A Warrior Spirit

To openly deeply, as genuine spiritual life requires, we need tremendous courage and strength, a kind of warrior spirit. But the place for this warrior strength is in the heart. Jack Kornfield

Mothers are natural warriors, because we are naturally centered in our hearts. We would do anything to keep our children safe. We are fierce in their defense and in our love for them. To become spiritual warriors, we need only use that same fierceness toward our own inner journey.

We must look upon our own spiritual quest with the same deep love and caring as we do our offspring. We must know that at every moment we have the ability to pierce through the veils of ignorance and attachment to the reality of the spirit, of truth and awareness.

When I was a child I wanted to cross the Red Sea with Moses, listen to the Sermon on the Mount with Jesus, see him divide the loaves and fishes and turn water into wine. I wanted to be there in the presence of a living saint. I wanted to see God. I still do! I was in my mid-20's when I met my first living saint. I went to see Muktananda in Oakland, CA. I looked into his eyes and I could see that HE could SEE, that he was real - a part of this world and a part of another world that I could not see. I wanted to be like him.

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Macrina Wiederkehr

I am almost 60 years old now, a crone, and I am just now beginning to understand about holiness and its connection to the ordinary. Every body of water is the Red Sea, every dinner a miracle of loaves and fishes, every ordinary moment is infused with the extraordinary if we can but see it. I don't need to be with Moses. I AM Moses right now, right here.

Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky. Chippewa saying

Lord, save me from my own self-pity. Make me a warrior of the heart.

Time to go walk on water.... :)

Growth Means Change

Recently my four year old grandson, Jordan, has developed a resistance to any transition during his day. When his mother tries to get him ready to come to my house in the mornings so that she can go to work, he is likely to have a tantrum saying that he wants to stay home. When it is time for me to take him to school in the afternoon, he will hide and cry and say he hates school and doesn’t want to go. When it’s time to pick him up from school he will run away from me – sometimes into the parking lot where cars are coming and going – saying he doesn’t want to leave school. And when his mother comes after work to take him home from my house he will refuse to leave my side. I realize that he has to face a lot of different places each day, but in each place he is loved and cared for and always ends up having a good time.

“Growth means change, and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown” (George Shinn) Perhaps for Jordan, each time he leaves whatever safe haven he is in means stepping from the known to the unknown. He must take the leap of faith that Nana’s house will be safe and fun and that school will be safe and fun and that home will be safe and fun, over and over in his young life.

Is it possible to feel safe and scared at the same time? I think so. Perhaps it is the higher self and lower self battling it out. Jordan’s higher self says “You will be fine wherever you are and whoever you are with,” while his lower self says. “I like it fine where I am. I don’t want to go anywhere else, take any risks. Let me stay here where it’s safe.”

Albert Einstein says, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” Seen in this light, it is miracle that Jordan works through his resistance each and every day and takes the leap into the relative unknown of my house, of school and of home again. I must appreciate more just how brave this little boy is as he steps each day into the unknown and lives to tell the tale.