Singing to the Dying

I have been reticent to blog the following experience because it seems so sacred and intimate. But I feel compelled to log in on what have been two profoundly powerful experiences that I've had while singing to the dying. I'll start with the first.

The first was my father-in-law, George. I began singing to him nightly four nights before he died, for about a half hour. The final night of his life was the night I was hosting a dinner party at a local restaurant, to honor the women who have meant so much to me and been so important in my past year. Before the party, however, I went to sing to George. He and Helen live two doors down from us during the winter and I am so grateful for the proximity to George in his final days. He was struggling gravely with the final stages of emphysema and having suffered with asthmu as a child, I knew all too well the terror from not being able to get enough oxygen into your body, even when you have oxygen tubes snaking up your nose .

That Sunday evening he was wide eyed with panic. Helen and I tried to change his pajama top and he could muster no strength to assist us in any way. Every breath was taking more energy than pure oxygen could provide and replenish. Helen left the room and I told George that it was o.k. to let go. That letting go was going to be a tremendous relief, like taking off a tight shoe after a long walk. I told him that everyone he ever loved and everyone who ever loved him was waiting for him. And then I started to sing. George has always loved music and it brought him great comfort these last eight years to listen to James Galway and those beloved Irish tunes and ballads. I sang him "When They Ring the Golden Bells". I sang him "The King of May", both songs that Natalie Merchant has recorded. I just sang along with my ipod...and George immediately started to calm down, to breathe a little easier and to my stunned surprise: to start humming along! It was a deeply moving moment. Not long after, I said my goodbyes and tried to muster some levity and mirth for the dinner party I needed to now go be "on" for.

We got a call about 9am the following morning that George was gone.

Caged Dragonfly

(image found at herondance.org)




I dreamt of a dragonfly in a cage, it's wings pressed up against the screened sides. A honeybee buzzed around the cage while a siamese cat watched. In Lakota spirituality, the teachings see dragonfly as Illusion, so to have the dragonfly caged represents my mind being trapped by the boundaries I have created for it. It's pressing against the sides of the cage, perhaps trying to break free. The honey bee buzzing around represents the freedom that's possible when one works for the greater good of the whole and I see the bee as a helper, giving me energy to break out of the cage. The Siamese cat represents the Tibetan buddhist mind, just observing, not threatening any of it. At least I hope so. I didn't get the sense that it was waitng for me to escape so it could eat me.

Finding the Beloved

I had a dream last night that revealed the face of the beloved to me. It was a fleeting glimpse but I recognized the face, which is one not of this world, or at least I haven't met it yet. I felt an incredible sense of longing, while at the same time a revelatory knowledge that something deep was being revealed, something we wait for all our lives.

There is a beloved in each and every one of us and it is our true selves, naked in our true nature of all that is pure and divine and crystalline within our cell tissue. Perhaps our minds just need to put a face on it so that we can appreciate it's nature as human as well as Divine.

My experiences of the past fall are the antithesis of embracing the beloved. There are people we meet who call out our highest nature and there are those who speak to our baser needs and desires, and in my case, brought out the very worst in me. So, it is the work now, to look and learn from these qualities that must be experienced on the spiritual path to enlightenment. Desire, deception, selfishness, superficiality, arrogance and grasping at the material. "The very worst in me", means those facets of my personality that I reject as un-lovable and unacceptable, but aren't I rejecting the shadow side of my "light" nature in that process of rejection?

I've spent 3/4 of my years asleep and unconscious. I operated from desire, deception, selfishness, a shallow understanding of humanity, arrogance and grasping at the material. All the time longing for God or the Beloved. I thought in my awakening that I would be free of all that, but my friend, let me tell you that I was dead wrong. It's easy to forgive myself my errors while unconscious, but having awakened, the falls from grace are so much more humiliating and that tells me that this lesson has been about pride and it's place in my life.

Always, there is more to contemplate.

May you be well and happy,
Connie

Return of the Goddesses

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Newly elected President of Monrovia. Africa's first woman to be elected a head of state.
Michelle Bachelet, Chilean President Elect

There are those who believe that all the feminine Goddess energy needed to heal this Earth home and it's humanity is now manifested and incarnate on the planet. It is time for the male leaders of this world to recognize that their ways don't work anymore. That their ways have led us all to a dead end of death that begets death and greater destruction. It is time to embrace the female ability to create, carry and birth new life. The time is not coming. The time is now.

