BARRED DOORS AND OPEN HEARTS

Walking in to the vestibule of the Santiam Corrections facility is lonely.  Two sides of the room are closed off with heavy doors.  There is a greeter desk near the front door.  Straight ahead is a door with bars. 

I stood in the middle of the vestibule reading signs and looking at pictures.  It is a vulnerable feeling knowing that the stories behind that door ahead are of crime and violence.  I pictured rough characters with angry faces and angry hearts. 

Any minute, I would be entering that world that I envisioned.  I made a promise to Erika, a woman I do not know, to perform a marriage service for her.  I didn’t know the groom, the inmate, and until now he was a faceless, unimportant aspect of that promise.  Viewing that barred door changed everything.  I was afraid to meet him.  I was afraid to walk into the labyrinth of hallways and rooms that lay behind that barred door.

But I made a promise.  I made that promise to Erika in October and I wasn’t going to back out now. 

So, my driver’s license was given to the man at the greeter desk, I was given a red tag to hook to my coat and a man came to escort me to room 140.  The barred door open with a squeal, we walked through.  It closed with a loud bang and I was in the labyrinth.  My breathing changed.  It was shallow.  I was walking with intention, my eyes looking each way in a guarded manner.

Entering room 140 was a surprise.  Instead of institution green walls there were murals of hot air balloons, parks, the state capitol building, and other delightful parts of the world outside these walls.  Ten or so people were seated in a circle talking loudly.  I realized that they were the wedding prior to the one I was officiating. 

The chaplain greeted me, talked to me a bit about the protocol, we shared our personal thoughts and he waited for the groom to join us.  I heard the news that he was on his way and my hands went quickly to the edge of my chair.  The door opened.

He walked in, a beautiful young man with strong features and deep brown eyes.  Tattooed on his temple were the words “Blessed” and three small birds flying.  He would not look at me for very long, he was shy and nervous.  I talked to him about the correct pronunciation of his very exotic name, and got it right.  We sat in awkward silence as we waited for Erika.

The other wedding was in process, one of the friends had apparently gotten his Universal Life certificate to perform the ceremony and he haltingly walked through a very traditional template.  The bride, in her long purple gown and purple hair ornament looked satisfied and humble.  The groom, in his blues, also looked happy and humble.  The wedding was over and the group broke in to raucous yelling and laughter and other inmates took lots of pictures.

It was an odd comparison, this lively and loud group and this singular shy man.  I began to feel honored to be sitting with this soul, who seemed sad and lonely, but waiting for the bright spot in his life.

There she was.  Model beautiful, Erika strode through the door dressed in different hues of pinks, her hair corn rowed in places and curly in other places around her perfect face.  The pink very-high heels clomped over to the groom and they kissed and smiled.  She is an organized, take charge person who handed me all of the paper work and had no questions about how to do her part with the signatures.  Again, the inmate photographers buzzed around the table as we completed the work, joking to the groom about signing his life away.

It was a beautiful ceremony, and I realized how completely comfortable I had become in this setting.  I was overjoyed with the happiness I saw in the groom, especially when he said, “I do!  I do!  I do!”  I was humbled to be part of something so sweet and so right.

I left as soon as they kissed.  The guard escorted me through a supply room, complete with a full laundry cart.  “I see those in movies all the time” I joked and he laughed.

I exited the labyrinth with a spring in my step.  I reclaimed my driver's license and I drove home energized and grateful.

Later that night, I wondered why the groom was in prison so I googled him.  It came right up.  At age eighteen he was inebriated at a .16 blood alcohol level.  He hit a cyclist in the dark of the night.  The cyclist died.  There were many articles about this tragedy, including some very hurtful articles about his race.  Pictures of the him were shown, the “blessed” tattoo was on his temple even then.

My heart broke.  I understood completely.

We both knew what it was like to make erroneous judgment calls that would change the course of our lives forever.  We both knew what it was like to be the focus of news stories that accused and set the tone of who we were to outside eyes. 

I did not take a life.  I did however watch people take mine.  I was not eighteen years old when I was vilified by the press.  I could walk away because I could retire.  He had no such choices.  When that barred door slammed, he was in this limbo life for a long time. 

I understood why he was shy.  He still carries the guilt and shame.  He most likely assumed I knew his story. 

I feel that way every single day.  Sadly, prison walls bring his old story to life every day, while I am creating a life away from that story that defined me in my past.

