The Table

Our table was passed down to us from my brother Mike. It was made by hand and with great care by the Amish. It holds love. It has seen two families grow and has taken a beating to prove it. It is covered with cloth to hide the scars and marks of wear and tear; colors and textures of love. It is a sacred place where we stop the rushing and we sit together. We turn our faces toward and we break bread. We hold hands and we give thanks. At our table we do life; the messy and the beautiful, the highs and the lows. We take time to be filled, seen, and known. Our table is a holy space. We are grateful! Kevin and I went to a marriage class at our church when we hit a rough patch. One week the teaching centered around the table. They taught about how the family table you grew around influences your current family table. They addressed the relational brokenness that each person brings into their marriage and to the table. In order to have a healthy table we each need to acknowledge and work through past pain and brokenness so that we can give and receive love in a healthy way. This is the journey… My childhood table didn’t really exist. It was there physically, but it did not represent the space of connection and intimacy that my soul longed for. Since my mom worked 3-11, she would prepare food and leave it on the stove. We each would come and go as we chose and there was much movement away from. When people would sit at the table, they were often doing other things than connecting. The TV was almost always on and for me it was a lonely place. My dad ate in the other room by choice. He watched the news and wanted to be left alone. He ate at a TV table and then played solitaire or space armada. I often wondered why in a home with so many people I felt so all alone most of the time. To my marriage I brought longing and desire for intimacy and connection in an almost desperate measure. Kevin’s table looked like my dad’s. It was a TV table where he would sit alone and eat a microwave TV dinner. He lived with his mom who was mostly absent. He cannot remember a single meal where he was invited to sit at the table and share a meal and some connection. To the marriage table Kevin brought a desire for a new beginning. A hope to create a new family tree. He brought an excitement of what could be different if two people turned toward one another with love. Gary Thomas wrote, “We receive, celebrate, and live in God’s love; we pass on that love to our children, and we teach them to love God and others. We are born to love, redeemed by love, carried by love, and called to love.” When we sit together around our table today, I cannot help but give thanks to our good God who has helped to restore our hearts and redeem our stories so that two lonely and broken kids were grown into a family of love and connection through God’s grace and the power of His spirit living and active in each of our hearts. We are a work in progress, and always have room to grow, but I celebrate how far we have come. My kids still mock and tease one another around the table. We get short and snappy with them too. We are constantly in need of grace and forgiveness, but we are fighting the good fight. We have declared together and before God that this family that he has blessed us with matters. We are determined to love and guide them and call them to the table. We are going to say no to the patterns of business and striving of the world as much as we are able so that we have more holy moments around our messy and beautiful table. We are grateful!

The Truest Truth

I used to think that if people knew the truth about me, the whole truth, they would run away. What I have instead discovered is that the more I tell the truth, the more others are drawn in. As I learn to love and have compassion for myself, others are invited in to do the same. So as I tell my story with great care and compassion, I live more authentically and effortlessly. People want to be in the presence of truth, even if it is imperfect and messy. When I was young I learned slowly and differently. I had a hard time focusing and auditorily processing information. If I were in school today, I would definitely be labeled with special needs. I didn’t know I had a learning difficulty all I knew was that what appeared to be simple for those around me was excruciatingly difficult to me. I began to believe a lie that I was stupid. Living with this false image created boat loads of suffering. Trying to measure up and be what I was not only led to pain. It has just been over the past few years that I have begun to see clearly and celebrate my unique learning style and giftedness. Learning to believe a truer truth when you have believed a lie for so long is a process and it takes commitment. The second yama or practice of taking off the old on the 8 limb path of yoga is satya; which translates as a commitment to the truth. The truth they are referring to in the unchangeable truth. It is not about what you think or do, but about who you are at the core or your being. Our true identity simply boils down to who we are at the core. Yoga identifies the root cause of suffering as avidya or spiritual ignorance. We suffer because we forget who we really are. It is a sad case of mistaken identity. My work with truthfulness or Satya has to do with remembering and returning. You are not the sum of your thoughts, you are not your mistakes or what other people think of you. You are a reflection of God. You are a bearer of Light who has been called to bring light to the world. When I remember this truth everything else seems pretty insignificant. Is says in scripture “You will know the TRUTH and the truth will set you free.” John 8:23 There is such great freedom in knowing who you really are. It has been a long process of shedding skin that is ill fitting to get to a place where I can stand naked and unashamed of who I am. As you peel away the wintery layers you have used to protect and hide you for so long, it takes great courage to stand firm in a new and truer truth. From this place of integration it is pure delight to step forward and follow your heart toward what your true calling and purpose is in this world. The process is filled with grief at times because the people around you may not like the change and they may drop away, but it is so incredibly liberating to Be authentically who you are that it doesn’t matter all that much. You will begin to find yourself surrounded by people who appreciate and celebrate all of you. This is a precious gift. It is like stepping back into a flow of Spirit that has been there all along. In the yoga sutras it says “For those grounded in truthfulness every action and its consequence are imbued with truth.” This process of grounding into the truth of who you are is a choice to notice the times you are exhausted and running around in circles to measure up, be still and remember the truth and begin again… It is invitation to return to grace and compassion, curiosity and great care for yourself and those around you. Today, may you live your truth from the inside out. May the Light of Christ swell within you and radiate out of every cell of your being. May you experience the profound peace and freedom that comes with being authentic. Jesus said, “You are the Light of the world…” GO SHINE!

