Glimmers

Dear Friends,   

Officially speaking, my last Glimmer was in September. (If Not Now, Tell me When) Emotionally speaking, what happened? what is it about time? It seems so long ago since we last connected. I hope you are well and safe. I hope you are taking care of your self as best you can.

The pandemic has added to our complicated relationship with time, as has the constant bursts of news and opinions (and resulting reactions) coming throughout the day. As an elder (ha), I claim an additional awareness about time, having lived seven decades. On some days, I fear there is less awareness as I try to narrow my focus on what or who is in front of me. It helps to have moments of purpose in “these times.”

One of the resources in my life, a peer supervision group for spiritual directors, invites me to ask the question, “What is the state of my heart?” I sit quietly with the question, opening myself to the month’s memories, images, feelings and stories. But mostly, I just wait and listen. I breathe into the question and let these elements of my life wash over me. The answer I am seeking is found in a place of prayer.

It is a helpful practice, it so easy to get caught in the details of life. When I ask, “what is the state of my heart,” the details become less demanding and I’m able to listen a little more deeply. Words come to the surface, they guide my conversation with the Holy One and support my path of authenticity. Grateful…anxiously hopeful…sad…all are welcome in my awareness, joining heart and mind together in the present moment.  I offer here, friends, a treasured bit of wisdom from Jallaludin Rumi, “The Guest House,” translated by Coleman Barks  (clip includes Barks reading this poem, 4:35) I suspect that most of us are experiencing “new arrivals” all the time, so let us learn the ways of hosting a Guest House. Let us listen to our hearts… lean into their tenderness, honor their truth, trust their wisdom.

With love, Lisa

Dear Friends,

You have been on my mind throughout these past weeks.  I hope you’ve found ways to take care of yourself in these uncertain times –  resources to sustain your heart and moments of beauty to remind you of the gift of being alive. These elements of our human story have become central to survival, I am grateful for the opportunities when they appear.

This morning’s invitation came in the form of a loud squawk over my head. Looking up, I saw a Great Blue Heron’s prehistoric form flying up above. Another squawk, and I realized there were two of them circling my little corner of the world. I see them standing on water’s edge, then crouching to take flight, but today’s arrival was much louder and more particular than usual. Their early morning conversation drew my attention and seemed to say, “Go forward, Lisa. Trust what has led you to this moment. Embrace your place in the Mystery.”

Our regular, sometimes hourly, adjustment to a Covid lifestyle in the United States has demanded deeper and more intentional spiritual practice from me. Perhaps that’s the case for you? Life has slowed, priorities have surfaced, feelings continue. As I say good morning to our garden, my heart relaxes into her beauty. The cobwebs shimmer in the sunlight, dewdrops create crystal-like points of light... I greet the day and respond to the heron’s call.

And you? How might the plants and creatures in your life be speaking to you? What scripture or poetry sings to you of love’s abiding presence? Where does wisdom reside for you? Go forward, friends, trust what has led you to this moment. You have what you need to come into the fullness of who you are, to bring your light into the world around you. We are grateful you are here. Embrace your place in the Mystery and let Carrie Newcomer’s lovely song “If Not Now” (click here) nourish your heart as you travel down the road.

“Hope is holding in creative tension all that is, with everything that could and should be, and each day taking some action to narrow the distance between the two.” Parker J. Palmer

With affection, Lisa

Dear Friends,

I never understood what people were referring to when they offer this platitude on the subject of age. “It’s just a number,” they would say and I would wonder, “Yeah, but it’s still the number of years I’ve been alive, right?  Are you suggesting that we can pretend our body isn’t aging?” (This is a sincere question, I can’t figure that idea out.)

I feel the weight of these years, both the lessons and the gifts. Or is it the physical weight I am feeling as a premier member of the Covid Continuous Consumption Club?  In the quiet of evening…or when I see the news… or just remember … I feel the weight of seventy years of living and these days, it feels heavy. (For comic relief, click here.)

I cannot look at the next year of my life without a deep and humble thank you for all these years that preceded it. Yes, some were painful, but so many were filled with moments of joy, of love, of beauty, of wonder. This number, this 70, is an invitation to open my eyes and see the me that I have become. It’s not just a number…

It’s an accumulation of life experiences that, combined with my inherent qualities,  weaves together the complex and “rooted in love” being that I am.

It’s the quiet mornings, stillness, as life is waking up to a new day, light returning once again.