He has received a joyful gift in this beautiful being named Erika.  She will be waiting when he is ready to begin his new life, and she will be a powerful force of good for him as he finds his strengths and moves into his own realm of actualization.  I pray that he finds himself amongst people who uplift him and care for him so that he is able to move that direction with confidence and support.  I pray that he realizes who are not strong players in his life and is able to bid them farewell.  And I pray that he finds that core of highest good within, because it is easy to see and has much to give this world that needs his light.  I pray the tattoo is absolutely right.

It’s easy for me to say.  It is happening to me.

This was a powerful reminder that we are all connected.  We are connected to the woman in purple with the other wedding who leaned her head into her new husband’s chest with a feeling of comfort and joy.  We are connected to her new husband who held his wife with feelings of hope and love.  We are connected to the beautiful Erika who knows what is true and right and cannot be stopped from her highest good. 

We are connected to Erika's groom who is poised on the precipice of change, with the opportunity to leave the past and its accusations and pain and find the true person he was meant to be.

The barred doors held the truth of all this, when they opened, hearts did too. 

FIVE FIGURE FEAR AND FORGIVENESS Taking the Gentle Path

I got the email from our tax preparer and I looked at the back page.  “Fantastic!” I thought as the three digit number peeked out on the bottom of the Amount Due line.  I proudly closed the email and moved on.

But then I realized that the federal amount owing was always on the top, the state forms were on the bottom.  I reopened the email, downloaded the form, read the number on the federal amount due and felt my heart stop.  There had to be a mistake.  Five figures? I have never owed five figures in my life. 

My thoughts became frantic.

It had to be a misunderstanding of the IRA rollover – thinking it must be “real” income.

It had to be a mistaken reading of our VRBO numbers.

It had to be………………..it had to be………………….it had to be…………………

My God.  There goes our savings!

Contact with the tax preparer’s office did not help.  And no, there are no deductions for a vacation rental business.  The pension deductions were insufficient and the rest must be paid.

My heart didn’t stop again, but it did beat wildly against my rib cage.

I emailed the tax preparer and outlined the details of the VRBO, the Business Identification Number, the lodging taxes paid, etc. etc.  I was very formal and assuring in my professional manner.

The response I got back was not friendly.  Basically it said the following:

What you say doesn’t matter.

Nothing can be done about it.

It will be worse next year.

You are welcome to get a second opinion.  (Inferred to read “good luck with that”)

The stronghold in my solar plexus cracked and melted a little as my power base rolled into a fetal position.  I was helpless against rules and laws and experts who performed mechanical tasks every day and thought nothing of their impact on humanity.

I was beaten.  I was frightened. 

My first defensive act when I find myself helpless is to fight. 

I had referred this tax preparer to my daughter to help her with an estate issue.  Since I was writing to her about issues around that project, I brought up the email I’d just received.  She confirmed that she too had received abrupt and rude emails and had eventually fired this person and hired another. 

I got his name.  Maybe he could turn this around.  I placed a call and got him straight away.  He confirmed everything our current preparer said about the vacation rental.    He confirmed their reasoning on insufficient withholdings from our pension funds.  He did not assure me that the five figure would go away.  He advised us to pay it in full.  His reasoning made sense.

But he did assure me that he could help us plan for less of a “hit” next year.

I felt better, although I still was frightened about how I was going to pay the bill.  Even more insidious was the unresolved irritation and discontent I held with our current tax preparer.  I hated that feeling of unease that comes from a skirmish that festers into blame or judgment. 

When I am hurt, I choose flight.  I created my perfectly thought out rationale.  Certainly, I didn’t need to repair a relationship with someone who I’d seen only once.  I sure didn’t need to be around someone who could be so callous.  Like my daughter, I could simply pay the bill and walk away forever.  I was entitled to do just that.

I knew better. 

This was a spiritual lesson.  I had the choice of what I was going to do.  I had to take a different path then what I may have used a year or more ago.

So I went into my forgiveness practice.  I said the words, I felt the waves of cleansing wash into my solar plexus and finally I was ready to see her in her total humanity.  I knew that those kinds of emails come when there is a shaky foundation.  Perhaps compassion wasn’t an option because she was tired from too many returns due in a short timeline.  Perhaps she isn’t able to take in challenges to her work. 

Perhaps……………………….Perhaps…………………………Perhaps……………….

It doesn’t matter.  It isn’t my job to know.  It is my job to let it go and heal the rift.

So I wrote a new email.  I apologized for sounding contentious.  I told her of my fears and how much I needed help to know how to protect us from things getting worse next year.  I thanked her for her hard work.  I pressed “send”.  I was free of my negativity.  I moved on.