From "The Feminine Face of God"
Patricia Hopkins and Sherry Rochester

"You will be teachers for each other. You will come together in circles and speak your truth to each other. The time has come for women to accept their spiritual responsibility for our planet."
"Will you help us?" I ask the assembled patriarchs.
"We are your brothers," they answer, and with that the entire room is flooded with an energy of indescribable kindness. I feel their love without any question. They say then, "We have initiated you and we give you our wholehearted blessings. But we no longer know the way. Our ways do not work anymore. You women must find a new way."

What we are is what we will be

What we are is what we will be? What we will be is what we do now. This Buddhist concept referring to reincarnation has me contemplating just what "I" am. Two years ago I was called to be a healer in the Episcopal church. By that I mean one who is trained to "lay on hands".

This idea freaks a lot of people out. The image most often conjured up reveals a televangelists holding the afflicted forehead and shouting that the affliction be gone. Certainly, this image makes for great entertainment and I reckon that some actual healing has taken place in those settings, but it's not what I mean at all when I talk about being a healer.

A very gifted and holy woman named Dr. Ann Brower taught the sessions that brought me to the laying on of hands. I have worked with my hands all my life, counting money in banks in my early twenties, creating beautiful embroidery in my early teens, "design and creation of fabulous glass bead jewelry" for the past 16 years. I have looked at my hands for a great portion of my working life and I know that they are capable and loving hands. When Ann Brower appeared in my life, she was speaking at the church I then attended on the need for bringing the healing rite to all Episcopal churches. She was soon to have surgery on her knee and we did a group healing. I put my hands on her knee as we prayed. She told me afterward that I had a gift.

I didn't see her again for about four years, but when she entered my parish life two years ago, she called several of us to take her training and bring the healing rite to St. Paul's. So we did. And once a month or so, I stand at the rail during communion and lay my hands on the heads of those who come and I pray for their healing. But I don't pray for them, I pray with them, and I too am healed in the process. Prayer is such an act of healing. It isn't miracles we look for or seek, though such phenomena is perfectly normal and welcome in the realm of holy work, but more it is acceptance of our brokenness, our pain, our suffering and our ultimate redemption into grace that creates a loving act of healing.

A fellow parishioner sent me a message yesterday, saying that his service as Chalist is the most important work that he does, perhaps in the whole of his life. Offering this sacred cup in ritual practice on a regular basis is also an act of healing and it is astonishing how the ego simply disappears in the face of such a gorgeous offering. To hold a silver chalice to the lips of another, as they drink, in communion with every other Christian accepting the sacrament in that moment. It is kind of leaves you speechless.

Long Life Goddess

This blows my mind, but I just learned that the Dali Lama's childhood "feminine" name is Long Life Goddess. Of course, a spiritual master such as this blessed man would embody all that is right and good in both the masculine and feminine aspects.

For this I am truly grateful.
Connie

Our Living Buddha of Compassion

From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:
By Soygal Rinpoche



"What you are is what you have been, what you will be is what you DO now."

Farewell Martha

Farewell to the entity most recently known as Martha Jones. Thank you Martha, for the honor of singing you over to the other side. Rest in peace now, until we meet again.

Namaste`
Connie

Dreaming of the Blessed Mother

Let me start by saying that I am not a recovering Catholic. I have never been Catholic and don't plan to convert. However, I do have a great respect for the Catholic relationship to the mother of the Christian God. I like to refer to her as the Christian Fertiltiy Goddess Image, and I have been wearing her likeness (with wings!) in the form of a medal around my neck for sometime now. I could debate the whole Virgin/Whore dynamic, but what's the point? The Mother Mary icon of Christianity is a goddess image in my book and that's enough for me.

I dreamt of her last night. I was inhabiting a little beach cottage in Santa Cruz, trying to make an appointment to see a counselor about all this crying I've been doing. I left to go to an appointment, but came back for something. There at the south end of the beach was a portrait of Mary, floating on air. Guess what? Her eyes followed me wherever I went!

I think I'm going to be ok.

For this I am grateful,
Connie

The Wisdom of Albert Hoffman

There is a lovely article in the New York Times this morning on Albert Hoffman, the father of LSD, who turns 100 this week. He discovered the compound in 1938.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/international/europe/07hoffman.html

I was twenty when I took my first and only half hit of acid. I was terrified that I would lose my mind, but intrepid in spirit, I dropped the little tab
anyway, amidst the safety of seasoned LSD taking friends. We got in the car and drove to the beach, about 2pm. I recall a sense of tremendous well being. It was spring time and the beach was SeaCliff in Aptos, Ca. For me, the trip was all about color and developing a greater appreciation for the colors of the natural world, and it is the chemically enhanced quality of the color that I shall never forget. And my eyes learned a new way of seeing the natural world and my life has been greatly enriched by that experience.

