A poem to me on my 39th birthday

(A poem for me, to me, on my 39th birthday, shared as prayer with you)…

Embodied

The other night, I watched a video of me that Brian recently filmed.
It was me leading a meditation.
Half way through, I stopped and paused it.

I sat there, staring

at the still frame shot of me. The incessant self-doubt
that strangled my joy for years was simply

not true. I could no longer deny what I now saw before me.
Here was the evidence.

“I see it,” I whispered in the silence of my heart,
“I see what my mother has seen all these years.

I am exquisite.

I embody the life I have led,
the years and hours of meditation and kindness and metta,
meltdowns and cries, softening and letting go
practiced on my cushion,
on the earth dancing and sweating my chants to the Divine,

in our kitchen cutting grapes for toddlers,
tired, alone, longing, yearning, returning
always

right here
to my life as practice, in the car

handing back snacks to hungry little ones wondering if I’ll rest today,
in our bed nursing a newborn in the early hours before dawn,
making love to Brian when we should be sleeping but

returning Home to our bodies reciting poetry to the Divine,

rising early with my prayer shawl wrapped around my growing belly,
sitting in silence until a baby cries and my feet take me to them,
somehow in the dark, and my arms become their shawl…

again and again,
through the doubt and the worry
the shame and the regret
the wondering and the wounds
the mistakes and the miraculous
the cooing and the sighing
the obsessing and

the letting go,

returning

again and again
to the Divine
within.

I already embody what I longed for,
what I thought was missing,
what I believed I was ‘not yet:’

I am sensual and beautiful.”

The words escaped my heart before they could be squelched
by analysis or habitual practices of learning to not be powerful…
and know it. Spoken into existence, they flew

out into the world and danced,

and then back into me
as prayer, as breath,
to be breathed

and then exhaled
as blessing.

Lisa A. McCrohan, © 2013

Can you pray faster, mom?

Sitting at mass today, right after communion…

Wait, let me back up.  Our five year old son LOVES going to mass.  Why?  THE doughnut.

I won’t lie.  Yes, both my husband and I have master degrees in theology/pastoral ministry, I work for a Georgetown University, and Brian works for a Catholic Church.  And our oldest loves going to church for the once-a-week-quite-HOLY doughnut!  (Now our two year old daughter, she gets all excited to go because she still thinks that we are going to get up and sing and dance to the songs at mass from Vacation Bible School earlier this summer.  Poor honey.  We only did it once.  Now, every week, I have to tell her that we got up and danced and sang only one time before mass started to show folks what we learned at VBS.  I tried to console her by saying we could dance to the music in the car or at home – which we do – but she wanted nothing of it.  She wanted to be ON STAGE with a group of her “friends” dancing and singing.  Oh my.  Neither one of my children are wall flowers!  So I tell her I’ll get her out of the nursery early to hear the final closing song even though it’s not a VBS song and even though we won’t be getting up on stage.  She agrees. “Otay, mommy.”)

I am fine with this holy doughnut thing.  Our son says going to one of the small groups or the nursery to “help his sister” makes “mass time go by faster and the doughnut time come quicker.”  Obsessed, I tell you, for the chocolate with sprinkles kind.

Mind you, what is also going on is that our son thinks he is Batman.  Seriously.

Our Batman

But when he is “out on the town,” he wears a long-sleeve shirt with a cape on it, a white button down shirt, and a navy blue sports blazer.  This is his Bruce Wayne look.  He does this to hide the fact that he is Batman.  He doesn’t want anyone to know that he is Batman – unless there is an emergency that would require super-human strength, speed, and sense of justice.  So he is sitting here, in three layers of long-sleeves, looking around for any sign of someone needing a superhero.

His “Bruce Wayne” look

Ok today, we were late AS USUAL.  (I’m telling you, I used to be 10 minutes early to EVERYthing B.K.  – before kiddos.  I’ve – mostly – accepted the fact that we just are late now much more often than we are early.  To anything.  But plus, it’s hard to get to mass on time because it’s the start of our work week.  Brian works at the church we attend.  Getting everyone up and ready and out the door on Sunday morn is quite a feat).

So we were late.  Brian took Aidan (late) to the  chapel for the special children’s liturgy and then they all returned mid-mass.  So our son comes back in.  He sits for awhile (which, I think, takes superhero stillness for a kiddo to do.  I don’t mind him moving around.  I love how he hugs us and we hold him.  Even though he weighs 48 pounds).  Five minutes later, he asks to get a bagel — “yes, go ahead”, asks to get a drink of water “yes, go ahead”, and then finally it’s time for communion.  He loves going up with dad for a special blessing.