It’s being with people, ahhh people, whose presence I sorely miss these days…whose presence I took for granted much of the time.

It’s each of those life moments that create a secret snapshot, or a serenade with a sweet, saucy, slithering sigh.

It’s the moments of love between hearts that illuminate my humanity, the moments of love I experience, within, that define it.

It’s the living, squishy vibrations that are ricochetting throughout my body, in record speed.

It’s listening to the breath of Spirit that whispers tender reminders of hope and forgiveness.

It’s that child of God, dancing among the stars or tenderly toe-stepping in the tulips, wherever her whim might take me.

It’s not just a number, it’s a call to be the best me in a time that needs everyone of us to live with integrity and hope. Will you join me? No age requirement.

with my love and gratitude, Lisa

Dear Friends,                                                                                                       

I have to confess, I have been thinking so much about my 70th birthday this month that I was not paying attention to July 4th. We raised our children with the joy of parades and wearing red, white and blue at neighborhood get-togethers. On our own, we have delighted in fireworks reflecting in the waters of Lake Beseck. But this year, the 4th of July feels entirely new. 

Preparing for a July 18th Zoom program, “The Wisdom of Grief, The Promise of Hope,” for my friends at Pilgrim’s Landing on Cape Cod. (click here for information) has added another lens to my patriotic ponderings. My last in-person grief-retreat was with these folks in Chatham MA on March 7, just as the virus was on the horizon. We experienced the nourishment of community that day, as we shared the personal pain that each brought into the room. I was asked to return, via Zoom, to address the losses we are experiencing, particularly as Americans, due to the virulent presence of Covid 19 and the painful, impossible to ignore, revelations of systemic racism in our country. On July 18th, we will come together to recognize and process the collective grief we share at this time. You are invited to join us.

I bring all of this to my prayer today. Our flag is up, potatoes and eggs lay waiting for their role in the day, the lake is getting busy – but July 4th, 2020 is like no other. My heart returns to the lyrics of “God Bless America” with a new layer of awareness. I reach out to you to join me in a prayer of grief and of hope – each holding the other – as we walk through the landscape of loss together.

God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her, through the night from the light up above.

Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant, wrote these lyrics as a soldier in a World War I army camp. The song was set aside from a musical revue, because Berlin felt it was too somber for their theme, “Yip, Yip, Yaphank.” Singer Kate Smith needed a patriotic splash during World War II, and Berlin was approached. The song became Smith’s signature song, singing it nearly every day for two years, rivaling the national anthem in popularity for years. The story goes in a July 3, 2019 New York Times article (click here), that Kate Smith’s long held “ownership” of the song was tarnished in 2019, when her early career, racist songs came to light.

My prayer invites me to step back through time… my hands reach out and part the shadows of Smith’s well-meaning and intentionally commercial invocation for God to bless America. I see, but look past, her racist history embedded in our American story. Further back, I imagine Berlin, a new citizen in the military, writing the piece as the love song it is. And even earlier, I watch his parents bringing this 5 year old child from Russia to escape anti-Semitic persecution in Russia. An immigrant’s prayer of gratitude becomes my prayer of hope and healing. 

God, please bless America. Like all of us, she is waking up to her flaws and failures, while trusting her gifts and goodness. God, please bless America as she navigates a needed transformation to maintain a safe home for all of your children that live here.  Bless her, O God, as she seeks to offer a light to those hurting in the world.

God bless each of you, dear friends,

Lisa

Dear Friends,

My heart aches. Oh, it’s been a glorious June in New England, the temperature has warmed up, roses are lush – birds are happy, and so am I. At the same time, my heart aches as I experience the serious divide over human value in our country. I watch a black father playing with his little girl, such love is shared between them, and I pray for his safety. At the same time, I receive an email from a high school classmate that diminishes human beings into a political statement.  My heart aches.

Recently, I experienced a lovely memory of my mother….. We are sitting together in her white 57 Plymouth Fury, on either end of a long bench seat. She’s in the driver’s seat, I never question how she manages the gas and brake pedals. Her crutches lay next to her purple, paralyzed legs. Before us, Mt Rainier rises up into the sky. “The Mountain is out,” a familiar phrase in this part of Washington state, means any overcast or cloud cover has eased. Instead, grey, and sometimes, purple ridges build upon one another, snow and shadows shape the familiar spaces in between. We gaze in wonder, as the Mountain speaks her message of presence and wholeness. 