The next day I got an answer.  She apologized for being harsh.  She is frustrated that the vacation rental is not able to be a business deduction and she agrees that it should be.  She offered to put us in touch with financial advisors to help us build wealth.  She offered to change our vacation rental to a classification that would be a legitimate deduction. 

A later email indicated that next year’s tax hit would be four figures, a figure that was very doable.

The issue was cleaned.  There was no residual negativity on either side.  Knowing that, there was no residual negativity splashing into my dealings with other parts of my life, so there would be no toxic ripple effect. 

When I went into savings account and took stock.  I realized that the tax bill will be paid with ease.  Only my fear caused me to think we were lacking in abundance.  The truth was that when insufficient deductions from pension funds caused a large end of year dip in resources, the Resource of Spirit had the resources available.  We are abundant and we will be fine.  I left this situation feeling immense gratitude.

In retrospect, the lessons are also abundant. 

A fight response is good protection from deep fears but only on the intellectual level. 

A fear response is good only if recognized and addressed.  Removal of judgment and offering the heart to forgiveness and intent on healing is the long term salve to our individual and collective return to love. 

Awareness of our abundance brings us gratitude, which is a heart strengthener.  Staying in fear or judgment overworks the heart.

I gained more compassion through this experience for those who are surprised with financial challenges and who need their own type of spiritual and experiential support.  I send them my prayers for abundant opportunities. 

In all, this experience brought me more than five figures of learning and Grace.  There have been many times when I chose the fight response and charged through a situation because I thought it was what I had to do.  There have been many times when fear mobilized me to hide from my accusers and I did not think I had any way to address their attacks.  But forgiveness and compassion always leads to the gentle path. 

Learning to Listen Retake

Monday, April 01, 2013

Oracle card from The Map  

LISTENING:  “Now is the occasion for listening – to either the spoken word or for deeper messages.  Listen with your heart.  This card ensures greater understanding of your circumstances.” 

I drew this card this morning.  I wrote down the key sentences and then I began my day, complete with a to-do list of 45 items that I was sure I could manage.  The card and its meanings left my memory as I set about to be productive!
Unfortunately, there were some side tracks to my perfectly planned day:
I realized early that I was facing a potential loss of one or two beloved friends from a circle of women who have been together for over twenty years.  The loss comes from a complete difference in political perspectives and harsh words spoken.  I felt helpless, powerless, and afraid as I watched one of the women indicate that it was time for her to leave us. 
Another potential loss is my involvement in a local civic club. Since retiring, I am back in the club and actively looking to help by using my organizational skills.  However, I see how values and traditions have changed since I was there before.  I see that my ideas are actually insertion into territories long established and held in place with strong leaders who refuse to let go.  Everything I thought I could do to help is protected by barriers of long lasting ways of which “it’s always been done”.
I also had to challenge an invoice from the housecleaning service we have just begun to use.  The invoice indicate more time taken last week than we know was spent, and I had to point out areas of thick dust and unclean toilets as a reason why the bill was too high.  It meant that an employee got in trouble. She's a lovely woman.  I didn't like what I had to do.
Having this amount of contention in my day became exhausting. I highly value having good relationships. 
If I could quantify my take on the day, I would label it sad. 
As I began to journal tonight, I re-read the card. I get it.  In each situation, I was advised not to find reason and justification within each scenario for my own ego laden values, but to listen with my heart. 
I listened to my heart that was breaking because two women may leave our circle, and I love them both.  I “listened” to their emails and understand that they felt disrespected and hurt by each other.  I outlined my love for them and for the circle via email, and then I released the situation to its highest good, knowing my love will stay steadfast, no matter what.
I listened to my heart give me a perspective on the civic group leaders and I saw years of their doing so much work on their own that they feel absolute ownership over all that is being done to keep the club alive.  They are angry at the loss of volunteers, but don’t understand that their narrow offerings have resulted in those losses.  I have already removed myself from a leadership role in the club; it is my time to be of service to these men who care deeply about the history and mission of the club.  I will support them, I will remove my ego needs to provide a different type of leadership model.  It is their territory, I am a visitor.
And I sent an empathetic email to the owner of the cleaning service, who tried valiantly to find middle ground between our critique of the work done and the loud protests of the cleaner who believed she had done nothing wrong.  We were given a discount on our bill, but more importantly, the owner thanked me for understanding.  I sent forgiveness to the cleaner, knowing that her interests on the day she cleaned our house were really at her own home in which she had just moved the day before and she had much to do.
Listening with my heart meant that I stepped into compassion through forgiveness.  The sadness was my ego letting go.  I am ready to listen for that greater understanding just by opening to a higher view.