Albert Hoffman says:

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."

More Tears

This crying thing is getting out of hand. Inexplicable tears for more than a day or two seems a little extreme, doesn't it? I was praying for my friend Lisa today, empathizing with the depth of her sorrow, having been separated by death from the physical bodies of her husband. Her daughter. Her brother. Her 20 year old son. And not all at once, but protracted, over ten years or more. More loss piled upon more loss. How does she go on living? How does the heart survive?

I've been thinking that my heart is breaking but I realized today that my heart is not breaking and I am experiencing no loss per se`. I'm not greiving anything! What I'm experiencing is the new fear that comes with having opened my heart further to love more deeply. It's terrifying, really. It's feels about as safe as walking in a desert windstorm with your heart outside your chest, unprotected from being swept from your hands.

I cry because it's a sensual, physiological reaction to my fear of the unknown and the startling realization of the level of courage I need to gather to become this thing that I have been called to. I recall my own suffering with illness in childhood and the hundreds if not thousands of times I was "bitten" by the sharpness of yet another needle, administering hope to my poor mother than I wouldn't die from asthmu. I have no recollection of ever thinking I might actually die from not being able to breathe. How is that for magical thinking? Maybe that is where my faith was born.

If you are so inclined, say a healing prayer now for Lisa and Calvin and Paul and Heather and Trevor. That they may be united in spirit.

Namaste,
Connie

Dreaming of the Eagle

I experienced the most lucid and profound vision this morning, between 6 & 7am. I introduced myself to a priest and the small man beside him. When I shook the small man's hand, he pressed a feather quill into my palm. I said, "wait, do that again, give me time". He pressed the feather into my palm again. I closed my eyes and like a camera lens, a white eagle came into focus, the appeture zooming until the focus was only on the talons. I said, "JESUS CHRIST". I opened my eyes. I bowed to the shaman. I said, "Thank you, Namaste`". (Namaste`: to bow to Buddha spirit)

He just looked at me knowingly and smiled a beatiful smile.

The priest next to him said, "I wish I got visions like that". I said, "you have to live with an open heart", and he said, "oh,that is very hard work". I can't help but wonder, if the priest hadn't been standing with the small man, would I have recognized him as a shaman?

Yes, I think the feather was the giveaway. In Lakota Native Spirituality, Eagle represents Great Spirit. And VISION. Eagle as God. White Eagle as Christ energy, according to the teachings of White Eagle.

The six principals of the White Eagle Lodge:

1. God the eternal spirit is both mother and father.

2. The Child/Son - the Cosmic Christ - is also the light which shines in the human heart. By design, this divine inheritance unites us in one spirit, a family which embraces all life, visible and invisible, including the realm of angels.

3. Serve the unified family in daily service. Remember that we are all connected.

4. Awareness of the invisible world, bridges separation and death and reveals the unity of life.

5. That life is governed by five cosmic laws: Reincarnation; Cause and Effect; Opportunity; Correspondences; and Compensation (Equilibrium and Balance).

6. The ultimate goal of mankind is that the inner light should become so strong and radiant that even the cells of the physical body are transmuted into finer substances that can overcome mortality.

Basic Principals found:http://www.whiteagle.ca/lodge/lodge_introduction.htm

I edited a little. And I will tell you that if I were asked to create a template for
my theology, White Eagle taught it years ago. Thank you White Eagle, for the vision.

For this I am truly grateful.

Connie

Into the Cave

I grew up in California for the first 25 years of my life...many years spent just a half a block from a private beach. I dream of "Black's Beach" often and frequently the dream is characterized by huge waves coming toward me. Sometimes I am helpless in the water and drowning.

Winter was a time of duller colors, less warmth in the sun, but still, a temperate climate...so much so that I literally did not own socks for most of my childhood and adolescence, sandals were my only footwear.

Winter in Virginia means golds and browns and trees devoid of leaves...the river is a muddy brown and the temperatures range in the 30's to the high 50's. For a California girl, it's just plain cold and unpleasant. It is not a time that I enjoy being outside and for many years now, I've been affected by a disorder that has come to be known as "seasonal affective disorder" or SAD. Doesn't that seem blatantly obvious that when the sun doesn't shine as much and rain and snow are prevalent that people would be sad?

