A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent

Posted on February 16, 2021 by barbmorris

Woman with a cross of ashes on her forehead

Dear Daughter,

On Ash Wednesday, if you were in church, the minister would invite you to the observance of a “holy Lent” and mark your forehead with the ashes of repentance.

Let me be very clear about this: I love you so much. I delight in you. I cherish you. For ever.

Here are a few more things I want you to comprehend. Despite what you’ve been taught, “holy” does not mean pure and unearthly. “Sin” does not mean breaking my rules and making me mad. “Penitence” does not mean listing and wallowing in all the ways you’re wrong and bad. “Repentance” does not mean promising to do better to stay out of trouble.

Please think about these words a new way, on Ash Wednesday and every other day going forward.

What if you only sin when you refuse healing and cling to brokenness? When you use those sharp broken edges to hurt yourself and others?

What if holiness is when you choose to be whole, even though you’re terrified? When you embrace and enfold those pieces of yourself you’ve lopped off to fit into others’ molds?

What if penitence is when you see yourself clearly, and know, speak, and live from your heart?

What if repentance is returning to your true self in all her messy glory?

What if, this Lent, instead of focusing on the ways you’re not good enough and the ways you fall short, you commit to your own healing?

I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone. I am everywhere, my love. You live in me and I live in you.

This means, my dear, when you let yourself be healed, your healing heals the world. And when you cling to your brokenness, the world stays a little more broken than it needs to be. Your healing is important and necessary.

You think your healing is selfish. That’s incorrect. On the contrary, your healing is crucial. I’m using that word deliberately, sweetheart. Your healing is the crux – where you and I come together.

This Lent, the only fasts I want from you are these: Fast from distractions that allow you to stay wounded and broken. Fast from believing you’re not good enough. Fast from making yourself small, and nice, and silent. Fast from all judgment, especially of yourself.

This Lent, make space for me to flow into you and through you.

Befriend your fear, your anger, and your sadness. They are a deep source of nourishment and strength.

Let your love go free.

Let your joy be unconfined.

Sweetheart, healing isn’t complicated, and it’s always here for you. All you have to do is tap into it, like a springtime maple tree or an aquifer of living water. You know this. But it’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? All you have to do is let me clear out the dams and the trash, the resentments and identities and old, too-small skins that keep you stuck and stagnant. Open your heart armor just a little. Let go, child. Breathe and soften. That’s all you have to do. I’ll do the rest.

This Ash Wednesday, let those ashes symbolize our unending connection, a connection so easy to forget and so simple to strengthen. When the priest wipes those gritty ashes on your forehead and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” celebrate your elemental oneness with this dear, dirty earth, and with me. I am in those ashes, in the dust, in the stars, and in you.

I need you, my daughter. You’re the only you I created. Please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be. You don’t need someone outside yourself telling you how to live. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust me. I’ve got you.

All my Love,

God

A Lenten gift for you: two printables of this post are downloadable here.