I am grateful.

Learning to Listen

Listening:  “Now is the occasion for listening – to either the spoken word or for deeper messages.  Listen with your heart.  This card ensures greater understanding of your circumstances.”  Oracle card from The Map.

I drew this card this morning.  I wrote down the key meanings and then I began my day, complete with a to-do list of 45 items that I was sure I could manage.  I didn't think about the card for a long while.  I set about to be productive!

There were some side tracks to my perfectly planned day:

A potential loss of beloved friends from a circle of women who have been together for over twenty years.  The loss comes from a complete difference in political perspectives and harsh words spoken.  I felt helpless, powerless, and afraid as I watched one of the women indicate that it was time for her to leave. 

Another potential loss is my involvement in a local civic club. Since retiring, I am back in the club and looking to help with my organizational skills.  However, I see how values and traditions have changed.  I see that my ideas are actually insertion into territories long established and held in place with strong leadership who refuse to let go.  Everything I thought I could do to help is protected by barriers of long lasting ways of which “it’s always been done”.

I had to challenge an invoice from the housecleaning service.  The invoice indicate more time taken last week than we know was spent, and I had to point out areas of thick dust and uncleaned toilets as a reason why the bill was too high.  It meant that an employee got in trouble. She's a lovely women.  I didn't like what I had to do.

Having this amount of contention in my day became exhausting. I highly value having good relationships.   

If I could quantify my take on the day, I would call it sad. 

I re-read the card tonight and I get it.  In each situation, I was advised not to find reason and justification within each scenario, but to listen with my heart.   

I listened to my heart that was breaking because two women may leave our circle, and I love them both.  I “listened” to their emails and understand that they felt disrespected and hurt by each other.  I outlined my love for them and for the circle, and then I released the situation to its highest good, knowing my love will stay steadfast, no matter what.

I listened to my heart give me a perspective on the civic group leaders and I saw years of their doing so much work by themselves that they feel absolute ownership over all that is being done to keep the club alive.  They are angry at the loss of volunteers, but don’t understand that the narrow offerings have resulted in those losses.  I have already removed myself from a leadership role in the club; it is my time to be of service to these men who care deeply about the history and mission of the club.  I will support them, I will remove my ego needs to provide a different type of leadership model.  It is their territory, I am a visitor.

And I sent an empathetic email to the owner of the cleaning service, who tried valiantly to find middle ground between our critique of the work done and the loud protests of the cleaner who believed she had done nothing wrong.  We were given a discount on our bill, but more importantly, the owner thanked me for understanding.  I sent forgiveness to the cleaner, knowing that her interests on the day she cleaned our house were really at her own home in which she had just moved the day before and she had much to do.

Listening with my heart meant that I stepped into compassion through forgiveness.  The sadness was my ego letting go.  I am ready to listen for that greater understanding just by opening to a higher view.

I am grateful.

When the sledgehammer no longer works (Sharing his story)

 by Brad Knabel

“Forgiveness is this world’s equivalent of Heaven’s justice.” ~ A Course in Miracles

When I was in my 20s I often imagined some kind of showdown with my parents in which I would nail them with their child-raising crimes and failures. After I’d read out all the charges and pronounced a guilty verdict, I would not allow them to escape from some kind of justice I would then exact—although that’s where the fantasy got fuzzy.
Their crimes were clear enough: my mother had been often hostile and punishing, undermining the well-being of my two sisters and myself instead of giving us the consistent loving support she should have. In between her undeniable acts of cruelty, she was either so depressed or so drugged with a wide array of prescription mood-altering substances that she was effectively absent for days or even weeks at a time.
For good measure, she often blamed her children for her own unhappiness. True, she had a “manic-depressive” diagnosis from her psychiatrist (nowadays called bipolar syndrome). But in my fantasy trial, that was rapidly brushed aside as just another failing of hers—a failure aided and abetted by my passive, quietly compliant father, who would rather see his own children suffer than stand up to his wife’s insanity. Even if she had some kind of disorder, they should have gotten it fixed before they had children.
(Yes, I was going to be a tough prosecutor.)
In my fantasy showdown, both parents had to face the music about their abysmal performances as parents, with no excuses allowed. Then I would bring down the iron hammer of justice… somehow or other.
When my showdown with my folks finally came to pass, the circumstances were not at all as I imagined. By age 32, I was seriously ill, with a phalanx of mystifying symptoms that had just received the equally mystifying diagnosis of “chronic fatigue syndrome” (CFS)—a malady that was even less understood than it is today. In a seemingly rare act of caring, my parents had flown 3,000 miles to see just what was the matter with me, although they’d already let me know that they suspected I had AIDS or a drug habit, and didn’t want to confess. (I did have to admit that “chronic fatigue syndrome” sounded like a classically Californian excuse for something else.)