Looking back to that time in my childhood – my father dead, my step-father abusive, my crippled mother doing the best she can – these trips were lessons in contemplative practice. I learned the gift of “being” without expectation. When we three – my mom, the Mountain and I – sat together in silence, I learned the beginnings of prayer. My heart shifted into a stillness that transcended thought,  even feelings. I didn’t have to “divide the field,” as Richard Rohr describes it. I was exposed to a moment

“where you don’t have to eliminate the negative, but let reality get to you as it is – without judging it, analyzing it, explaining it, critiquing it or even understanding it.”

As I sit here today, grateful for such glimpses of wisdom, I’m also aware of the heartache of loss and uncertainty around me. I’m even more aware of my human experience of fear and doubt, anger and sadness. But as Rohr explains in his wonderful video, “Becoming Stillness,” (click here) we humans always face unresolvable contradictions. The path that I choose at this time of Covid-19 and a call to social justice is the path of paradox. I seek to hold all of it, gently, and also with compassion…for the world, for the broken, for the angry, for the heroic, for myself.

I invite you, friends, to join me at the foot of your own Mt Rainier. Recall, find, or create a space that allows you to let go of control – a space that teaches you the simple lesson of being. These reflective moments may last only a few seconds, but cumulatively they might lead us into awareness.  They might comfort and guide us as we balance the heartache of the transformation we’re experiencing with the “softest of mornings,” as Mary Oliver so sweetly teaches,

“No doubt clocks are ticking loudly all over the world. I don’t hear them. The snail’s pale horns extend and wave this way and that as her finger-body shuffles forward, leaving behind the silvery path of her slime. Oh, softest of mornings….how shall I go on, with my introspective and ambitious life?”

Thinking of you with affection, Lisa

Dear Friends,

My work in grief ministry has given me the opportunity to observe very personal, and at the same time, “universal” responses to loss. And into that mix, I bring my own unique experiences of loss. One thing that is painfully clear, losses know other losses. Maybe they’re all part of the same web, in the way that trees are interconnected under the grass in my backyard.

Our maple trees are being “cleaned up.” That translates into 1) cut out dead and dangerous branches off of five trees and 2) remove one of our trees and our neighbor’s tree. I sit here in the middle of our house, listening to the sounds of the tree’s “death,” I feel loss.

On Friday, May 29, 2020, that isn’t the only loss I’m experiencing. My soul vibrates with the losses that surround me: Three hundred and sixty thousand people have died from Covid-19 around the world. The city of Minneapolis is screaming with agony. Our black brothers are being hunted.  Individuals and families are facing hunger, homelessness, illness, and deep despair. Our fear of dying has moved way past a literary question, into a haunting echo. Our, seemingly, collective lack of trust IN ANYTHING has infiltrated our very private conversation with trust. All of these movements in our collective consciousness are losses.

Our experiences of loss vibrate together like the caterpillar’s silks connecting their chrysalis homes. The trees , clamoring down around me, are pulling at my heartstrings, and as a result, I am vibrating with other losses in my life, all at varying frequencies.

This tree work will end. The yard will be cleaned up, the newly discovered tree rot will become a pat on the back. I will sit outside, ask the trees to forgive me, and enjoy a few extra rays from the Sun. At the same time, I will be holding my brothers and sisters, in their anguish, a little more closely to my heart. As I experienced our collective grief, I named their experiences. I do not return to the Land of Hope alone. I carry the hearts of those I’ve met in prayer with me. 

People ask me, “What can I do? How can I, possibly make a difference?” Our sense of helplessness is a common response to loss and it is everywhere. I know what I have to do, I have to change my daily routine to include quiet time with the God of my understanding. I have to experiment with many other names for the Divine, to develop and deepen our love-relationship. I have to surrender into the Love that Knows No End, surrender everything, even if it’s just for that time of morning prayer.  I have to trust that my singular effort to shine the light of Love in my life could somehow support you in your life. I have to proclaim that we, like the trees, share an interconnection.… my brother’s pain is my pain, my sisters joy, I share too. Our souls

“experience a coming together, a communion of hearts, knowing that, as philosopher William James puts it, ‘the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom.’ ” *

Let us embrace the idea that in addition to collective grief, we also experience collective soul, collective hope. We have the capacity to share “good vibes,” the Spirit…. Love. Let us, together, bring our broken hearts into moments of connection. Let us rest with the God of our understanding and the abiding strength found in union. Let us say, “Yes!” to Hope. I close with words from Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault from Mystical Hope, to nourish your relationship with Hope as you, dear friends, nourish mine.

