Yoga: yoking. Because I have not studied or read up on yoga, I speak from my experience. For me, the yoking is of mind-body-spirit. Interesting that Jesus is remembered as saying, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” This captures my experience of yoga. Yoga eases the often heavy yoke I carry across my shoulders (my shoulders are often tight), lightening my burden. The yoke and burden remain; however, I am eased and lightened by the end of a yoga practice.

I began weekly yoga class 15 years ago the September after my late husband died. For several years a friend had encouraged me to try Ramesh’s class. Now I found solace in the quiet and rhythmic sessions. Early on, during the meditations tears came unbidden. The stretches and postures led me into a physical release as re-memberings of my late husband arose. Space for silent tears and healing breaths. Lightening my burden as I grieved while being held by the practice within the class.

Since that first class, unless I am out of town or indisposed in some way, I have been present. Since I married again twelve years ago, my husband has joined me. The healing energy of yoga has become almost as important as the air I breathe.

Ramesh, who was taught by a master yogi from India, has been an “initiated” yogi for over 40 years. His classes are part of his practice; the classes’ financial contributions cover the rental cost of the space. With an American name, he is a college professor in his day job . His Pranayama, the breath of life energy, practice includes beginning  with stretching followed by silent meditation. The stretches and postures are done in relation to “breath in and breathe out”, always through the nostrils. Near the end of the class during the second meditation, Ramesh offers his wisdom as we lie in corpse position, releasing ourselves “into the floor”. Body still; mind quiet; spirit listening. Yoga.

I am drawn to Grandmother Ocean, to the immediacy of connection at high tide, called by the energies she wants to share with me. To teach me of her unfathomable depths, her diurnal rhythms, her shifting moods, her playful exuberance. Ten minutes before high tide, I walk down the slight hill from our home onto the dirt road which turns east past at the corner. I look up and am once again stunned by the first view. The Ocean’s beauty surprises me even after these five years. Framed by wild rose bushes, the Ocean rises up beyond the opening. (See photograph on website opening page.)

The immediacy of high tide each day as the water is pushed higher, then drawn further out thrilling by the power. I feel joyous as my heart swells in awe. No two days are alike. Each day the tide is higher up the rocks than the day before or lower. Gradually, I begin to understand the internal rhythms of the ocean. I announce myself: “Great Spirits, It is I, Joy Anna Marie; I am here.” I acknowledge earth, Earth Mother; air, Sky Father; Fire, Grandfather Fire; and water, Grandmother Ocean.

As I go down over the rocks, I choose my sitting rock here on the Maine coast according to Grandmother Ocean’s tidal heights, a rock with enough flat surface for me to sit on so that my feet are submerged in the playfulness of the water rising and retreating. The cold splashes of a larger incoming wave become a foot washing as I ease my feet onto the smaller rocks and stand in the clear water. I am cleansed of other thoughts; the chill rids me of preoccupations. The unexpected in rushing of the tide often shocks me and I laugh aloud as I rejoice with the exuberant wavelets. Today the waves are small, lapping gently yet forcefully, breaking rhythmically as the water surrounding my feet then recedes.

Each time I come to the Ocean, I come to listen. Grandmother teaches me over and over to breathe deeply and be still, be present, to listen. A meditation emerges as I know that I am held by earth, air fire and water. We each are held, all the time, every day. The Creation longs to teach us that we are one with Her. She longs to heal us so that we are strengthened to go out into the world and share that healing in whatever way we are called to. SHE WAITS UPON AND COUNTS ON EACH ONE OF US WILLING TO SAY, “YES, I WILL BE STILL AND LISTEN.” SO BE IT, SO IT IS.

Dreams:a way to listen to God, the title of a small book by Morton Kelsey, a late 20th century Christian mystic. He brought spirituality alive again, particularly as a priest in the Episcopal Church beginning in the 1970’s. I cherish this book title because it captures the potential power and impact of listening to your dreams.The stories of the world’s major religions encompass dreams and visions–the world beyond the five senses. In the first two chapters of the Christian Gospel of Matthew five dreams are recorded.

No faith expression holds the patent on understandings of “God”. However, listening to this energy which comes both from within and from beyond us has the power to enhance and enliven us. “God”: an intelligent, loving energy that wants to help us live more fully, love more wastefully, become more of whom we are meant to become? (to paraphrase Bernie Siegel and Jack Spong). We can recognize this energy when we respond to an experience with mystery, awe and wonder.

