Meditation #18 "All is well, You are Beloved"

Meditation #18 "All is well, You are Beloved"

Last time we were pondering about Growing Pains and the sheer thrill of adolescence. This time around, precisely on Christmas, we are invited to reflect upon the presence of God in our lives. How has he manifested his power as your days have unfolded?

I vividly recall an image that made me feel a Loving, Reassuring presence in a moment when I desperately needed it. I was eighteen years old and had left home to fly very, very far away, and as I was riding on a bus back home, crossing the barren, frozen landscape of Salt Lake City. I felt so lonesome and lost. There was a mother traveling with a child, and they caught my eye because the little girl's hair was a glowing, deep black wild mane, so much like mine, and as I watched, her mother took out a comb and started the loving ritual of untangling that blessed mess. She then carefully parted the thick, wavy locks and carefully wove them, trapping them into thick, strong braids that she decorated with red yarn. I felt like I was watching a scene from my own childhood, and I remembered my own Mother's loving hands brushing my hair, and I cried. Ironically, after my outburst, I felt reassured, comforted, and held within the certainty that I too had known love and that thought felt like a shield, an armorplate that life, in all its fierceness, could not penetrate. I had a Capital Mother, so it is perhaps logical that the most meaningful image of God I hold is a Mother's love. But sacred texts and theology offer some beautiful images, and perhaps one of them works best for you. My second best is the image of an eagle teaching her young to fly, or as I read it really happens, pushing them out of the nest. Other options include God as a shepherd, a lamb, a king, a warrior of righteousness, a ray of sunlight piercing the clouds (a definite winner on my list), a fiery spirit engulfing a brush, the masterful designer of the web of life, a bleeding heart, a friend who knows even the number of hairs on our heads, a loving friend who washes our feet, or a person just like you and me, who loved his way into splitting history in two.

What is your vision of the Deity, the presence that reassures, glows from within and reminds you that all is well and that you are beloved, time and time again?

Can it find shelter in your heart and be reborn once again, revealing your own Nativity?

With Love and Light, wishing you a Rebirth of all sorts=)

Lina.

Meditation#14 The Shedding of Selves

Meditation#14 The Shedding of Selves

I have always been fascinated by exoskeletons, whether those of the cicadas or the shriveled snake skins I found so often in the Amazon and Louisiana wilderness, or by the ones I have found on beaches, my treasured seashells.  Often, I have contemplated how even as the time passes and our children leave behind clothes, shoes and toys, these too are like armor that has been outgrown and discarded, requiring newer wardrobes to accommodate the growing bodies of manifold creatures. Nature seems to adapt and easily transform whether it be the growth of a bigger body or a completely new self in order to allow development and growth to continue unfolding. What then signals the need for a new soul, a bigger heart or a higher state of being when life seems to reach a new stage of existence?

In this particular meditation we are invited to reflect on the many times in life in which we have so longed to belong to a group, to be lost in the collective and feel like a cherished crucial part of a jigsaw puzzle. In early childhood, this becomes a particularly powerful desire as the transition from home into school allows us to observe how the others around us dress, play, talk and behave. Our immature selves were particularly eager to please and be accepted no matter what the cost or sacrifice we had to make. How many times we agonized about being the last to be chosen for a team or the one not invited to a party or to participate in a simple game and perhaps even about not having the right kind of clothes? How many times a kind gesture or a word saved the day, and opened a fold where we could be part of the group and feel included. The longing to fit in and be valued was very strong and if never understood and rationalized, it might make us obsess about fitting in and feel that we need to possess all kinds of things in order to feel worthy or accepted.

How often have we realized that when we dare follow our own hearts and make choices based upon our own individual tastes and preferences, this simple act reveals fascinating details about who we are? Have we developed enough certainties about who we are that our exoskeletons do not need to match the collective for us to feel comfortable? Can we defy the powerful pull of uniformity to dare to be different and shed the masks that hide our real selves? Can we remember with a grateful heart the people who welcomed us and helped us to learn to trust who we were in order to belong?

So often, our own attitude can be a catalyst or a blockage as to how the people who surround us decide to act, depending on whether we encourage them to feel free to reveal who they are in all sincerity, or if we carry the sword of our judgement and the shield of our criticism. Can we depose our fears and act with such spontaneity and genuine authenticity that we encourage others to be confident to be who they are, plain and simple, and excel at what the only assignment we are all expected to excel at: merely being our true selves, selves that are free to be shed and to evolve as the never-ending surprises of our lives unfold.

With love,

Lina.