Photo: Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

The Feast of Barely Beginning

Posted on January 31, 2021 by barbmorris

I heard a lesser goldfinch sing his spring question and answer melody today. Waking up? he asks. Oh, do, he answers.
Crocuses, daffodils and tulips quicken underneath the snow.
Buds swell on bare trees sturdy as sculptures, though it will be many weeks till tender leaves emerge.
The feast of barely beginning is here!
Weeks of winter left, yes. Yet … Have you noticed the sun rising just a little earlier, shedding golden light on surfaces untouched for months by her rays? Have you noticed her just a little higher in the winter sky? Have you felt the lengthening days?
Earth, barely pregnant with new life, dances in snowy meadows and along forest trails, arrayed in festal white, silver, and the barest hint of spring green, holding her barely bulging belly.
Women walk riverbanks, gather new green willow branches and weave Brigid’s crosses to mark thresholds in this fresh year.
Melt, just a little, in the warmth of Brigid’s fire. Let go. Let yourself dream, dear child, of what could be. Dream, daughter, of what you want to create in the coming long summer days. Courageously dream into being the world you want to live in. And dream, Braveheart, of your heart’s companions in this work.
Bake bread. Make space. Speak true words at the right time. Bravely create the world you yearn for, one seed at a time. One furrow at a time. Row by row.
Set your holy intentions.
Tend your taproot. Feel your roots deep in the Mother wake up and slowly, so slowly, stretch and reach to touch your sisters all around you. Feel how everything you need is here. Feel your immense quiet power, slowly waking, held, supported, nourished by Earth—rich dirt feeds you, fresh cold snowmelt trickles down between your roots, warm sun limbers your branches, bright air infuses every leaf and needle. You have everything you need. Everything you need is here. You are perfectly placed. Be who you are. All will be well.
The Feast of Barely Beginning is here. Be here now, a creature of this glorious barely waking Earth. Be where you are, and come.
Let yourself be moved, just a little. Let yourself be warmed, just a little. Just a little. Let yourself be a peaceful slowly burgeoning miracle, waking, swelling, singing softly, rooting, growing. Just a little.
Just a little.
Just a little.

This poem is about Imbolc. Imbolc is one of eight Celtic celebrations rooted in Earth’s cycles – four solar festivals of solstices and equinoxes, plus four pastoral festivals: Imbolc in February, Beltane in May, Lughnassa (or Lammas) in August, and Samhain in November. These Earth-centric celebrations affirm the birth/death/rebirth cycle in which women especially are embedded by virtue of our menstruating bodies, and for which we have been shamed by patriarchal culture.

Celtic rites are an antidote to Earth-denigrating, patriarchal Christianity which is hostile to women and girls, and not all that kind to men.

At Imbolc (Candlemas, Brigid’s Day, Groundhog Day, the Feast of the Presentation), celebrated at the beginning of February, we begin to see the first stirrings of rebirth after the darkness of Winter Solstice and the longest night. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, days lengthen perceptibly. In Bend, today is an hour longer than it was on December 21^st, and the sun is just a little higher in the winter sky. Bird behavior is just beginning to change, as the males begin to preen and sing and vie for female attention, and the females begin to consider their mating options. Buds on trees begin to swell in the growing daylight, although it will be weeks before leaves emerge. Bulbs begin to sprout in the dark dirt under the snow.

The energy of Imbolc feels like beginning. A gentle beginning, not raucous and full of fireworks, but slow, steady, almost imperceptible. Imbolc feels like the first little belly bulge of a new pregnancy. (Imbolc may derive from the Irish Gaelic word for “in the belly,” although the etymology is uncertain.)

Some Imbolc rituals have survived in Ireland for centuries and are rooted in pre-Christian history. Some are probably just invented because they help Earthlings ritualize the passage of time and ground them in Earth’s rhythms. February 1^st begins the Feast of Brigid, also called Bride, one face of the Celtic triple goddess composed of maiden, mother, and crone, adopted by the Christian tradition as St. Brigid. Traditional Imbolc celebrations center on Brigid, an icon of holy change.

Imbolc celebrations in Ireland, and around the world for people who have adopted these Earth-honoring practices and made them their own, include some common elements:

White, green, and silver in cloth and candles.
Weaving Brigid’s crosses from local grasses, reeds, and willow branches, hung over doorways to mark thresholds.
Deep cleaning and space clearing, in preparation for new life.
Literal seeds: bake seeded bread or cookies or cake.
Seeds of intention: Make a vision board for 2021. Choose your word of the year if you haven’t already. Let the gentle spaciousness of Imbolc feed your vision, and you may come up with something more whole and healing than what you would have on January 1.
Sheep’s milk or wool: Imbolc in Ireland is when ewes begin to lactate in preparation for giving birth, so eat some ewe’s milk cheese. Tie off your Brigid’s cross with wool.
Light candles. Sit by a fire. It is still winter, after all.
Bird feathers, especially those of the swan, can be used on your cross or your altar.
Snowdrops are the traditional flower of Imbolc, but any white flower will do, if snowdrops are in short supply.