The key is in the responding, particularly when you want to begin remembering your dreams. I liken this to any relationship. If a friend’s name appears on your caller ID and you do not answer, you are not developing the relationship. On the other hand, if you answer and make a connection, the relationship may flourish. This happens with dreams. If you begin simply by remembering how you feel when you wake, you have started to develop your relationship with your dreams. The next step is to write down whatever comes to you when you wake. It may be a feeling or a single image–or a full blown dream. I promise you that if you write these down, you will soon remember your dreams more fully because you have chosen to develop the relationship with your unconscious.(more about the unconscious in a future blog).

Yes, dreams can be more elusive than we would like them to be, and interpretations more challenging than we might want them to be. That is when sharing dreams with a trusted person can be helpful. I work with a Jungian analyst to listen more deeply to my dreams. He is not only steeped in dream interpretation (as Jungians usually are), he also has a more objective perspective than I can possibly have. He constantly reminds me that figures and images and actions in dreams represent aspects of my own unconscious. They are trying to tell me about myself by using images and people. Again this mystery of understanding a dream is about a relationship that is not superficial. Dreams do not comment on the weather or gossip about other people. They are directed to us personally as a way for us to move more intentionally through our lives so that the meaning of our lives is continually revealed and enhanced.

Listening to dreams: a way to lead a more intentional and meaningful life.

More easily written than achieved. However, there are many ways we can expand our listening to ourselves. If we practice listening to ourselves, we may find it easier to listen to others respectfully.  When you have a dynamic relationship with your own thoughts, beliefs, desires, opinions, you are more apt to listen to others’. I have learned to listen to myself primarily through writing, through working with my dreams, through meditation, and through yoga.

When I write, I move thoughts out of the gerbil wheel of my perseverating mind. I bring them to fuller consciousness as I form them into phrases or sentences; I come to new understandings about my way of being in the world as I become interested in exploring past experiences and relationships. I see the thoughts on the page and can more easily develop those thoughts and/or question whether what I have written makes sense.

This commitment to developing my own thinking and exploring the meaning of my life experiences is part of my decision to write this blog. As I write about one experience or idea, I clear my mind and leave open space for more creative thinking. I can save what I have written and return to it another time to develop the thought or story.

I often tell people if you are not falling asleep easily at night, before you get in bed (preferably not in your bedroom) write in a notebook all the things that come to mind after a busy day. When you are finished, close the notebook firmly and say, “I have written down what is concerning me. I will return to these thoughts in the morning. Now I am going to go to sleep.” You are telling your unconscious that you do not have to be awakened  or stay awake worrying over something. You have made your thoughts and experiences conscious and you have promised to deal with it in the future. A caveat: you must actually keep your promise to write more the next day or the deal is off. The unconscious knows when we cheat ourselves.

So that your writing has a chance to become a discipline, I recommend a commitment to using one of Julie Cameron’s books which involves writing three pages daily. I discovered that you cannot write about the same thing over and over for three pages without becoming frustrated and bored with yourself. Three pages forces you through your own impasse into new thinking, insights and ideas. In conjunction with psychotherapy, you can break through all sorts of barriers to living your life more fully with more energy and integrity.

Beginning a blog, as I have, is another way of keeping track of your own listening skills. As I have said, I know I have many ideas and experiences that have taught me an immense amount about myself and pushed me “to know what I know” at a more life giving level. For instance, I was sure today’s blog would be about my meditative practice of sitting through high tide with Grandmother Ocean. That piece simply would not write. I felt stymied and disappointed in myself–why couldn’t I make it work when this discipline is so essential to me? Then I mentioned my impasse to my husband, who said, “Why don’t you write about the dream you worked on yesterday and shared with me this morning?” I responded, “All right, why not? I’ll try that. I’m not getting anywhere with this topic.”

And here I am. I have set forward four topics I want to blog about. Tomorrow I will write about that dream. I also suspect I will be writing more about writing in future blogs–and even explain more about the other tabs on my website: Imagining the Sacred, DARING Faith and Living (Well) into Our Dying.