On top of all that, even stranger things had been happening. Desperate for a cure and not finding one in either conventional or alternative medicine, I’d ventured into psychotherapy, and then into the even more questionable realm of spirituality. In my very vague cloud of unknowing, I’d picked up and begun to study an utterly bizarre modern teaching, self-contained in one book known as A Course in Miracles, which mixed a heavy-duty Christian terminology with Eastern metaphysics and proposed an extreme and relentless discipline of forgiveness.
The sum total of all these circumstances was that by the time I’d sat my parents down in the living room of my apartment for a big showdown, I had none of the righteousness that I’d always expected to bring to this encounter. In fact, I was in a totally opposite state, feeling physically weak, mentally confused and utterly uncertain of what to say.
First, I found myself thanking my parents for coming all the way across the country to look after my health, and said I hoped they’d been reassured by the explanation of my condition given to them by my physician (which, in fact, they were). Then I told them that while I thought my illness had probably been triggered by some kind of virus (which I still believe), I’d had to face some deeper questions about why I wasn’t getting better after months of steadily worsening symptoms, and what I could possibly do next in the absence of any effective medical approach to CFS.
I told them, briefly, about being in therapy, and then tentatively mentioned that I’d begun working with a spiritual teaching which suggested that forgiveness was a very good idea. Then I got to the hardest part, the part that I had always thought would be easiest: I told them that I had been very angry with them for a long time because I thought they’d failed as parents, and to be perfectly honest, I simply couldn’t imagine why they’d had kids at all, if they were only going to treat them the way they’d treated me and my sisters.
(The prosecution didn’t go on quite as long, with as much damning detail, as I’d once envisioned—I was chronically fatigued, after all.)
Finally, I told them that while I might well be losing my sanity along with my health, the Course had influenced me to consider that I’d be better off just giving up my anger, lock, stock and barrel… without conditions, without them saying or doing anything differently, without anything really changing, in fact, anything besides my attitude. I ended by sheepishly admitting, “Maybe I’m just too tired to be mad at you anymore.”
At that point I closed my eyes and waited for the hammer to fall on me. After all, what the hell was I saying? This was certainly not the capital case I’d outlined in my mind for so many years. Instead, this was little more than a craven admission of surrender. They’d won! They’d gotten away with everything, and now I was saying I wouldn’t even be mad anymore?!
With my eyes closed I could easily imagine my mother rolling her eyes, or harrumphing at my outrageous complaints, and my father looking hurt or confused, as he usually did in our family’s rare moments of open confrontation. I fully expected them to rise from their seats and walk out, shaking their heads. When I summoned the courage to open my eyes and peer across the room at them, my parents instead did what I would never have expected them to do.
They confessed.
My mother already had tears in her eyes as she said, very softly, “Son, I know I’ve always been eaten up with hatred inside, and I’ve taken it out on everybody I know. I’ve had lots of drugs and therapy and it doesn’t seem to do any good. I guess there’s just something wrong with my brain, but I can’t seem to help it.”
With a look of genuine compassion, and a steely tone in his voice that I’d never heard before, my father took my mother’s hand and said, “Janie, I’ve never understood why you had to be so hateful either. And I’ve never known what to do about it.”
Then they fell silent, and little more was said between us that day. The big showdown was over in less than 15 minutes. I was reeling inside, even more dizzy than usual, not quite able to believe what I’d just heard. My folks seemed beaten-down and sad. They left to return to their hotel, and I went out for a walk, hardly noticing that I suddenly had the energy to do so. In fact the walk consisted of little more than staggering from tree to tree in a semi-wild grove, weeping uncontrollably and trying to grasp what had just occurred.
Despite my parents’ confession of exactly the failings that I had always wanted to pin on them, I did not feel especially vindicated or victorious. Instead, I felt strangely shattered inside, as if an iron hammer of forgiveness had fallen on my own sense of self. Because at that moment I realized that the self I’d grown into was heavily identified with being a victim.
First I’d been the victim of my cruel and crazy parents, and then I’d become the victim of a cruel and crazy illness, and when you got right down to it, I was the victim of a cruel and crazy world. But if my first oppressors, my parents, had confessed, what was I going to do now? I knew I couldn’t go on identifying myself as their victim, but if that was not me anymore then who was I? Suddenly I didn’t have a clue, and the total effect was both frightening and disorienting.
“I am not a victim of the world I see,” suggests Workbook Lesson #31 in A Course in Miracles. I’d read that lesson before, but now it became the starting point for a new exploration of who I might actually be.
It would be nifty if I could report that I awoke the next day totally cured of CFS. In fact, I would get sicker for a few more months before beginning a slow, halting recovery that would require about five more years. But I did fully recover about seven years after onset, and today, I look back on that paradoxical showdown with my parents as the day I began healing.
I’ve since gone on to research and write extensively about forgiveness, and I’m always a little amused when I hear people dismiss this powerful discipline as a means of caving-in, letting other people off the hook, or just being spiritually correct. That’s when I know that these folks have not experienced the iron hammer of forgiveness smashing their old, sad self to smithereens.
To this day, that’s the only form of violence I can wholeheartedly recommend.