We go back to our seats and I feel a tug on my left side, “Mom…”

Me: “Yes?”

Our five year old: “Can we go get a doughnut now?”

Me: “Let me just pray for a moment.”

Silence.

Tug.

Me looking at my superhero son.

Five year old: “Mom, can you pray faster?  God likes those kinds of prayers, too!”

I cracked up.

I said, “Sure, go ahead.”

He took off with lightening speed.

I got a minute of silence as I watched our son bolt to donuts.  He even got one for his sister.

So today, I didn’t make it in time to hear the gospel.  And I heard about three minutes of te homily.  (Our daughter wasn’t havin’ it being in the nursery.  Brian was with her for awhile, I waited outside.  She grew comfortable and Brian left.  We went into mass.  Late.) I have absolutely no guilt about this.  I lost that Catholic guilt a long time ago.

God was right there, in that seat next to me, looking at me with sweet, loving, doughnut-obsessed eyes.

I think God likes chocolate with sprinkles, too.  (And dancing and singing up on the altar).

Enchant me

Lately, this is my prayer, my mantra, my song to the Divine.  On my early (painfully early!) and quiet morning commute to work.  Late at night when I have five minutes of “me time” after the kiddos are asleep and before I move eagerly to my bed.  Enchant me, God.  Enchant me.  Delight me.

Sung, chanted, swayed to.

Enchant me.

I see me barefoot under the moonlight, softly swirling with the evening summer breeze.  I see me in a long flowy skirt with my long hair against my shoulders moving through my day, with my children, with my husband, in our kitchen “decorated” with tiny handprints on the wall from superhero crusades, ants in our sugarbowl (again), laundry to be folded, floors to be swept……. with ease and sweetness and delight.  Enchanted.  Fully aware that all of this –  ALL.  OF. THIS. — is gift.

Enchant me.  Right here.  Right in the middle of my messy, busy, glorious life.

The courage to heal

A few times a year, our church weaves into the mass a time of “anointing the sick.” Anyone who is hurting, in any way, is invited to come forward. The priest and deacon take their time. They lay their hands on the person’s head and they anoint the person’s forehead with oil. They speak a prayer privately as the congregation sings and “holds the space.”

It’s a time of bodies being blessed. It’s a time of remembering – the fragility of the body, the tenacity of hope, and the need for community. It’s a time of having the courage to step forward, announcing with their silent but visual presence that one wants to be healed…and surrendering.

This past Sunday, we had the anointing of the sick.

I sat there watching as folks from the pews got up and stepped forward. I wanted to go up. I wanted, wanted, wanted to. But I didn’t.

I never do. I never stand up and walk to the front of the church.  And I’m sad about that.

No, I don’t have cancer or a tumor; I don’t struggle with addiction; I don’t have a mental illness.  But I do desire what so many of us do — to be held and healed, to have our brokenness acknowledged and seen. Whatever that brokenness is that we all have.

You don’t have to believe that there is healing (which is different from “cure”) going on with the “laying on of hands.” Healing happens in having the courage to acknowledge and say, “I feel broken”  and we welcome that brokenness with the tenderness of a mother comforting a hurting child.

Healing happens when we have the courage to be vulnerable and share our brokenness with another person.

Healing happens when we finally proclaim and ask for what we have longed for – maybe for decades.  Healing happens when we finally say “YES” to that longing – yes to its presence (and residence) within us, yes to the Divine forces that have so desired to hold that longing with us and soothe it.

Healing happens when we ask for what we need and fold into the arms that can and want to hold us.

Maybe me not getting up in front of the congregation this past Sunday was then a prompt to now go before my husband and my mom, two of the most beautiful, loving people in my life and say, “Hold me, please.  Just because.”  I’ve been too strong lately.  Too “independent.”  Too “do it on my own.”  I need to acknowledge that I feel broken at times and be ok with being vulnerable and broken before another.  And allow them to hold me.

Like so many of us, I often do a lot of the “holding.”  I’ve been great at that my whole life.  I do it for a profession.  But I can easily get caught up in being the one “listening” and “about the other person.”  I, too, need to have the courage to ask for someone to do the holding.  And I am blessed to have a mom and a husband that are awesome at that.  And long to do just that – hold me.

how the fear of death dissolves

sunrise

This is a tender post.  Over the last few years, I’ve started to reconcile my fear of others dear to me dying.  I used to be terrified of my parents dying.  My dad remembers when I was in middle school and we were traveling with my soccer team to a tournament in North Carolina.  My dad was getting dressed and I saw gray hair on his chest (he was all of 40 or so!).  “Dad!” I cried with tears streaming down my face, “You are dying!”