I become introspective in the winter, like a bear heading into the cave to curl up and rest; I journey into the symbolic cave in my mind and power down my energy to just "be". It is not a time of creativity for me, but a time for charging my battery and storing energy rather than exerting it. My greatest challenge is being in present time with the season. It's so natural to want to live in the future...visualzing the plans that have been made, anticipating a warmer and happier time. But it's important to experience this down and low time and that is what I am in the process of doing.

So perhaps I'll be silent here for some time. Perhaps I'll find lots to say. Perhaps I'll emerge in the spring from this cocoon, a brand new butterfly.

Namaste`,
Connie

Tears

Saturday I cried.
Christmas I didn't.
Monday sobbed for two hours.
Tuesday was dry.
It's Wednesday now.

Beautiful Women

The most beautiful woman in the world is the one who isn't afraid to be herself.

Living Out Loud

There is no doubt that living out loud carries with it a certain measure of humiliation. Perhaps that is the lesson in being one of those people who isn't afraid to put herself out there and experience fully the wonders of this life we've been given.

Today feels like the first day in months that I've had my spirit fully intact and back in my body. I've got a hold on my heart again, having let it go flying about, unprotected by this body that was entrusted to contain it. I am deeply relieved and feel like I've experienced some great inititaion into the second half of my current life.

Emile Zola said, "If you ask me what I came here to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud".

And Connie says, "If you ask me the reason I came here, it is to live with an open heart.'

Blessings to you.

Connie

The lesson that just keeps giving.

When I am experiencing anything (new) intensely, it's a given that a
valuable lesson is being taught. I hope this is true for most...when
you find yourself immersed in whatever joy or trauma or thrill or
pleasure or adventure your soul has been seeking to throw you into, and
you can't think of anything else and you wonder if you're actually
going to survive this intensely felt experience, well, you can bet that
a teacher is walking right beside you.

For me, in these past four months, my teacher has been the man I sleep
beside every night, Christopher, my husband. He appeared as a teacher
16 years ago and his lesson is the one of love. Ten years ago, he
said, "you can't make me not love you". This fall he just kept saying,
"I love you, I love you, you are worthy of love". And even though my
heart had left my body and landed deep in tortured territory in
California, he kept loving, even in his pain. And he showed me through
his example that there is no situation in a marriage that throwing more
love at won't improve. Now I see that the only cure for heart ache
is more love. Heartache, not hate is the flip side of love. Hate
certainly isn't the flip side. Hate resides in the 3rd Chakra, right
there with your ego. But love...

For some of the broken, the heart was shut down so long ago, that it's
power is no longer accessible. Pain and humiliation and suffering got
dealt with in the manner of shutting down the center of love in the
human chest, and all the choices to be made in this life begin to be
made from lower chakras...perhaps first integrity and ego, in the
third, start making choices that ego thinks will make us feel better.
Then creativity in the 2nd, gets confused with producing income and
then sex gets confused for real connection on the heart level and sex
becomes the focus; the heart continues crying out to be unlocked and
acknowledged for it's incredible capacity to heal itself and others,
just by being OPEN!

Yes, open-heartedness can hurt. A lot. But no pain is worse than the
loss of the power of the heart. Love is the ultimate healer. Every
moment that love and heart ache are experienced, felt, glorified, is
the penultimate moment in this universe that not only CHANGES the
energy in a room, it magnifies itself and ripples out into the world to
create huge waves of love that are absorbed into the greater cosmic
energy of divine mystery.

So go out there and give your heart! Just give it away. You'll
survive the painful part. You'll learn how to stop hurting and start
loving. We are all broken. We are born naked with open hearts, and
may it be naked with mature and ancient hearts that we find ourselves
moving on from this current incarnation whose only purpose is to
experience love.

May Divine Mystery reach out and grab hold of your heart and may you
not be afraid.

For these lessons, I am truly grateful.

Connie

Wisdom of Black Hawk

ON MOTHER EARTH

"We must let our roots grow deep into Mother Earth. Look at that tree that reaches high, the old tree that has grown its roots deep. It stands tall and touches Tunkashila. But the tree that rushes its growth and makes a shallow base, what will become of it? The first big wind will push it over. And that's what your people have done. They don't root themselves in the earth first. They don't appreciate the earth for what it is. They don't believe it is a living thing. They must touch the earth. To touch the earth is to appreciate your mother, your true mother. For it is She who keeps me alive. It is the She who kept my mother alive."

– Black Hawk