Go easy with yourself. Let the gentle energy of just beginning permeate your February. Sit with what feels good to your barely burgeoning roots and shoots. Brigid won’t mind if you weave her cross next week, or make a vision board later in the month. Be gentle. Watch for rebirth, yours and the Earth’s, barely beginning.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

Big. Loud. Messy.

Posted on January 3, 2021 by barbmorris

Wearing a lichen hat — New Year’s Day lettuce lichen hat

Lately I’ve been trying on words to see if they fit. I, and many of my clients, choose a word of the year every December or January. Many of us find that our words actually choose us.

I’ve gone through several word changes before finding the perfect word(s) for 2021. First there was “delight,” which turned out to be too airy-fairy to support the big changes in store for me this year. Then I tried on “Force of Nature,” thinking that the unstoppable, fierce energy of that phrase was perfect. Close, but not quite right. So I tried on “Creator,” thinking that the goal of moving from victimhood to creatorhood in every area of my life was a worthy one indeed. Powerful, but still not it.

These are all fine words. Perhaps one of them is your word.

The trouble with these words, for me, is that my brain thought of them.

Words of the year should arise from your soul, your connection to what simultaneously sustains you and calls you into new life. I hadn’t been listening to my soul very well.

It turns out, my soul wants to expand. My soul is tired of staying in the lines, caged, and tame. So my words this year are, according to my soul, are BIG, LOUD, and MESSY, whether I like them or not.

My friends, I don’t like these words at all. These words scare me. Like most females in our culture, I’ve been heavily socialized to be the opposite of big, loud, and messy. I’ve been taught that I should strive to be small, quiet, and neat. I’ve been trained to be pleasing and useful and “low-maintenance,” whatever that means.

To take up space, to say what I mean and mean what I say, and to make a lot of mistakes—these will be very uncomfortable. I will not be the same woman after I embody these words for a year. No wonder I’m scared.

That’s the point of your word of the year: to set an intention and a direction, to plant the seed of a desire, to unfurl and grow a little. Maybe to scare yourself a little, too, although that’s not a requirement.

For me this year, I’ve decided I’d rather feel the fear of being big, loud, and messy than the despair of staying small, quiet, and neat.

What about you?

How do you want to feel? What do you want to create? What is your soul’s call?

Want to go deeper or explore further? Contact me here to schedule a no-obligation conversation. And here’s more information on how coaching with me works.

My favorite “Word of the Year” resource.

A meditation on messiness from my novel.

A poem to bigness, also from my novel.

The link to download my novel as a free PDF.

Photo credit: Jed Holdorph.

How do you create a new life when you’re still living in the old one?

Posted on December 6, 2020 by barbmorris

How do you create a new life when you’re still living in the old one?

How do you change your life and live from your heart without destroying the things you love about the life you’ve already created?

How do you stand tall and strong, when the structure you’ve built up till now wants you to stay crooked and small?

Three things:

1. Courage. Heart-based radical trust in your inner wisdom and goodness. Trust your unhappiness, boredom, frustrations, longings, desires.

2. Clarity. Get just a little clearer on the next thing. Maybe the next two things if you’re an overachiever. You don’t have to have the whole vision. Ask yourself: What tugs? What delights? You know what’s next.

3. Conflict. It’s gonna happen. Learn to manage the inevitable conflict that arises when you change how you live your life.

It’s tempting to just move out of the house. And sometimes that’s necessary and it’s what you know you want to do. You could be the woman who seemingly out of the blue divorces her husband and moves to (Santa Fe, Seattle, New York City, a farm in Iowa, fill in the blank) to follow her passion for (ceramics, whales, the theatre, organic fiber, fill in the blank) and no one saw it coming.