Ever since I can remember, I had been scared of my parents dying.  Past life stuff, stuff from this life…doesn’t matter the source, really.  All I know is that the fear of them dying kept me frozen.  It kept me from living.  It made me hold back.  In most of my relationships.

That fear is losing its grip on me. Little by little.  And oddly enough, this comes at a time when my parents are aging.  Dad retires this month.

I have always believed in a Divine presence. I’ve never needed to “know” what “comes after death” in this lifetime.  I do not think ANY one religion has the monopoly on truth when it comes to “the after-life.”  I have always just known that whatever happens, it has to be lovely.  And gentle.  It’s home.

But we can know something and still not be “healed.”  Information — in the form of a thought, knowledge, or even a cognitive belief — informs.  It doesn’t heal.

Healing happens in our bodies.  It is here, in our cells, in our tissues, in our nervous systems, in our BODIES that we hold all our memories, experiences, interactions.  It is in our bodies that we hold the fears (and joys) that arise out of those experiences.  So,  it is IN THE BODY where we “go” to heal these tender wounds.

How?

Noticing what arises when we become fearful.  Noticing the sensations that arise.  Breathing.  Allowing.  Holding each image that arises with gentleness, as though we were holding a small child.  Giving it all a lot of spaciousness.  Connecting to our hearts.  Allowing the body to do what it needs to do.

Mindfulness.  Radical acceptance.  Spaciousness. Gentleness.

Doing very little.

These are healing balm. This is how any fear dissolves.

It’s not through analyzing our fears or dissecting them. It’s feeling them in our bodies.  And letting the body’s innate wisdom to do what it needs to do.

Our mainstream culture fears death.  We are “sold” every day on ways to preserve and hang on to youth.  But this keeps us in denial that we will all meet death.  You, me, those dear to us.   We will all meet death.

Instead of being frozen with fear, I find that I am thawing out.  I am beginning to LIVE this one precious, wild life, with total clarity that death will meet me some day.

And I hope that my last breath is the same as this one I take right now: full of gratitude and true contentment.  I hope that I have lived a life of being ALIVE and tender.  I hope I have followed the delights of my heart with no regrets…surrendering and “birthing” into Home.

Running over a snake

I have no picture.  I didn’t want to take one.  There is one already etched in my mind.  The other evening, we were all packed up in the minivan and off to our friend’s house for a lovely evening to be had.  We parked.  We started to get out.  Then we noticed a HUUUUGE snake crossing the road (no joke!).

I am waaaaay freaked by snakes.  Ever since a dream when I was about seven.  I just freak out about them.  My children, on the other hand, are fascinated by them.  Even my two year old.  (“I wuuuuuuv snakes, mommy!”)

I noticed myself becoming incredibly nervous.  But I decided to engage in a new option:  be fascinated.  So I shouted to the kiddos in the back, “Hey guys!  Look!  A huuuuge snake up ahead!  It’s crossing the road!  Come see!”

My five year old leaped out of his carseat.  Brian went to unbuckle our two year old.

I noticed a truck stop by the snake.  I assumed they too were admiring this huge snake (that Brian insisted was NOT poisonous).  But they weren’t.  They were backing up.  They tried to run over the snake.

Again and again.  He backed up and tried to run over the snake while the snake hissed and tried to attack the truck.

I was in shock.  It all happened so quickly — here were my son and I sitting in the front seat of our car now.  Me – trying to be fascinated and face my fear of snakes for my kiddos’ delight.  My son – over the top excited and entranced by the snake.

Before I could act to turn my son’s gaze from watching, we saw it happen.  The truck ran over the snake.  It twitched and twitched.  “OH my god!  He ran over the snake! I’m so sorry!  Oh son, I’m so sorry!”  My heart ached as I watched the snake laying there.  A million things crossed my mind.  I have never ever seen someone right in front of me intentionally KILL another living being.  I mourned for this snake.  AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE SNAKES.  I FEAR them.  My heart SANK for my son as I pulled him close to me.  He was already weeping.

The truck pulled up beside us and gave us a thumbs-up.  I felt sick.  Physically sick.  My son was wailing.  A sound came from deep within him that I had never heard before.  Mourning.  Brian came around and held our son.  I took our daughter inside.  They prayed for the snake and sent it some healing energy.