“Hope’s home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that . . . will send us forth in hope, regardless of the physical circumstances of our lives. Hope fills us with the strength to stay present, to abide in the flow of the Mercy no matter what outer storms assail us. It is entered always and only through surrender; that is, through the willingness to let go of everything we are presently clinging to. And yet when we enter it, it enters us and fills us with its own life—a quiet strength beyond anything we have ever known.”

Peace to you this day,
Lisa

*Grieving – The Sacred Art: Hope in the Land of Loss,” Skylight Paths/Turner Publishing, 2016

“So on this meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend.                                                       
Like light, we can’t be broken, even when we bend.”

Amanda Gorman

Dear Friends,

You have been in my heart this week.  You, me, all of us –  souls on our planet Earth. We are witnessing a time of transformation. Perhaps you, like me, are reading essays, praying or deepening your meditation, or walking in nature to support this inescapable process of change. Perhaps you, like me, have moments of uncertainty or sadness around the great unknown that is before us.

I followed my instincts, recently, and purchased a grow-your-own-caterpillars kit. I watched them travel around the plastic cup, down into their food source then up the walls to the top. Over and over, shedding their skin as their bodies changed and grew. Their final days, at this stage, were filled with jerks and spasms as they return to the underside of the lid, attached themselves and moved into a “J” shape. Slowly, their bodies transformed, once again, and a chrysalis encapsuled each of them. The next three days were important, explained the instructions, no movement, no disruption to their time of total surrender to their destiny.

These soon-to-be Painted Ladies accompany me, as I too, wait in stillness. They have now been transferred to a habitat for their next stage of transformation. I welcome them each morning, as I too, await mine.

While I wait, I am grateful for the words of our Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman. I am grateful that her message of hope acknowledges the mourning that is all around us.  (I hope you’ll take the time to hear her message to us.) The fullness of life is found through embracing all of life, not just the sweetness but the bittersweet, sour and distasteful. On those days when I allow myself to feel the enormity of these times, I take little sips of such flavors. I grieve the lost lusciousness of an unfettered life. Something happens when I honor my feelings, as I wait inside my Covid Chrysalis. Something shifts with a timing all of its own. I, like the caterpillar, have no control over the next stage of my life. But I can choose to participate in the process, I can align myself with that-which-is-greater-than-myself….Mother Nature, Higher Power, the Sacred Mystery, God.

I listened to John Phillip Newell’s recent offering: Wisdom in the Pandemic. He affirms the call that I have been hearing, “Deepen your integration of grief and hope, Lisa, step into the fullness of My love for you.” I allow myself to grieve the losses in my life, with faith in my heart. Newell puts it this way,

“Keep our hearts open to allow ourselves to feel the pain, in order to access a deep strength of soul within us, to act for one another.”

This is where I land, dear friends. I am learning compassion from the inside out. As I hold the space of your pain in my prayer, I touch my own. As I trust the healing path with grief by my side, I open my hidden wounds and ask that they be bathed by the light of Christ. Today, as just one more sojourner in the Land of Loss, I embrace the gift of self-compassion and find my compassion for you, more grounded and clear. If the instructions are correct, my guides in the art of transformation will soon be emerging from their time of darkness. I will watch them with a deep respect as each limb, wing, antenna comes into this world. With deep gratitude, I will trust the flow of my own emergence into who I was created to be. May it be so, for all of us, brothers and sisters, this time demands no less.

Your sister on the journey, Lisa

This coming Saturday, May 23, 1-4p EDT, I will be facilitating an important conversation and time of reflection about grief.  Our online program, $40, hosted by Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center, is titled “Conscious grieving: Cultivating Hope in the Land of Loss.” Registration closes at noon on Friday, May 22. If this interests you, I hope you’ll join us. Perhaps you might share this time of community with the people in your world. I’d be grateful.   

 https://programs.mercybythesea.org/CourseCatalog/ScheduleView.asp?ScheduleId=3275

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Dear Friends,

I share here a recent blog that I wrote for Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center. We are working together to create an afternoon of connection and healing, and you are invited.  Details follow for our live, virtual gathering on May 23rd, I hope you’ll consider joining us, especially if you’ve been circling around sadness or loss. And know that you are in my prayer, as we learn to let hope and sadness co-exist in our tender hearts.

with love, Lisa

FINDING HOPE IN THE MIDST OF LOSS*

A cardinal visited my window today, the burst of red in the grey morning made me smile and reminded me of Florence Trahan, RSM. I was fortunate to learn from her at Mercy by the Sea. I was blessed to pray with her. Sister Florence’s gentle heart touched my own as my urgent questions and thoughts filled the room. Where is God in this situation? How should I respond to the people before me? Her spirit sits with me now as I pray about the pandemic and my upcoming program on grief++.

