We, like the women in the Gospel, are still asking, “Who will roll away the stone?”  The first thing we need to recognize is that the stone is surely there, but notice also the moment of their arrival.  They came “just as the sun was rising”.  I think the text is telling us that it is divine light that allows us to both see—and then see beyond—the very same stone.

Richard Rohr

A very happy and blessed Easter to you all!

Image by Hamed Saber

A very happy and blessed Christmas to you all.

Today is the annual Blog Action Day when thousands of bloggers around the world unit to write about one crucial issue. This year we are addressing the need for clean water.

I’ve chosen to focus on water in a Christian context. Water is mentioned continually throughout the Bible, in both literal and metaphorical ways. From the poetry of the creation myth in Genesis, to the psalms praising all creation, to the language and imagery of Christ as living water, it underpins all of biblical life.

Listen, Oh heavens, and I will speak; hear, oh earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like the rain and my words descend like the dew, like showers on the new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.

Deuteronomy 32:1-2

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants

Isaiah 44:3

Image by Hamed Saber

You care for the earth, you give it water,
you fill it with riches.
Your river in heaven brims over
to provide its grain.

And thus you provide for the earth;
You drench its furrows,
you level it, soften it with showers,
you bless its growth.

Psalm 64: 10-11

We are graced with such abundance and such goodness.

There’s another passage:

Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?

Ezekiel 34:17-18

For there to be enough clean water for all the living things that need it, we must make some changes.

One of the best changes we can make is to stop buying bottled water. Although I reuse each bottle until it starts to crack I do still buy water in plastic bottles. Now I’ve got myself a totally reusable bottle and I’m using it.

Did you know that each year in the United States, creating the plastic bottles for bottled drinking water takes enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars? Yes you read that right, and I’m sure the figures are similar here in the United Kingdom.

Check out this video by Annie Leonard:

We can all take action to reduce water consumption in all sorts of ways. So let’s do it.

Main image by Steve Jurvetson

Elsewhere:

The Blog Action Day site is here. Find out more about issues around water and poverty here at WaterAid. You know about your carbon footprint – here’s how to calculate your Water Footprint. And returning to our theme of sacred water, here’s a thoughtful article by Jewish Contemplatives on water and prayer.

(Read to the end of this post for the winners of my competition last week.)

I’ve been through some black clouds this week, I expect some of you reading this have, also. But millions of people have it far worse than me, and probably you as well.

I was talking to a family member about this. She’s going through her own issues. We were discussing how to honour our own suffering without allowing it to define us.

Whether it’s physical, emotional, mental or practical, we all have problems, and sometimes they threaten to take us over.

The problem with problems

Image by Marja van Bochove

The problem is that the problem can run away with us. You know what that’s like: you focus on what’s wrong and so you feel worse and worse. Your thoughts drag you further and further down, like a muddy whirlpool. Your thoughts create a worse reality than you were in five minutes ago. Your suffering and problems will begin to define who you are if you let them.

But… if we don’t acknowledge our suffering we’re in danger of creating a Pollyanna on Prozac unreality for ourselves.

What doesn’t work

1. Beating ourselves up: “but so many people are worse off than me, I’m a really bad person to feel so sorry for myself”. That’s just going to make you feel guilty about feeling bad, on top of feeling bad.
2. Minimising it, telling ourselves what we’re going through doesn’t really count as “suffering”.
3. Other people telling you you just need to buck your ideas up (caveat: very occasionally that can be exactly what you need)
4. Ignoring the problem, telling yourself “I’m fine, really”. Because you’ll either go into a kind of emotional paralysis or your brain will kick back and pick up on the lie, which will make you feel worse.
5. Dwelling on the problem, brooding about it endlessly.
6. Doing nothing about it. A really bad option.

What does work

Here are a few suggestions:

1. 

   Image by D Sharon Pruitt

   Create a ritual to honour your own suffering. Sit down, clear some space for yourself, your feelings and thoughts and journal or draw them. Don’t censor yourself with any “shoulds”, and don’t minimise how you feel. Or light a candle or some incense and sit with your suffering, acknowledge it fully, for five minutes only. Or write a story about how you feel and then store it somewhere, perhaps in a beautiful bottle (to subvert the notion of bottling up your feelings), or bury it in the garden.