Let Peace Begin With Me : Ahimsa

I went to catholic schools from 1-12 grade. My favorite parts of being in church was the stillness, the ritual and the music. I didn’t feel the presence of God in the teaching, in the action of the nuns, or the preaching from the pulpit. I felt God’s love pouring through the stained glass window like a rainbow of warm sunlight just for me. I didn’t even listen to the priest because they were not preaching from a place of humility and love. They were fire and brim stone. They reminded me of the Pharisees or religious scholars from Jesus’ day. They were not like Jesus. I have been meditating, pontificating, studying and praying about ahimsa. Today I awoke with a song from my childhood : “Let peace begin with me! Let this be the moment, NOW. With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow. With God as our Father, children all are we. Let us walk with each other, in perfect harmony.” This is Ahimsa! It is universal peace, love and harmony. This is a lofty goal, but definitely one worth practicing and aiming for. Sometimes we feel powerless in a world that has so much chaos and violence. We don’t even need to look beyond the four walls of our homes to see real life suffering. We can look within our own being and get overwhelmed with pain in that space alone. I believe that is just the place to begin. “Let peace begin with me! Let this be the moment NOW” If each human being stopped reaching for the speck in their brothers eye and returned to the plank in their own eye we would begin to move in the right direction. For as hard and long as I have tried, I have never been able to control another human being. I can teach them, love them, shape and guide them, provide for them, but I cannot control them because they have their own perfect plan unfolding. Every time I think I can or try to control them I slip into a role of trying to play God. Those are shoes I don’t want to and am not equipped to fill and so I practice surrender and love. This is Ahimsa. In Sanskrit the word ahimsa means non-violence or non-harming. In the yoga sutras, Patanjali writes that “Being firmly grounded in nonviolence creates an atmosphere in which others can let go of their hostility.” This practice begins with awareness. It is very important to be able to look at yourself through the eyes of compassion. Many times you are doing harm to yourself in the critical thoughts and attitudes of the mind. As I write these words, my son applies pressure to me to release him from his grounding. Would the non-violent thing to do be let him fly free or give him an opportunity to suffer a consequence for a poor choice so that in the future he will be protected from more harm? There are two sides to every story and two halves to every whole, but I think the glass is half full and all the world needs now is love sweet love. Love comes in the form of discipline at times and as grace and mercy at other times. The most important thing in each moment is to speak the truth in love. Much of my work in regards to ahimsa is holding my tongue. I vent more than I like to admit. For me, it is just alleviating my pent up frustration, but it is negativity and it is not necessary most of the time. I practice ahimsa by recognizing my own sin nature and doing my best in each moment to release what is not love to God and return to love. I do this with my breath all the time. When I feel anger or frustration rising in me. I breathe in the light of Christ and allow the expansion to fill me completely. I pause in the fullness of his presence. On the exhale I surrender and release what ever is causing harm. I empty completely. I pause and rest in the complete nothingness and trust that I am held in the almighty hand of a good, powerful, and loving God who is in control. I breathe in the light! I breathe out and let go… This is ahimsa! Many times I end my yoga classes by re-committing myself to speaking my own personal truth. Only that which is true, kind and necessary. What if every word you spoke today had to pass through those 3 filters? I think you would cause less harm to the people who you are in community with. What if every thought you thought today had to be true, kind, and necessary? You would dismiss so much mental chatter that you might actually begin to feel the peace that was intended for you. What if you could only do today what was true, kind, and necessary? You would find a rhythm that would radically eliminate busyness and striving and you would return to a deep sense of inner strength and power. This is ahimsa. In our practice of ahimsa, we must be gentle with ourselves. It is easy to beat yourself up for your imperfection in striving to attain this lofty ideal. A practice is something that you do every moment of every day. It is a process that will last a lifetime. There is no beginning or end, only moments in which to notice if you are abiding in love and peace or not. If not, begin again, and lovingly return. Develop compassion and love for yourself today. You are perfectly in progress! You will only begin to love others around you well when you have been loved well. Love yourself today. This is ahimsa. When we practice ahimsa we begin to address ourselves with compassion, curiosity and care. We start to notice the subtle ways we are being violent or harmful with ourselves. As we pay attention and start to feel self-love we begin to heal and move toward integration and peace. From this place of integration we begin to allow this light and love to ripple forward into all that we do. According to B.K.S. Iyengar, “with practice of ahimsa one rises above anger, hatred, aggression, fear, jealousy, resentment, envy, and attachment. With perfection of ahimsa one realizes the unity and oneness of all life and attains universal love, peace, and harmony.” This is my hope for our world. That through the peace in each individual heart we can become rooted, established, and connected in LOVE!