So there I was ...

So There I was...

Looking at the news. Late in the day after the Feast of Gratitude. There was a video clip of a two women being interviewed by a Local TV reporter clearly at the low end of the Totem Pole. It was this poor man’s job to get a story out of how their shopping had gone. I almost clicked off, and then the camera caught an unusually good angle; the woman’s chin up and out, a laugh rolling out of her mouth, and flash of her eye that meant victory. The look was one that in earlier times or other places would be called blood satiation. She had triumphed and was bringing home the trophies, scalps and booty. She had planned and executed an invasion. The God’s and Goddesses of war had smiled upon her. She was the hero to whom the crowds yell “Die Now! Die Now!” for nothing more noble could be achieved.

She had shopped well.

Oh, my sister. How we have fallen. This is our victory.
The pillage of Wal-Mart. The plunder of Target. The sack of Sachs.

Clearly, no one has ever told you who you really are. What you were created to do. Let me try and give you a glimpse. See if it does not sound an echo within your soul.

Our most ancient stories tell us the truth of who we are and what we can do. In every culture, the stories exist. Scheherezade knew these stories. Boudica told these stories to her daughters. These stories tell of heroic women; Judith and Xena. This archetypal woman has come down to our day and turns up as a blonde in Sunnydale. But she is here and she will not go away. You know these stories, you have just forgotten their meaning, and failed at their application.

The oldest story I know is of a garden. Firstmother was seduced by a lie. A fear-based lie. A myth of scarcity. She was told that her creator was holding out on her. She bought the falsehood that she must acquire, by deceit or force, what she was not given. She realizes her mistake very quickly, but the adhesive gum of the price-sticker of that lie stuck to her soul and was passed down.

But not before her creator gave her one more thing.
A task.
He spoke to her seducer and said this.

“You who were made for glory, you who has never had a predator, you have now made an enemy, and her name is woman, and you should be afraid, very afraid for although you will cut her, in the end, she will crush your head.”

Not Firstfather. Not the second Adam who came to plant the new garden. No, SHE was tasked with vermin eradication. She shall have the final victory. Doubt me? Get thee to a Roman church; find the pretty Lady, the one of the serene face, the upturned eyes. Look at her feet, and see what is crushed under them.

Since that day two forces have been competing for your soul, my sister. One, a foul lie from Hell, which says that you are not complete, that you are not good enough, that you must have more, be more. The other force is deeper and more powerful, but often buried, unawakened. It says that you are more powerful than you could ever know – right now. That force knows that evil itself, fears YOU. You were meant to crush poverty. To thwart abuse. To free captives as well as to bind wounds. You were meant to have clear sight, wisdom and power.

But sister, you have bought the lie. You have bought it wholesale, retail and on sale. You have stocked your cupboards with it and put it away for the winter. You have breast-fed and spoon fed it to your babies. Your soul has root cellars full of it.

You have let your enemy bind your feet, so that you cannot stand your ground. You have let your enemy steal your right to read, so that your may not look upon the truth. You have let your enemy impoverish you through mistaken wars you have enabled with your cooking pot and laundry pail. You have died bearing daughters who do not know who they are.

Yet in your deepest dreams the battle songs on Miriam and Deborah still sing.
“Horses and chariots are no match for my God”

There was nothing wrong with that feeling you felt on Friday night, my dear. You were hardwired to crave it, seek it, fight for it and revel in it. But oh, by sister, my mother, my daughter, you have settled for a pale echo of the truth.

Give it a thought now, before we settle into the cookies and the glass balls and the laughter of children. Any maybe on this New Year, you might want to sing a new song, and laugh a new laugh, and look your true enemy in the eye and let him see that you see him, clearly. Let him see that flash in your eye. Scare the Hell out of him, I tell you it will.

“Get the claymore out of the thatch where you hid it Molly.”

Veni… Vidi… Vi – effin – Ci

10.24.2006

The Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude

Three seasonal repeats

and then

SOMETHING NEW

So There I was...

…Getting my clock cleaned weekly.

I was training to be a counselor. I was in my last term. I had 18 months of clinical practicum in my backpack. End of tunnel in sight – didn’t expect that light to be an oncoming train.

I had a new supervisor, and she did not appreciate me. I don’t think that there was anything about me that she liked. And her disdain of all things Peggy Parsons was apparent in the first session. Our meetings focused on listening to, and critiquing tapes of my counseling sessions – my clients signed up for this by getting a cheap student driver counselor. From the get go it was apparent that she thought that I could do nothing right. I remember her criticizing the tonal pitch of one of the sounds that counselors make to show empathetic listening. She didn’t like it when I spoke, she didn’t like it when I was silent. Realizing, of course, that a good supervisor would never give ONLY criticism, she occasionally faintly praised ridiculously small things; as in “Well, Peggy at least you called your client by their proper name – that was adequate.”