2. Use other people’s stories of hardship as inspiration, not as a stick to beat yourself with.
3. Do something physical, if you can. There’s nothing like movement to shake up the cobwebs and get those endorphins jiggling.
4. Gather a list of favourite inspirations that will give you some energy. I love this, and I often get up and dance to this or this.
5. Get some counselling or therapy or practical help. Sometimes we’re too proud and think we can or have to do everything ourselves (that’s a big issue for me).
6. If you’re religious, pray in your own tradition. If you’re not, find some kind of grounding meditative technique.
7. Find one aspect of the problem you can do something about, even if it’s just changing your attitude to it. Make a start on dealing with this aspect in some small way. Do something else small tomorrow. Baby steps build momentum.

Well, I feel better for even having written that. What are your suggestions for both honouring and dealing with your suffering? I’d love to hear them.

Competition results

Now, one way of healing ourselves is sharing with others, so I’m delighted to announce that I’ve drawn names out of the hat and two FREE places on Magpie Girl’s course Power Stories go to…

Drumroll…

Kel and Sulwyn!

Congratulations, I’ll send your details to Magpie and she’ll contact you shortly. I’m SO sorry to those who were disappointed.

Main image above by D. Sharon Pruitt

Elsewhere:

I love the way in which our faiths roll into each other. We are drawing to the end of Ramadan, and Abdur Rahman explains here the importance of these last ten days and their connection with seeking forgiveness.

Meanwhile, the Jewish High Holy Days are almost upon us, beginning with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah  next Wednesday, and lasting for ten days until Yom Kippur. Norman at Jewish Contemplative talks here about celebrating alone. “Each of us alone. All of us together.”

I’m delighted today to publish a guest post by Marian Van Eyk McCain, editor of a new book GreenSpirit, Path to a New Consciousness. Marian has long been one of my favourite writers and I was happy to meet her in real life a few weeks ago and spend time in her beautiful corner of the English countryside. Over to you, Marian:

Another of those gardening catalogues just came. I am forever taking myself off mailing lists but somehow it keeps happening. This one is from the firm that sold me the little fig tree I blogged about last year so they have my address again.

I leaf through the pages as I eat my breakfast. Colour co-ordinated flower beds…shades of blue…or would you prefer shades of pink? Eeek!! Forget it! This is my garden, for goodness’ sake, not my living-room. (Mind you, my living-room is not exactly colour co-ordinated either, I have to tell you. Well why should it be? It is a living room, not a showroom.)

Nature, where I live, is not colour-co-ordinated. Yet everything Nature creates without human intervention, like this tangle in the hedgerow, this glorious, riotous, multi-hued tangle, goes together perfectly. Nature is messy. Life is messy.

Was it because those 19th and 20th Century philosophers had fantasies of ‘taming’ Nature that they so admired the neat and tidy? Think about Victorian gardens, their straight paths, their topiary, their forced, unnatural symmetry. No, that’s not for me. I don’t see beauty in that. Just a misguided desire for control: an overweening arrogance. It is the arrogance that brought us to where we are today, on the brink of environmental freefall as the strain on our ecosystems takes them to a tipping point from which they may never be able to recover.

When I look at the tangle in the hedgerow I see beauty, vibrancy, the life force made abundantly manifest. Messy? Sure.

In fact, as we now know, the process of evolution has always needed—and still needs—messiness.

Complexity theorist Jean Bee, one of the contributors to the new book GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness, writes:

Complexity theory has arisen, over more than half a century, out of the work of many scientists and social scientists who seek to investigate the implications of embracing the world as messy, interconnected, open to influences and change, able to learn…Essentially, this work tells us that:

• Things interrelate, affect each other in a messy, complex, systemic fashion
• Variation and diversity are necessary for creativity, change, evolution, emergence
• Things build on the past, but not with clear one-to-one correspondences and cause-effect relationships
• There is more than one possible future; the future cannot be reliably predicted from the past
• At key moments or tipping points, radically new features and characteristics can emerge
• Top-down design and control will certainly have an effect, but may lead to unintended outcomes

Systems which are diverse, richly connected and open to their environments can evolve a sort of form, or patterning, and this may be more harmoniously in tune with its surroundings that one imposed from above.