Listening to one another deeply may be an essential pathway to becoming more fully human. If I do not hear the cries of the disenfranchised, people desperate for a change in our economy, in our capacity for compassion, am I one of the hard-hearted? If I do not listen to the very, very rich who have closed their hearts to the needs of others, can I learn to respond–rather than react– to their beliefs in a creative, rather than negative, way?

Yesterday’s post summed up what is at stake in the USA as well as throughout the world during this crisis which is pulling us apart from one another. Perhaps our very survival; certainly our humanity is at stake. The websites of the three sponsors who have invited you to listen in this divisive political year provide guidelines. Click or copy the link beside each name to learn more. Kay Lindahl is a good friend whose book The Sacred Art of Listening with its brief chapters could be used as a daily reading. The practice of this sacred–sacred because it opens the possibility of meaningful human connection and of shifts in stuck relationships–art will develop as you choose to focus on it intentionally.

This discipline may not be easy for many of us. We must “Practice, practice, practice.” Practice is about trying something new, then stepping back and saying to yourself, “What did I say or do that was satisfying? What would I change next time?” It is rarely about negative criticism. Although criticism can point to places where change is needed, it usually does not lead to change because we may shut down in the face of the pain generated by criticism. However, when others, especially teens, are critical, if we listen beneath their outer words, we may hear what they are trying to show us more clearly. We can say, “Tell me more.” Become interested. Become curious.

Then there is also listening to the still small voice within ourselves. Using Carl Jung’s term,  I call this voice the deepest Self. From the Self arises the voice that wants us to be more fully alive. For instance, as you read one of Kay’s chapters, underline and write notes in the margin–or keep a notebook handy when you read and track the insights that might pop up simply because you are listening for them. Writing insights down brings them further to consciousness, making them more available to us

Many faith traditions, spiritual practices, poets and dreamers believe that one person’s intentions lived out in the world has the power to change the world–because it joins with all the others who believe in humanity’s desire for compassion as well as humanity’s will to work toward the well being of others.

               THE LISTENING PROJECT           THE LISTENING CENTER

URBAN CONFESSIONAL

BE A LISTENING PRESENCE AT THE REPUBLICAN AND/OR DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION

Are you listening? Is anybody listening? From the tone of discourse in America today it seems like there’s a lot of talking and no listening. We are here to do something about it and we invite you to join with us.

Listen First Project, Urban Confessional: A Free Listening Project, and The Listening Center are combining forces to promote listening around the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Our civil activism on the streets outside the convention walls will be a breath of fresh air, a compelling statement standing in stark contrast to the tenor of the national political debate.

We’re seeking volunteers to join us in Cleveland (July 18-21) or Philadelphia ( July 25-28) to encourage greater understanding, respect and cooperation through listening. To stand ready to model listening on the spot as we hold signs saying “Free Listening” or “Listen First, Vote Second.”

The rancorous polarization gripping American culture in this election year seems to have made listening an endangered practice. Yet listening is the only thing that can bridge our divides and draw us back into civil dialogue with one another.

We can move beyond the slander and seek common ground, with new respect and appreciation for contrasting ideas. We can listen to and consider another person’s perspective before sharing our own. We can stand ready to listen without expecting anything in return, simply because people need to be seen, heard and understood. We can learn and grow by engaging in dynamic conversations with strangers on the street. We can model the way forward for a culture that’s forgotten how to listen.

Many people across the country are deeply troubled by the spectacle of demagoguery – even violence – that has come to define our national discourse. According to CNN, 78% of voters say that America is more deeply divided on major issues facing the country than it has been in the past. A Listen First Project poll found that 57 percent of voters believe that if people with different viewpoints listened to and considered the other side first it would make a major or even huge impact on our politics and society. Failure to listen is harming our relationships and productivity at every level, from park benches to presidential elections. If we hope for a healthy, prosperous nation, we cannot continue to demagogue our neighbors because they see the world differently.

Help us demonstrate civility where it seems hardest to find. Help us recover the lost art of listening.

Please join us at the presidential conventions this summer! Sign up now at ListenFirst2016.com!

