inner peace with outer action?


Bucket List of Intentions as a Parent

I woke up with the crystal clear thought on my mind- “Make scrambled eggs with the kids.” Not turn the kids into scrambled eggs mind you, but get the whisk out and show the kids how to mash up an awesome batch of fluffy scramble. So we did, and it was delicious (both the eggs and the time).

It felt like the most important thing I did that day, like the sort of bucket list moment that you just store in your own mind.

Do you have times like that? It can go either way. It can direct where you put your attention, as in making scrambled eggs, or it can be a decision to not spend any more energy on something that doesn’t feel worthwhile.

Sometimes I wonder if the whole notion of an afterlife was just a cunning plan from ancient spiritual leaders to get us to make the most of this life. An afterlife is so mysterious and unknown. What is right in front of our noses is not.

So when Jesus said “don’t store up treasures in barns for some future time” I hear it as call to urgency. Buddha was attributed with saying something very similar. Maybe it’s a universal truth. There’s no point scrambling eggs and putting them in Tupperware for later. Life doesn’t reheat well. It needs to be savored now while it’s fresh. There’s no point just thinking about spending time with your kids. Actually do it, and don’t delay.

All of this urgent energy bubbled up into a fresh baked affirmation, a Seed of Urgency, particularly for parents but it relates to all of us.

Seed of Urgency
What are you waiting for? Your time with children at home is fleeting. If you store up treasures, you could miss your chance to enjoy them. Apply the same principle to much larger things than money; like forgiveness or praise. If you store up kindness or encouragement for some future time, you just might miss your chance to express them. Don’t delay. Express something you have been meaning to say to your children. Do it today.

Say to yourself: I take every opportunity to express my love for my kids.

So here’s my bucket list of intentions as a parent-
1. See my kids smile every day.
2. Tell my kids I love them every day.
3. Tell my kids they’re amazing at specific things every day.
4. Begin every correction, with encouragement.
5. Forgive myself for moments of impatience.
6. Forgive my kids for any and every time they mess up.
7. Learn from my kids how to play in the moment.
8. Put time with my kids before chores.
9. Help my kids give voice to their dreams
10. Savor every fleeting moment

Now, excuse me. The kids have some scramble ready for me. They don’t even need my help any more.