I have never seen anyone take a life before.  But I’m an adult.  My little five year old — he is trying to make sense of the world, seeing that the world is a bit bigger than our sunshine-filled kitchen.  Brian was brilliant with how he held our son.

Ironically, later that night, at our friend’s house, after a huge rainstorm that we all watched from the porch, our friend had a “fake snake” (it still made me squirm) that he got from our local zoo.  My son and daughter both held it and hugged it.  Again my two year old, “I wuuuuv snakes, mommy!”  And our five year old hugged it tightly and asked, “Mom, if we go to the zoo and get one of these, can it sit at the table with us and eat dinner?”

That spirit of the that snake might be at our dinner table for a loooong time.  That somehow seems right.  Both Brian and I talked last night about how we didn’t do enough to get the truck to stop.  Shock or not.  Maybe we are doing enough in teaching our children that when people do mean things it’s because they are scared.  And to help them become “unscared.”  Maybe we are doing enough in teaching our children about compassion and a regard for life – whether or not we have “issues” with that life.  Maybe we are doing enough by comforting our children in ways that allow them to experience the fullest sense of their emotions…and for it to be OK.  That fake snake we will get at the zoo will be a reminder for me of just this.

And as our son was going to bed he said, “Mom, you don’t have to be afraid of snakes. Here’s what i’ll do.  Me and dad will tell you if we see a snake if it is poisonous or not.  If it’s poisonous, you can stay inside.  If it’s not, you can come out.  You’ll be safe, mom.  I’ll protect you this way.”

I’ll protect YOU this way, my son, by being honest with you, comforting you when you see the cruelty of life, and holding you until a “right response” rises up from within you and respond with offering your unique healing balm to this world.

Holy Saturday: the space between death and birth

This is a reprint from Holy Saturday 2007…

Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself? – Tao Te Ching

Birthing my son is the closest I have come to touching the hem of Death.  In Tibet, they say childbirth is the closest one comes to death.  I’d believe it. Mystically speaking, I find myself now in the space between death and birth.

Yesterday my good friend Cynthia reminded me of Holy Saturday.  Jesus is dead; his body is in the tomb.  The rug has been pulled out from underneath his family and friends.  Each is reacting in his or her own way.  Some are freaking out, others want answers.

On Holy Saturday, nothing appears to be happening.  What is known is that Jesus is dead.  What is unknown is who they are to become – as individuals and as a community.  That is yet to be born.

Holy Saturday – the space between death and birth.

We find ourselves touching the hem of Death and yet reaching for the apron strings of Birth when we go through a transition in life.

The self I was before my son’s birth is no longer.  Who I am to be is still being birthed.  The Buddha teaches that there really is no self – self is an illusion.  There is only Oneness.

Maybe Holy Saturday is a call for us to let go of our illusions of even death and birth…to go deeper into our Oneness – our true essence.

It is a time of staying with yourself until the chattering mind quiets down and you come face-to-face with a glimpse of your true essence.

This can be scary at first.  We may freak out like the apostles in the upper room.  We may mourn our own death like the women who went to tend to Jesus’ body.  We may want to have control over something like Peter.

And yet, we want to let go.  We feel the call within us to let go of our ego’s grip on the false stories of birth and death we’ve been telling ourselves.  We are drawn into the deeper waters of the Unknown.

The only way I know how to “let go” is to be fully present with the experience of Holy Saturday.  To be present with the fear of losing what is known.  To be present with the hope that what emerges is something filled with abundance and beauty.

And how do we do let go?

- Well, whatever it is that is dying – whatever it is that is still yet to be birthed—we breathe with it.

-  We “send” compassion to that space within us.

-  We have the courage to breathe, cry, reach out, and wait until the mud settles and the water is clear.

-  We have the courage to hope that if we remain unmoving – fully present to what is happening within us and around us – the next right action with arise by itself.

God in the ugly

Inspired by the spiritual yoga class I teach at our local parish, I started to really sit with the Gospel reading for today, Sunday, November 20, 2011. It’s the very “Catholic-y” famous Matthew 25: “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothes me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

taken by theojunior, flicker

Noticing God…… Right here. In even the ugliest of places. The vulnerable, the outcast, the imprisoned. No, not just in what is beautiful.

It’s easy to see God in babies and butterflies. What about seeing God in the ugly?

The outcast, the sick, the lonely?