We’re so afraid of causing conflict. Making trouble. Rocking the boat. We’re so convinced the life we’ve built is real – immutable, rigid, solid – and if we wiggle and stretch it’ll all come crashing down. Maybe it will.

If the life you’ve built is that fragile – if all that’s holding the structure of your life together is your precious energy and power, then it might need to collapse. If you’re holding the foundation up like the Incredible Hulk while your people upstairs walk around oblivious, then you might want to stop doing that.

Over and over I hear in my clients a deep fear of talking honestly about their frustrations, anger, and yearning with their husbands.

Sometimes they’re fearful because they made a commitment x number of years ago to this man. I hear these women say, “He hasn’t changed, so why do I have the right to be unhappy? I just need to get over myself and wait out this frustration. My kids would be devastated if I left him.”

Sometimes they’re fearful because their husbands are fine with things as they are. I hear these women say, “He’s perfectly happy. I must be wrong. I must be the one who needs to be fixed. I’m being crazy and hysterical.”

Sometimes they’re fearful because they’re afraid of being dismissed by their husbands. I hear these women say, “What if he doesn’t listen? What if he blows me off? What if I’ve opened this can of worms and nothing changes?”

All of these reasons are a variation of the belief that they need permission from someone else to know what they know, feel what they feel, say what they mean, and do what they want. (Words lifted from Martha Beck’s forthcoming book, The Way of Integrity.)

We’re so well-trained by this patriarchal culture in which we live, move, and have our being, that, as women, we need to look outside ourselves for authority. That we’re irrational and we can’t trust our inner wisdom. That the only things that matter are the things we can measure.

My friends, this is bullshit. I don’t know why it is that women seem to need to to grow and change more than men. Maybe it’s because we live in cycles. We embody change. We are rooted in a deeper reality than patriarchal culture.

Why ultimately doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you trust your courageous heart’s voice, you take the next step that delights you even if it’s scary, and you learn to manage the inevitable conflict. Let me know if I can help.

Photo by Haley Hamilton on Unsplash

We’re all messy miracles.

Posted on November 6, 2020 by barbmorris

I have a dream: imagine we all knew that we are perfect just as we are. We’re messy miracles and we’re fine with that. No need to be perfect or exceptional. Just breathe and love and raise good humans and be good friends, lovers, community members. If we knew that there’s always enough if we share. If we met ourselves and each other with a deep, holy, accepting, life-giving presence. If we said to each other everyday, “There you are. I’m so glad to share the planet with you.”

I posted these words on Facebook last night, November 4, 2020. If you’re reading this in the future, let me remind you – it’s the night after November 3, Election Day, and 24 hours later we still don’t know who won. (As I write this on November 5, 2020, we still don’t know who won. As I post on November 6, 2020, the winner is still unclear.)

No matter.

What matters is what we can control, which is how we live, move, and have our being in this precious world.

What’s your dream for our world?

I dream that all have enough food, shelter, water.

I dream that we live simply so others can simply live.

I dream that we remember that we are all connected.

I dream that we have each other’s backs.

When you’re sick, you know you’ll be cared for.

Your children will be held by a cadre of caregivers and meals delivered to your door.

Fossil fuel stays in the ground, and human encroachment into irreplaceable wild land is out of the question.

Plants and animals and ecosystems are cherished and valued.

Every person is welcomed into the human family, no question.

We can walk or bike to the grocery store, school, and park.

We have a robust and sustainable local food infrastructure.

We understand that we humans are part of the web of life, not outside of it.

I have a dream that the only achievement expected of us is that we grow into our fullness as humans. Both my gifts and my foibles are accepted with generosity, so I can be generous with my gifts and forgiving of my foibles, and yours.

I’m beginning to understand just how deeply comparison, scarcity, and the need to excel are embedded in my thought patterns. These thought patterns cause so much suffering. They stop the flow of creativity and love. They keep me stuck in perfectionism and fear.