This emerging worldview, which seems more in tune with our personal experience of life, creates a powerful new image for all sorts of institutional thinking, including spiritual traditions. It is itself paradoxical and uncertain in that we are less clear how to act, how to intervene. Does it mean there should be no design, no leadership, no control? Is emergent structure always helpful and generative? Might we not just sink into chaos and disorder? Indeed, are our current problems the result of too much control or not enough? It raises issues of ethics, of the politics of participation, of power and domination. There are no easy answers. But imagining that the world is predictable and controllable when it is not is not helpful either; our current economic, social and environmental crises are, perhaps, ample evidence of that.

So we shall, as the contributors to this book suggest, try new ways of being in this 21st Century. We shall search for solutions to the problems that beset us. We shall build new infrastructures. With any luck, we ourselves shall continue to evolve, at least in terms of our awareness, our consciousness our understanding of who and what we are in relation to the rest of Nature. We shall, I hope, finally rid ourselves of the arrogance that has led us so far astray.

Who knows what interesting tangle will result? Let’s hope it is green and lovely and full of vibrant life.

All images by Marian Van Eyk McCain

About Marian:

Marian Van Eyk McCain is the author of three non-fiction books, including The Lilypad List: 7 steps to the simple life (Findhorn Press, 2004), a primer for living simply and lightly on the planet.

She is Co-Editor of the GreenSpirit Journal and Editor of GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness (O Books, 2010), a new anthology with a Foreword by Satish Kumar and contributions from Brian Swimme, Matthew Fox, David Korten, Stephan Harding, Cormac Cullinan, Chris Clarke and nineteen other writers. (The book is being launched in London on Wednesday July 14th by Jonathon Porritt – click here for details.)

Marian’s main website, which reflects her keen interest in ‘green and conscious aging’ is at Elderwoman.

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Obedience is an old-fashioned and emotive word, isn’t it? Memories of childhood and school. Makes me want to yell “SHAN’T” at the top of my voice!

It’s one of the three vows Benedictine monastics take. I’d love to know how you react to the word and the concept.

What is Benedictine obedience?

First let me offer my interpretation of what this means in the context of Benedictine spirituality:

Image by Vieux Bandit

The first word of the Rule of Benedict is Listen. Obedience is about listening. The listening ear, the listening heart, humility before God.

Benedict’s primary model is Christ himself, and his obedience to God, unto death.

The Superior holds the place of Christ in the monastery, the monks as disciples, who listen and learn in obedience, although Benedict accepts the Superior may not always be right.

Benedict also says we must show obedience to one another, to respect and be patient. He says no-one should pursue what is to his or her advantage, but rather what is for the good of others. Tough one.

Joan Chittister says this:

How is it that a Rule that purports to deal with the spiritual life can possibly put so much stock in the human dimensions of community? Obedience to God is imperative, yes, but so much emphasis on obedience to a prioress or abbot, to leaders whose mundane lives are as limited as our own, almost seems to make a mockery of the very concept. If this is a life centered in the call of God, then why so much attention to the human?

“The answer, of course, is that the human is the only place we can really be sure that God is. It is so easy to love the God we do not see but it is so much more sanctifying to serve the God we learn to see in others.

What about the need for disobedience?

Joan Chittister is quite a good example of this, actually, because she is certainly considered very disobedient by the Vatican. She believes the Catholic Church should have female priests (gasp!) and is not shy about expressing this belief. For her, the moral issue overrides church leadership diktats.

And what about everyday life? How does the artist reconcile the imperative to express her art with her responsibility of caring for her children? How does the businessman make a decision about closing his company and putting people out of work so he can be obedient to a deeper calling? For that matter how does a Benedictine monastic make the decision that it’s time to leave that life behind?

What do you think?

I’d love to know what you make of this rather old-fashioned word, obedience. What are you obedient to? How do you listen for the still small voice within, and what it might be leading you to?

Elsewhere:

Over at Magpie Girl’s Flock, we’ve been talking about the importance of self-care, and I really liked this post in her main blog which talks about combining life as an artist with chronic illness. Listening to your own needs is an important part of obedience.