Sincerely,

Pearce Godwin, Listen First Project, Pearce@ListenFirstProject.org

Kay Lindahl, The Listening Center, TheListeningCenter@yahoo.com

Benjamin Mathes, Urban Confessional, Benjamin@UrbanConfessional.org

How you can help
• Be the boots on the ground at the conventions
• Be a local leader (manage logistics, training, recruitment, permits)
• Volunteer from wherever you are to help spread the message
• Identify our Listening Headquarters in Cleveland and Philadelphia (a physical location where volunteers can meet, train, get materials, and debrief)
• Donate towards materials, promotion, snacks for volunteers

This is it. Write or my blog dies of inactivity.

I just sent out the last post of an online 20 minutes a day for 30 days challenge course with Story Circle Network: Women Telling Their Stories. The eight of us wrote 6 days a week for 4 weeks with comments by one other writer and the facilitator each day. This discipline restarted my commitment to do what I love: write.

My website tab titles reflect my expansive foci in my blogs. Given time, I will develop blog files for each topic: Imagining the Sacred, DARING Faith and Living into Our Dying.

Only a few of you even know that I am writing a blog and that I then went into hibernation for three months in order to deal with a bizarre combination of chronic health issues. After seeing an incredibly insightful doctor who prescribed just the right supplements, my energy has returned and my focus has sharpened. This has led to a commitment to a BLOG BLITZ patterned on the course I just finished: 20 minutes a day (plus revision time) for 30 days with Sundays off. Part of this commitment is to invite people on my email lists and people who have expressed interest in my website/blog, as well as a slew of email addresses I have collected at various conferences and from other encounters. YOU are one of these people!

My dream is to have a dialogical blog website so that we actually engage in give and take conversations. After reading any post(s) please comment with your own insights, questions (more important than answers!), relevant information resources, your own or others’ blog posts, your own concerns. Let’s see what happens! Joy

As Holy Week approaches its nadir preceding its zenith, I want to share “The Ballad of Judas Iscariot” which I first read over forty years ago in Episcopal priest Morton Kelsey’s book The Other Side of Silence. (Since then I discovered a longer version online. The Ballad was written by Robert Buchanan.) I have been profoundly touched by the height and depth of the forgiveness and love it celebrates.

“The ballad is based upon an old fable that, after Judas committed suicide, his soul wandered through the universe, bearing his body, seeking a place for it to rest. Hell would not take it in; the earth would not receive it; the sun refused to shine on it. In all creation, Judas could not find a resting place. At last, in a nameless region of darkness and ice and snow the soul of Judas sees a lighted hall, with the shadows within of people moving about. The soul lays the body in the snow, running back and forth outside the windows. Although Judas does not know it, inside Jesus sits at the table with his guests, ready to receive the fleeing soul and relieve Judas of his burden.”

‘Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head,
and the lights burned bright and clear—
“Oh, who is that?” the Bridegroom said,
“Whose weary feet I hear?”

‘Twas one looked from the lighted hall,
and answered soft and slow,
“It is a wolf runs up and down
with a black track in the snow.”

The Bridegroom in his robe of white
sat at the table-head—
“Oh, who is that who moans without?”
the blessed Bridegroom said.

‘Twas one looked from the lighted hall,
and answered fierce and low,
“Tis the soul of Judas
gliding to and fro.”

‘Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
did hush itself and stand,
and saw the Bridegroom at the door
with a light in his hand.

‘Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,
and beckoned, smiling sweet;
‘Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
stole in, and fell at his feet.

“The Holy Supper is spread within,
and the many candles shine,
and I have waited long for thee
before I poured the wine!”

I wonder whether most faith expressions have periods of heightened spiritual disciplne. I expect that they do. Times of intense, intentional spiritual focus are meant to enrich people’s understanding of themselves in relation to their spiritual lives. Christians are particularly invited to choose a discipline for the 40 days of Lent. 

In our neighborhood as children some of us would gather together as Lent began, always choosing to give up chocolate for Lent. How many of us succeeded, I do not know. I doubt that we shared our success or failure with each other! Yet remembering having done this together connects me with me even today. 

However, Lent 2016 I turned this giving up some thing on its head and decided I wanted a discipline of taking on actions so that I add something to my life rather than take away somethiing from it. Immediately I knew that there are three things I wanted to take on. Since I am an introvert, they are disciplines that take me inward. More extroverted people might take on entirely different activities. Often I envy extroverts whose activities and outward bound energies can more obviously change the world. I simply have not been given that gift, no matter that I often consider it admirable.

#1 Spend time each day reading “A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts” edited with commentary by Hal Taussig. 