ENDLESS LOVE

GOD IN THE SOUL MATES

(THE GIFT OF ETERNITY)

A soul mate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that take place between us were not the product or intentional efforts, but, rather a divine grace.  That kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious is life.          Thomas Moore

Grief is an awful thing.  Losing a partner, a best friend or anyone else that fit “just right” in our lives causes the heart to break, the throat to constrict and as Lynn Lauber describes so well, the “hot depleting brine of tears” that remind us of our helplessness in the finality of death.  My own memory of my first awful death was lying in a fetal position, crying uncontrollably and asking “how will I go on?”  But we do, and we need hope that there is a larger picture than what we small creatures understand.  And in the case of losing those partners, there is evidence of life beyond, and it is exemplified by soul mates.

The world of God seems like a vast, infinite electromagnetic field. It is filled with undulating charged pieces of response to prayer and focused thought.  It is magnetized by a cosmic pull that brings the right lessons, the right circumstances or the right person into our life.  That magnetic pull happens with soul mates.  There’s a loving cosmic hand that guides two souls to gravitate to each other.  When they connect, it’s just right.  There’s no question.  We all know it when we see it.  That energetic cord never loses its power.  It goes on forever.

My grandparents were like that.  Farr met Modie in a Danish farm town in Oregon.  Within a week they had fallen in love.  They bought the family farm and raised many children.  People came from all over the countryside for polkas in the barn. “Farr’s” blacksmith shop was the town center for gossip and coffee.  Modie tended the garden.  They played hard, they worked hard, and they loved hard. 

Farr died during a visit to Denmark, Modie lived many more years.  She lived a full life, but looked forward to the day when she would reconnect with Farr.  Well into her nineties, she lay dying.  Her nursing home roommate woke to hear her thrashing as she prepared to shed her mortal coil.  Suddenly, in the stillness of the early morning, she looked at the ceiling and lifted her arms in welcome.  And she died, ready for the eternal polka with her love.

And the infinite energy cord never lost its power.

Chris met Wilda on a passenger train headed south.  They shared the same row of seats and the same refreshments as they talked of their dreams and goals.  With much in common and a spark that ignited immediately, they fell in love.  They realized their dream of land and family, and shared sweet stories of life and love for many years.  Among many of their common bonds was their love of the coastal corridor that took travelers from the inland valley to the beach.

Wilda died with Chris by her side.  Her ashes were strewn on a part of that beloved corridor.  Chris, like Modie, lived many more years and even remarried, but Wilda was his heart.  When he lay dying in his home years later, he looked up and his face changed from a grimace to one of adoration and joy.  It was the same look, his daughter said, that he had whenever he saw Wilda.  “Go to her” his daughter encouraged him, and he died.

The family spread his ashes in the same area of that corridor.  His daughter and I hiked into that forest area one day, and found two trees that had wrapped around each other in loving embrace.

And the infinite energy cord goes on forever.

Joannie met Chuck on a cruise.  Learning that they loved to dance, dance they did.  They danced every night and soon fell in love. When they returned to their home towns, Chuck wooed her until she married him.  Chuck had cancer, and together they explored all sorts of treatments and spiritual retreats to augment his medical activities.  They learned about Hawaiian meditations, how to communicate in peaceful ways, and found many books and classes to keep them alive and searching for answers.  When Chuck died, he had grown in so many loving ways.  Joannie sat by his side as he moved on peacefully.  He promised to stay in touch.

In the midst of her grieving, Joannie waited for word from Chuck.  She continued life with her friends and mediated regularly, trying to find ways of healing the broken heart.