Image by Noel Zia Lee

Coming soon!

Finally, if you enjoyed my Greenspirit video, watch out for an interesting guest post coming here at Anchors & Masts this Friday, 9th July.

Often when I’m talking about the Enneagram, people get worried that discovering their personality “type” is going to put a label on them.

We tend to resent being labelled, but we label ourselves all the time: conservative/liberal, gay/straight, old/young, extrovert/introvert. Some of our labels are factual, some are a question of degree, some are more important than others. Some may not even be true. None of them give the complete story of who we are.

So what use are they?

I recently took the Myers Briggs typology test again. (I used this site, which is fully accredited by the Myers & Briggs Foundation. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the MBTI measures where we focus, how we deal with information, how we make decisions, and the structure we prefer to use in dealing with the outside world.) I’ve taken this test before, but always in a business context, and this time I actually answered all the questions truthfully, rather than how I thought I should answer.

My new results (INFP) aren’t really the point, although it was a real ‘aha’ moment for me. What is important is that all these personality systems and tests are just a parlour game unless we make use of them.

I believe the work of our lives is twofold: doing and being.

And like the eagle, we must circle closer and closer to who we really are, because the two are intimately linked. If we don’t know ourselves, we won’t know what we are really meant to do.

Ayn Rand once said:

To say ‘I love you’ one must first be able to say the ‘I.’

That’s why I believe so strongly that structured ways of looking at personality, such as Enneagram and MBTI are really helpful, and that these “labels” are to be worked with in reflection, exercises, prayer and observation, not just left as a brief moment of illumination.

What are your experiences of helpful labels?

Image by playingwithbrushes

Elsewhere:

Claire writes about coming home to herself here, and Lucy talks here about the different parts of the song that make up the whole.

And happy 4th tomorrow to all my American friends!

Today is Summer Solstice in the Northern hemisphere, the longest day of the year, on which people gather to greet the sun at sacred sites such as Stonehenge. As I stand in my wild garden today, I see and hear dozens of bees conducting their age-old sacred dance in and out of the flowers.

But this year, at the same time earthy people are celebrating the energy of the sun, we are grieving as oil spills like the Earth’s blood into the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s easy to blame BP, but we are the ones who use oil-based products, and far more of them than we need. We need to live more simply, we need to do our bit.

I was moved by a post last week by The Pollinatrix, which you can read in full here. In it, she quotes a prayer request by Chief Arvol Looking Horse of the Wolakota Foundation.

Here is some of what he says:

The dangers we are faced with at this time are not of spirit. The catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the bleeding of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we cannot afford to continue to make.

I ask, as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is these serious issues will continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of in their Prophecies.

I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers for the sake of our Grandmother Earth are long overdue.  I believe we as Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers to allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth.

As we honor the Cycle of Life, let us call for Prayer circles globally to assist in healing Grandmother Earth.

We ask for prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people to be guided in repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we make the choice to change the destructive path we are on.

As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected.  And that what we create can have lasting effects on all life.

So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.  Along with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your own sacred space, let us make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children’s future and well-being, and the generations to come.

My hope on this Solstice day is that the disaster in the Gulf will finally bring people together, will finally encourage us to change our lives and live as part of the Earth, not as if we are in charge of her. Perhaps it’s a futile hope, but I choose to think it is not. So today, 21st June, is a day upon which people all over the world are invited to gather in prayer for the healing of the Earth.

Will you  join us?

Image by vintagedept

Elsewhere:

Treehugger is a good place to keep up to date with the oil spill, and all kinds of other environmental matters. A lot of our over-use of resources is because we think we have no time. Sally Lever has some good questions about The Tyranny of Convenience.

“I’m Christian but I would say I have Pagan leanings.”

If I had £10 for every time I’ve heard a woman say that recently, I’d be… well perhaps not wealthy but at least off to have a meal in a very expensive restaurant.

What might this mean?

Are Christians and Pagans always at odds?

First, let’s dissect the third word in that declaration above: does it have to be “but”? Well of course in conventional Christian theological terms it has to be “but” at the very least, preferably followed by lengthy self-flagellation. The two – Christians and Pagans – are deemed mutually exclusive.