I’m aware that now, and during my training with Sr Florence, I want to do this “right.” Structure my day, I am told. Make time for both movement and contemplation. I listen to wise teachers online, as I listened to Florence’s guidance, and find myself lacking. Some days, I am not steeped in the “peace which transcends all understanding.” I dip into sadness, hover around fear and get drawn into the great unknown.

My study of and experience with grief reminds me to pause…take a deep breath…and open my heart to these feelings. The pandemic is an experience of loss upon loss. Some days I can’t keep up. At the same time, I remember the call to self-compassion. “The root practice,” Francis Weller explains, “for our inner lives and for our relational lives.”

As any griever, I am doing the best I can. I am remaining conscious and bringing that awareness to my experience of loss. I hold the space of love for myself, just another pilgrim on the journey. In the midst of these times, Sister Florence’s gentle spirit reaches into my heart and reminds me that when we choose compassion for one another, and for ourselves, we enter the Mystery as one.

Sister Doris Klein wrote, “We must remember that to own the light is not to deny the darkness but to allow it to be transformed – and it takes courage to be faithful to this transformative process.” Grief after our loved one’s death and grief during this life-changing crisis both call us to an unknown transformation. That is part of the challenge. At the same time, Love is the light that guides us. Love cultivates the courage to choose self-compassion. Love, just like a visiting cardinal, comes at the right time to calm our fears and heal our wounded heart.

*Posted on 4/30/2020, Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center, in Madison, CT https://www.mercybythesea.org/blog/finding-hope-in-the-midst-of-loss/

++  Conscious Grieving: Cultivating Hope in the Land of Loss 

Due to the pandemic underway, we are experiencing loss and grief in an entirely new way, including unprecedented separation from our hospitalized or dying loved ones. As global losses mount, our personal losses can become “disenfranchised.” At the same time, we can feel overwhelmed by the “collective and anticipatory grief” that we share each day. 

On May 23rd, 2020, 1-4, p (EDT) Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, CT presents a live, online gathering to explore and express our experiences of loss and grief, including those related to Covid-19. The cost is $40, for detailed information and registration go to https://www.mercybythesea.org/

Lisa Irish, MEd, MA, BCC will host a time of reflection and sharing, as she draws from her experience in bereavement chaplaincy and spiritual direction. This program will support our individual and collective grief in these times of isolation, exploring the transformative nature of grief and nourishing the sacred strands of connectedness between us.  Fr Richard Rohr says of Lisa’s book, Grieving – the Sacred Art: Hope in the Land of Loss, “…The roadmap is wise, but sensitive – grounded in hope – and reminds us to rest in God’s healing love.”  

Dear Friends,                                                 

The finches’ yellowness increase day by day. Their morning visit to the silo of seeds is filled with song and calm, wings and wonder. I think I’ve been taking them for granted…these little friends had become part of the backdrop of my window on the world. But not today.

Everything is harder than it used to be, everything is more intense. Everyday Life has been distilled into This Extraordinary Moment, and it is Exhausting.

I was so grateful to see a reminder of Maslow’s Hierarchy – a staple of Psychology 101 – with an arrow pointing at Safety and Physiological needs, noting “You Are Here.” It isn’t just me! What a relief! We are sharing this life-changing experience, trying to make sense of it…trying to survive it.

“I’ve spent weeks hanging out with myself and I am so sorry to every person I have ever spent time with.” Facebook friend

In the midst of lessons in a solitary lifestyle, we are bombarded with images and messages of discord, hope, fear, heroism, anger, loss and love. How do we navigate through it all? My path must include grief. I cannot wait for this to be “over” to cry, for as we know we have no idea what tomorrow will even look like. I cannot stall my sadness until its my family member with the Covid-19 diagnosis, for every soul is related to me. The weight of sadness is everywhere. I have learned enough about loss and grief to know I must trust my feelings and give them space.