#2 Every day honor the Four Directions: East, South, West, North; Grandfather Fire, Sky Father, Earth Mother, Grandmother Ocean; Fire, Air, Earth, Water.

#3 Do 20 minutes of Music Meditation with my husband each morning.

Briefly, 

#1 I only recently discovered this volume published in 2013. So far I have read the introductory material and the commentary at the end so that I could ground myself in the uniqueness of its contents. Then I began at the beginning of this new New Testament with the ancient Thanksgiving Prayer; the introduction to the Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Thomas’ 114 sayings of Jesus; the introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, and the first chapters of Matthew. Most astounding to me is that after the instructveness of the preparatory materials, the beauty of the Thanksgiving Prayer, and both the familiarity and the shock of the sayings in Thomas, I am reading Matthew with new eyes and ears and heart. The words almost pop from the page; I am moved by the familiar verses and shocked by some of the strangeness of others–a strangeness similar to that of some of Thomas’ sayings of Jesus.

#2 I was introduced to the Four Directions soon after my late husband died and I went on a Vision Quest on Lake Temagami in northern Ontario with Journey into Wholeness. For 35 years Journey presented conferences which explored the intersection between spirituality and Jungian psychology, eventually incorporating the opportunity to go on an eight day Vision Quest which added Native American/First Nation/Quichol Mexican-Indian spirituality. The Four Directions take me out into nature and deepen my awareness of the Creation which surrounds and holds us. I approach saying, “Great Spirits, it is I, Joy Anna Marie; I am here.” Then I reverence each of the directions and the animal beings I have learned to associate with each direction. This has become a profound way to listen to the spritual world. There are days and weeks when I wander away; I always return and feel welcomed again “just as I am.”

#3 My husband Buck and I learned Music Meditation ten years ago from Shinzen Young, an American Jewish Japanese-trained Buddhist monk who guided my late husband Lew to live mindfuly into his dying. Buck and I return to this practice sporadically. As a forty day discipline, we are appreciating the richness of listening to a piece of classical music together in the quiet of the morning. There are several ways to attune to the music, the most intense and meditative for us is to follow the notes which leads to an expanded awareness of the complexity of the music as it soothes our souls. Our two year old rescue dog Bear has learned to enter into the quiet with us even though he might have preferred a walk initially!

More about each of these practices can be learned by Googling them. You have to discern the wheat from the chafe–but isn’t that always true? the work of mindful critical thinking.

Blessings during the sacred times of your faith tradition.

Below is my 250 word reply to the NYT, February 12, 2016 “Tell US: Is It Important to Elect a Woman as President?” I am thankful for Bernie Sanders’ running for the Democratic presidential nomination because he is pushing Hillary Clinton to more closely define her beliefs, thereby, standing closer the compassionate, democratic ideals and lived into principles I believe the United States has to stand fully for once again. I hope his challenges continue to encourage her to more openly speak out for the values women can bring to the table, living in to the promise she proclaimed in Beijing 20 years ago at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women: “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that Human Rights are Women Rights and Women’s Rights are Human Rights once and for all.” She repeated and elaborated on this statement when she addressed the UN on the 2014 International Women’s Day saying, “When women succeed the world succeeds. When women and girls thrive, entire societies thrive.” This is why I believe

It is essential that a woman be elected president in order to shatter the glass ceiling that is often obscured by the widespread belief that women, by our nature, are second class citizens. The presence of the glass ceiling is denied by those who have power over women, their children and underclass men, by those who have far more than enough and remain blind to the suffering of those who have less than enough. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton intentionally chose to visit women and children in need, every where she visited throughout the world. Her actions lett us know that she cherishes and respects women’s rights as human rights. This willingness to stand with those who have less than others and who are judged as less than others is critical to revitalizing our sense of ourselves as a compassionate and democratic nation.
When we speak about climate change, we are implicitly talking about Mother Earth, the Creation which is given lip service but is treated ruthlessly in order to aggrandize the top layers of society without consideration of the cost for present as well as future generations. In her very being, a woman president would image, embody and raise up the feminine. She would not be flawless; however, her presence, her voice, her leadership would challenge perceptions of all women at a time when we know that women and their children are raped, human trafficked, abused, murder as well as underpaid, demeaned, devalued and trivialized in in more subtle ways.