What about seeing God in what makes us recoil…about ourselves? The parts of us that we are ashamed of so we try and keep them in the dark? The outcast, ugly parts of us longing to be gently brought out into the light with tender, warm hands…holding, protecting, healing?

I see God in the lavenders and reds of the rising sun, the ocean-blue eyes of my children, the coziness of our light-filled home. I have become mindful and grateful for such delights. I have trained my brain and eyes and heart to pause and notice these silent gems in my day. And while yes, I could always use more mindfulness in my day to notice these gems, tonight, as I write, in the darkness, listening to the rain, feeling the pulse of silence in our sleeping home, I’m wondering about seeing God in the ugly. The ugly moments of my day. The ugly parts of me. My habitual reactions looping again and again.

I haven’t looked for God there. If anything, I have tried to keep God out. Along with the light and my beloveds and my Self. Oh the ego has been hard at work “protecting” what no longer needs to stay shut up, shut in, imprisoned.

God in the imperfect. The ugly. The outcast. I imagine God in the trash. In the dumpster. Digging. Saying to any part we’ve banished, “No, we will not throw out this one. Come, Sweet Love. Yes, I call you ‘Sweet Love.’ We have a lot of holding of you to do.”

Everyday Resurrection

Everyday Resurrection

There comes a moment
when you know

that you can no longer keep digging in the past
searching for the magical golden “why”
that you think will finally heal
that one
tender
wound.

There comes a defining moment
when you are standing in the rain
outside your front door
with grocery bags in your hands
hungry, tired, soaking wet

and you see how all these years
you’ve just been running
even if it’s to therapy
you have been running

and you know
that no amount of analyzing it
is going to get you any closer

to being happy

and folding into the arms
that want to hold you
when you open that door.

The small, still voice
within you
just knows
has known
has been whispering to you
late at night for so long:

“There is another way, Love.”

But it is finally today
that you hear her
clear and certain
as the voice
of your true God.

And you know now
there is no going back.
No talking, judging,
trying to fix it, wishing it away.

You are done
wrapping your whole self-concept
around that wound

done believing that
there even is a wound to heal.

You stand there
soaking wet

softening
breathing

softening
breathing

opening up to
the spacious grace of emptiness
now swimming in your chest
with no desire to run and quickly fill it.

You know now what you have to do
when you open that door.

And you softly smile.
Lisa A. McCrohan, copyright. 2011

“…done believing there even is a wound to heal.” Maybe we really are dreaming, like Don Miguel Ruiz says in his book, “The Four Agreements.”  Maybe we really are just asleep like Buddha said.  Maybe we are all imprisoned by these carefully constructed beliefs learned over time that we cling to as truth.  Maybe our way of seeing things, judging things, putting things into boxes are all just illusions.  Maybe there really aren’t any wounds to heal.  And maybe it’s all just a story we keep telling ourselves.

Maybe resurrection isn’t about some big moment that happens after we die in this lifetime.  Maybe it’s an everyday thing.  Yes, everyday resurrection.  Everyday waking up.  Everyday enlightenment.  Maybe it’s about dropping the story we’ve been telling ourselves for years, maybe even decades.  Maybe it’s about allowing those tightly held beliefs, perceptions, emotions to die.  Giving them no more attention or energy and just watching them “poof!” – disintegrate.  And maybe it’s about being in that “spacious grace of emptiness” – the space between something dying and something new emerging.  And just being in that quiet, empty, holy space, paradoxically, filled with, well, Sacred Nothingness.  Not looking back with sorrow-filled eyes at what has died and not eagerly reaching for what may be birthed.  Just being.

How about you? What was your last moment of resurrection, enlightenment, “waking up” in your everyday life?

A Lenten Metta Meditation

My friend and colleague, Julie Kaus, recently shared this version of Metta meditation found in Pocketful of Miracles by Joan Borysenko:

“May I be at peace, May my heart remain open,
May I awaken to the light of my own true nature,
May I be healed and may I be a source of healing for others.”

What a lovely way to start one’s day. I think I’m going to use this during my Lenten prayer time. Lovely images. I hope this prayer speaks to you as well.

For all us women in need of some spring renewal, there is still a chance to take part in the Women’s Spring Retreat next weekend with Julie (Friday Mar 18 – Sun 20 2011). Enjoy gentle yoga, ritual, meditation for women, nutritious food, quiet time, nature hikes, nurturing & reflective activities. Julie is a phenomenal yoga teacher and psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience in the healing arts. Visit her site for more info.