Yesterday, I climbed into the woods behind our house, so grateful for the natural world and for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. I watched a brook coming down the hill, the water turning this way and that depending on where the rocks were positioned. I could see little ripples as the water pushed its way through a narrow space, I listened to the sound it made. I listen now to the words of John “Juniper” Robertson, OEF, adapted into poetry form by Shoshanah Kay, OEF

“What do I have to fear?

 My path has been prepared for me.

 It is a path built on love.

 My ancestors, our ancestors, have lived through really rough times.

 And the hope and knowledge of the

        Love at the center of the Universe

        has brought them through.

 Spring is all around me in New York City.

 This pandemic makes it obvious that I don’t know.

 But, in fact, that is my every day.

 I don’t know what is coming, what is just around the corner.

 Living in this “I-don’t-know” locates me in a place of listening.

 Listening to the struggles of those around me.

 Listening to fear, to anxiety.

 Listening to the birds, to the signs of spring.”

As the finches’ color gets brighter, something is shifting in me as well. I am changing – sometimes against my will, sometimes aware of God’s grace. Inch by inch, feather by feather, I adjust to this new reality. May I also experience an intensity of awareness for the gifts in my life. These finches, for example, they bounce from perch to perch, flap their wings to protect their favorite spot. Their bright yellow presence pops against the newly green grass and reminds me to look a little more closely at the life all around me…they remind me to breathe…with one conscious breath I open my heart, and assume that in spite of all the change around me, the God I know, is God.”*

With love, Lisa

*With gratitude to The. Rev. Dr. Molly O’Neill Louden, Celtic Worship Team Facilitator

 

“This is preeminently a time to tell the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly….Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.”      Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Inauguration Address, March 4, 1933

Dear Friends,

I heard these words from Doris Kearns Goodwin on CBS This Morning. (open link for the interview) Her historical knowledge of American disasters offered wisdom and perspective that was very helpful. Doris described the Civil War, the Depression, and other challenging moments in history with the words, “They did not know how it was going to end, there was enormous anxiety. And yet, history tells us that in each of those situations the leaders came through, the citizens came though. We really did emerge stronger than ever before.”

My mission in these six years of writing to you has been to tell the truth, my truth anyway. I have shared experiences and observations from my life, and sought to “make meaning”  from my stories. It was and is my desire to connect to you, to your stories, and to your sense of the sacred…to affirm our shared human experience

Today we find ourselves in a new reality, ever changing and completely upending our sense of home and safety. Each of us, we and our neighbors, find ourselves in various states of denial and awareness. But if I am to tell the truth, “the whole truth, frankly and boldly,” let me add my voice in favor of our capacity to adapt and to grow in the midst of this crisis.

Four years ago, I claimed March 24th as “I Am Enough” Day. It was an idea that came out of my prayer and healing journey. We celebrated simply, the idea being that for one day let each believe that “I am ok, I am enough.” I know that some of you have no difficulty with that concept, but I also know many who do. So, as my ministry grew, I sought to affirm folks in their “enoughness.” It’s been fun, enlightening and needed. Nathaniel Branden, a psychologist known for his work in self-esteem, puts it this way,

“The feeling that ‘I am enough’ does not mean that I have nothing to learn, nothing further to achieve and nowhere to grow to. It means that I accept myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and respect myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage.”

Oh friends, too often we find ourselves “on trial in our own eyes”…..after that phone call or text; within a place of deep grief – where we question every choice; following a change in a relationship or work status; and now – in the midst of constant self-doubt about our Covid-19 behaviors and our uncertain future. Now, more than ever, it is time to consider and embrace our enoughness as the act of courage that Branden describes.

As these sheltered-in-place days seem so long and so alone – it is indeed time to embrace the unique being we are. Let us “value and respect” ourselves, dig deep and listen to our inner wisdom. We were created in love, by love and for love. Let us shine our light in the spaces around us! Yes, we must practice physical distancing but let our hearts extend love into the world. Yes, we must renew practices to protect ourselves, but let us do so on behalf of others. That is our call, that is our mission, that is our reason for being here in this moment in history.

With affection,  Lisa

Please join us on March 24th, light a candle, send your love to our hurting world. Know that you are enough and can make a difference.

“Anything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new, give us more to see.” Stephen Sondheim