I never did figure out if there was anything I did to precipitate her treatment of me, but I do know that moment that I sealed the deal.

After weeks of tearing apart my work, we ended a meeting and I looked up at her shelf of books by feminist theologians and psychologists and said “Gee, you know, I would have thought that feminist supervision would have been a little more nurturing than this.”

It wasn’t a clever thing to say. After that she called the school I was to graduate from, and the clinic where I was doing my practicum and tried to get me fired and held-back. It’s pretty rare to get held back a grade in graduate school, but she tried.

At that point I was starting to wonder if, despite lots of evidence to the contrary, I really sucked at this. And if I did not, how I was going to get through the last couple of months of the ordeal.

I hired an independent person, another clinical supervisor, to give me some perspective. He listened to my tapes and told me that I was doing fine. I asked him for advice on surviving an upcoming exit interview, when my supervisor would meet with me and the director of the clinic where I was working. The one I was hoping would hire me after my graduation. I was certain that she was going to try and make sure that I did not get that job.

His advice; “Thank her.”

“For what? – abusing me?”

“Yes, call it diligence and thank her for it. Make a list of everything you could possible think of, and thank her for it. Thank her for providing you with a chair to sit in, thank her for agreeing to see you, thank her for her attention to detail. Start with that list – take up as much time as possible and then when she gets her say, argue with nothing and thank her again, in detail. Gratitude is your only option, any other response will look like defense or offense and they will both fail. But Peggy – you have to thank her sincerely, you can’t sound facetious when you do it.”

I didn’t like his advice, but I took it.

It was nasty hard to do, but I did it.

The look on her face was pretty precious, but the bottom line was that I graduated, got the job, and that woman has become an unnamed footnote in my story.

That was my first awareness of gratitude as a spiritual discipline.

I am grateful to her for that. Really.

My mom taught me to say thank-you – but that was usually for things that were good, and that I liked. She gave me a way to express my natural gratitude.

The discipline of being grateful when things are going to hell in a hand basket came harder and later.

But I have come to believe that it is a foundational spiritual discipline. It is the discipline that frees you to learn all the others. It completely circumvents resentment. It takes anger and divides it into that which requires action and that which can be released. Eliminating resentment and reducing anger allows you much more time for attention. It makes failure bearable. It sweetens everything that is already sweet.

If I start and end my day with gratitude, nothing that happens in between has the power to ruin tomorrow.

A couple of years back I received a second-hand instruction from a Benedictine nun. It was shared with me by a friend, and it dropped immediately into that hole in my soul that is truth shaped. She said, “Pray this prayer daily; Thank-you for everything – I have no complaint.”

I have tried to do this, not just daily but hourly and moment-by-moment. It is not easy. Some things, like interruptions and thwartings, do not fall easily into the gratitude basket.

I wrestled for a while with thanking God for things that I did not really believe that God was sending me. I do not believe it is God’s explicit intention for me to be sick or stupid or in harms way. But then I came to believe that these things were part of the global package and that for all its faults I choose to believe that the package is good.

Most of my problems are the consequences of my own foolish actions. I realized that having painful consequences for stupidity was indeed a gift from God, how else was I going to know when to change?

A smaller percentage of the things I hate are the consequences of other people’s stupid actions. But I have learned to thank God for this because it gives me a chance to be perfected in my own reactions, and to step up to the plate for things like justice and peace.

The smallest percentage of my grief is in response to things that are not in human control, like death and sickness. This IS God’s deal – it is part of the set-up. I do not like it very often. But I have come to accept even these things, and trust God in them.

The hardest part of this prayer is the “choosing not to complain” bit. For years I have used God as my unedited sounding board. If I have to yell at somebody, why not God, I mean God’s a tough mother and can take it, right? God has always seemed patient about this, and after I rant a bit, I always feel better and settle into a better place. So to give up complaints, seemed to be giving up one of my favorite coping mechanisms. It also seems at odds with justice. There is a lot of bad stuff going down on this planet; don’t we need to make an issue of certain things?What I have discovered is that forsaking complaint and going straight to gratitude has zero affect on the truth, in fact, it makes truth clearer, and you can move straight to action.

Dear God, thanks for this mess – I have no complaint – please get my back as I step into the middle of it.

Sometimes I need to do something. Sometimes I need to be something. I have found that gratitude is the fast track to the place where God needs me most, and where I most need God.

Two Minutes of medicinal Baby Laughter

Apply as needed.

Can repeat as often as necessary.