There was one magazine that Chuck loved and Joannie didn’t care for.  It was all about international travel; it was thick with heavy paper and glossy photos.  This cumbersome volume came in the mail one day and Joannie immediately bundled it with other unimportant papers to go to recycling.  As she carried the papers to the garage, the magazine slipped from the pile and landed, open, on the floor.  Chuck was in a picture taken years before, smiling at her.  The smile seemed to say, “I told you I’d be in touch”. 

Rollie and Hazel lived a solid family life for many years.  Hazel was a sweet soul who kept a wonderful home with fresh baked goods and the music from her beloved piano.  Rollie worked on the railroad.  He loved to play jokes, and he loved to play music. He played the guitar alongside Hazel’s piano. 

The years were good to Rollie, but Hazel developed brain tumors that, when removed, took a toll on her ability to recognize people or even connect with daily living.  Always sweet, always cheerful, she would greet anyone with great love and joy, but didn’t really know who they were.  Sadly, Hazel gradually lost any recognition of Rollie.  He visited her daily in her nursing home, loving her completely.  She was kind and cheerful, just as she was to anyone else who came to see her.  Each day, he hoped that she would acknowledge him and their love.

Rollie’s health eventually failed and he joined Hazel in her nursing home room.  He still cared and loved her; she still smiled her smile of undiscerning kindness.  As the months passed, Rollie became less able to walk or tend to Hazel.  He was failing, yet held on to be with his beloved wife.

One night, Hazel sat up and looked at Rollie.  “Rollie,” she said.  “I love you very, very much.”  With a smile, Rollie died. 

It is the eternal love that never ceases to fill those of us who watch with joy and humility. 

There are many gifts in the energetic ebb and flow that is God’s world.  In those times of grief, we ask for hope, peace and love.  Always, hope and peace come with those inspiring expressions of love.

Thor's Hammer

Lately I read a piece that described life changes and unanticipated events with the symbolism of Thor’s hammer.  In Norse mythology, Thor is the god associated with thunder.  His Hammer is one of the most “fearsome of weapons, capable of leveling mountains.”  The author goes on to say that in wielding his hammer, Thor “would be able to strike as firmly as he wanted, whatever his aim, and the hammer would never fail, and if he threw it at something, it would never miss…….”

I didn’t think much of it, until Thor threw his hammer at me and it didn’t miss.  It hit me square in the gut, the second blow reeled me around like a spindle and the third pass pulled me straight up and I landed with a thud.

I didn’t even see it coming. 

Sixteen months ago, I filed for retirement.  The purpose was to allow me to reduce costs to the state and help build the cash flow that was dwindling.  My salary was immediately reduced and the associated costs to of the retirement was erased.  Only four of us knew, our Chief Operating Officer, the Council Chair, Council Vice Chair and me.  Since I had no real retirement date set, it didn’t seem appropriate to announce something when I would be working for a long time to come without interrupted service to my staff or our constituents.

In February, I set a date of December 31, announced it to my staff and to the council.  One council member was upset at learning at a late date.  Another smiled internally because he wanted to find problems with the agency that would jeopardize our program base.  My staff was glum but shouldered on, unsure of the changes that would happen with agency leadership.

By April, I found out that not only was I dead wrong about the simplicity I had attributed to the May 2011 act, but the ensuing furor from auditors, other agencies and the Governor’s office was stunning.  My chair and vice chair were removed for “bad acts”.  I tried to talk to the auditors about the reasoning of financial savings, but that fell on deaf ears.  I had a report run in June that indicated I’d saved the agency close to $100,000 by getting off health insurance as well as the other measures.  I was told to bury it because one line item would be misconstrued as proving rumors that were being spread by gubernatorial staff. 

I left the agency in July instead of waiting for that December date.

Thor’s hammer was already lifting, Thor clenched his fists to get a good grip.

The audit was published this week and the only problem found was my “secret retirement”.  An article came on line from the Portland Business Journal.  I braced myself, hoping that it would be a fluke.  I’d been assured by my media guru that this was not a story of interest by the media.  Nevertheless, Thor’s hammer had tapped me on the elbow.

A reporter called that day from the local paper, giving me a chance to tell my story.  I felt empowered by that.  The resulting article was very fair.  I relaxed

Thor’s hammer raised itself that same day when I heard the story was now on the radio, and being shared on television broadcasts.    The hammer swung me sideways and I had trouble righting myself.

Today the local paper published an editorial about the issue, using me as an example of a flawed retirement system.  Thor’s hammer swung wide, hit me square in the chest and I lay prone gasping for breath and writhing in fear.