On the face of it, they are. If you’re Christian you believe in one God (although divided into three in some mysterious way). If you’re Pagan, you believe in many Gods and Goddesses. The Christian Bible has unpleasant things to say about Witches (well let’s face it, it has many unpleasant things to say).

So why is it Pagan ‘leanings’ seem to speak to so many Christian women?

Declaration: I’m one of them. And I can only answer for myself. I think it can be “I’m Christian and I have Pagan leanings”.

Why the interest in Paganism?

There are two issues I believe are key to the rise of interest in Pagans and Pagan practices, especially among Christian women:

1. The intensely patriarchal history and nature of Christianity, right to this day, which makes most thinking women wriggle on the hook of our faith. The European Witch burnings were only one among many extreme examples of Christian patriarchal power-broking.
2. The way in which the verses of Genesis have been taken literally to give mankind (sic) the right to subdue the earth, to have dominion over it, which encourages an incredibly utilitarian and destructive approach to our mother earth and her creatures.

A huge amount of damage, to people and to the earth, has been done in the name of Christianity.

Women: it’s not all good!

Now I don’t want to romanticise us women. Yes, some of us give birth, some of us are naturally nurturing, some of us make deep connections with the land and with each other. But I think there’s something a little dangerous in the school of thought that women have a special, privileged relationship with creation, that we have some kind of free pass. I don’t like the way that both diminishes men and, subtly, lets them off the hook. Nor do I like the way it ignores the many women who are at best complicit and at worst active in our patriarchal structures.

If you’ll allow me just one generalisation, perhaps women generally find it easier to be inclusive rather than narrow about what we believe, and more able to express it.

heron evening meditation

Earth beauty

So what is it about Pagans and Pagan beliefs I and many other women find so attractive, and can they possibly fit with Christianity? These are the echoes and meanings the word Pagan has for me:

The direct connection with the Earth: finding the sacred in observing the rhythms of nature, in laughter, growing vegetables, stirring soup, making rituals and offerings with no need for a priest (male or female) to intercede.

Language: the specific naming of the divine as female (as well as male). Goddess has a real positive meaning for me. We can say all we want about the word God encompassing both male and female, but for centuries in all common Christian expression it meant male. (Which is why I find Claire’s habit of referring to Godde so helpful. It gives a little frisson of recognition.)

Lack of language: I love words, but sometimes they get in the way. The land can be our sacred scripture, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water our Gospels.

None of this seems to me in any way at odds with the true lessons of Christianity.

I’m currently reading a book called The Earth Path, by American eco-feminist and Witch Starhawk. Of the natural world she says:

Everything around us is always speaking. We can heal only by first learning to hear, to understand, and, in time, to respond. As we do, the world becomes richer, a more complex and vibrant place. Open your eyes; see the patterns of light and shadow, the play of the wind. You have already begun your education in the language of nature. You have already set foot upon the Isle of the Birds, which is always right here, wherever we are.

What do you think about all this? Are Pagans and Christians forever at odds?

Both images by Alice Popkorn

Elsewhere:

I can’t remember down what internet rabbit hole I found Margaret Finnegan, but I love her Goddess of the Week series. Jenny Peacock’s haunting story about her tree love brought tears to my eyes. And Hecate writes thoughtfully about living as a Witch in our modern world. Finally, of course one of the definitive books on the spiritual journey of women from Christian backgrounds is Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd.

I will be away for the weekend. I leave you with this thought that I posted at my other blog, Sacred Graffiti, this week:

It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.

Thich Nhat Hahn

To me this is the most beautiful concept. What do you think, is it possible? And how can we become midwives – both women and men – to such a Buddha community?

Image by Teresa Stanton

Elsewhere:

I mentioned Sacred Graffiti above. It is my commonplace book, a gathering together of sacred scraps. What I’ve found through Tumblr (the software host) since starting it is a treasure trove of similar collections. Here are three of my favourites: Women Reading, Dreaming in the Deep South (Wait – what?) and the stunning Crashingly Beautiful. Treat yourself this weekend, follow the links and explore the treasure.