Twenty eight years of service was reduced to a single incident and I was personally named as a violator of good practices.  The phone had stopped ringing.  I received no emails or Facebook salutations.  I plummeted into well know reactions of the martyred victim.

But I’m lucky to have friends that are not impressed by victim mentality, nor do they want to nurture those behaviors.  “This does not define you,” my friend K. said.  “What you need to do is focus on the you that is good, and true, and has an open and caring heart.  That’s what matters.”  In my despair, all I could do was jot those words down for later use.

I pulled out the article on Thor’s hammer and read some more.  “…..if you find yourself flattened by Thor’s Hammer, it means you have become mired in the quicksand of fear and reactivity that has made you a target.  You will find that at this time you are…..blaming, attached…………..martyred……judgmental, self-deprecating, full of regret…………..  This is the place of feeling powerless to act.  You got triggered by something or someone and did not stay neutral.”

Stay neutral?  When 28 years of my life is reduced to finger pointing and lifted eyebrows and silent phones?  Stay neutral when I am worried that I will be tarred with this brush for the rest of my life?  Stay neutral when I am now only able to detach from that job that I loved because I have no choice?

Ah………………….there it is.

This event heralds the end of a life that fed my soul at times fed my ego at times, gave me uplifting joy when I could be creative and tremendous downs when I didn’t do things right.  Through it all, I carried the responsibility – sometimes well, sometimes not.

I knew that every single person who was fired from the agency was gobbling up the news stories and licking their lips with glee.

I knew that my ego was now squashed and pulled like silly putty, because instead of a retirement party where the celebration of good things done could happen with jovial camaraderie, I am walking away alone.

Yes, my friend K was right.  It is time to shed the CEO package and learn who I am underneath that entire persona that I developed over the years.

But first I had to grieve.

I am grieving the demise of those 28 years.  I am grieving the loss of the relationships I treasured.  I am grieving the joy of planning new ventures and watching key staff grow into amazing professionals.  I am grieving the death of me as a CEO, the most important persona I had.

I will grieve for a while but I will also begin to craft my own direction for the third trimester of my life.  I will use Thor’s hammer to stand in my truth about this situation, whether it is admitting that I had no idea about how to function as a state agency head around retirement issues, or informing about my intentions in doing it the way I did.  It could be that no one cares what I have to say.  I am a game piece in the reaction game to potential retirement fund misuse.  How I feel about how things have been done is of no concern to anyone.  That is another reason why my ego is stretched and pulled and flattened.  In politics, it isn’t the individual that matters; it’s the end result of the political issue.

In my neutrality, I get it.  Now I need to move forward toward acceptance.

The article goes on to say, “Become neutral as quickly as possible, observe that you always have a choice, reflect on what action you choose to take in your life and then do it.  Use the image of having a Thor’s Hammer as your own ability to choose, intend and take powerful action.  This is it.  Do it now.”

Thor’s hammer will swing again.  I am not fully ready, but I am ready to find out how to be ready.  For now I am working at staying away from blame.  The decisions made were done as best way possible based on everyone’s knowledge and mindset at any given time.  This hammer is swinging mightily for reasons beyond those made in May of 2011.

What is more important is that I learn to be in acceptance of those hammer swings and be as neutral as possible in my response.  It is important that I stand in my truth when I can, but take very good care of myself all of the time.  It is important to heal.  It is important to embrace with open arms the wisdom brought to me on a daily basis by friends who are steeped in the attitude of acceptance and spiritual high-mindedness.

It is important to see a future of new opportunities and not need to know what they are.  That’s the beauty of an ego that is slithering and squished.  It allows new thoughts to come in.  Like a blacksmith’s art, Thor’s Hammer will create the new life with magic and unanticipated beginnings.

A beautiful friend and I talked about those endings yesterday and she sent me this beautiful piece through Facebook.  It is true for so many. 

I give closure to the past
I cut the cords that bind me
I deserve to fulfill my destiny
I adjust to change in my life
I welcome change in my life
My future is full of possibilities
I invite new choices into my life
I live free from struggle and fear
My goals are becoming manifest
I seek and find what I need within me
I release my need to deaden my feelings
I release the past and welcome the future
Change in my life is a way for me to learn
The plan of my life reveals itself naturally
New realms of possibility gleam before me
I accept peace and joy in all aspects of my life
I learn valuable lessons from change in my life
I am in control of my life by the choices I make
I'm ready to live life to its fullest, and life's ready for me
I nurture my inner child, love her and have allowed her to heal
I make every act an act of love, freedom, mastery and hope