Here’s the truth: You are perfect just as you are. We’re all messy miracles. We all have gifts. We all have parts of ourselves that don’t work so well and cause suffering for ourselves and others. That’s okay. That’s how humans are. Your only job is to breathe, love, and be a good human in all the contexts you find yourself. There is always enough when we share.

There you are. I’m so glad to share the planet with you.

Now, get clear on your outrageous dream, and live into it. Be courageously average, make mistakes, and be a good human.

Be a messy miracle.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

What’s your plan for Election Night?

Posted on October 30, 2020 by barbmorris

Do you have a plan for Election Night?

There’s been a lot of talk about having a plan to vote. But do you have a plan for AFTER the vote?

My husband asked me this morning how I wanted to handle Tuesday night. My thoughts went immediately to alcohol. Tequila if things don’t look so good, and champagne if things go well. Maybe both.

But that’s not really functional, is it? It’s human to buffer our emotions occasionally, of course. It’s best not to make a habit of it.

It turns out that what worries me about Tuesday night is that I won’t be able to handle my feelings if Trump wins. I suspect if you dig down under your thoughts, you’ll find the same thing. Worrying about and anticipating my fear ahead of time just means that I’m feeling fearful of my fear ahead of time, before the event I’m anticipating has even happened. It’s a little nuts, and completely understandable if you have a human brain, like I do.

I know it’s my thoughts causing my feelings.
But what do I do about my thoughts – thoughts that seem so reasonable, given the state of our nation and my beliefs about Donald Trump’s four years in the White House?

This is what I was mulling over as I listened to Kara Loewentheil’s Unf*ck Your Brain podcast, devoted this week to Election Emotions.

Kara confirmed for me that what I was actually afraid of was feeling overwhelmed by aching despair, hopelessness, and anger if Trump wins. You can read here and listen here.

What will actually help me these next few days, before and after November 3^rd, is to have a plan. Kara suggests four components:

1. Decide, intentionally, what thoughts you want to think. Choose your thoughts and feelings on purpose.

2. Schedule twenty to sixty minutes each day, blocking out news and social media, to accomplish one or two important tasks. Commit to what’s important to you, and take action.

3. Give yourself at least ten minutes of pleasure each day.

4. Write one sentence of gratitude every night.

After you read or listen, follow the prompts to download Kara’s “Survive This Election” pdf. You’ll be glad you did, I think.

I can’t stress highly enough how much I want you to listen to this episode. It will be 23 minutes well-spent, I promise you.

I’m taking Kara’s advice one step further. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I’m declaring November PeArMaMo, my own Personal Art-Making Month. I commit to making some art each day and posting it on Instagram. I also plan to write daily, focusing on the sequel to Lost and Found, my Camino novel. I may post snippets of that, as well. PeArMaMo doesn’t please the ear like NaNoWriMo, but it will have to do. Perfectionism sucks the life out of life.

Our brains hate uncertainty. We are currently swimming in uncertainty. What a perfect time to flex our grown-up muscles and take some control of our minds and our feelings, right? {Insert smiley face here.}

Make a plan. Choose your thoughts on purpose, and your feelings will follow. Commit to making the world a better place, no matter what happens on November 3^rd.

The world is my field of practice. Unfortunately.

Posted on October 16, 2020 by barbmorris

Moraine Lake in the Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon

(Salty language warning)

Friends, my life is really hard right now. People are doing things that are bugging the living crap out of me.

I’m not talking about the political landscape or COVID or global climate change.

What’s really bugging me right now is the people across the street who have left their porch lights on two nights in a row and they’re really bright, shining into our bedroom, and the assholes aren’t even home. They’re never home. They won’t be home for weeks.

And it’s the jerks pitching their tents where they’re not supposed to at my favorite mountain lake.

And it’s the shitheads across the lake making so damn much noise. I come up here for silence and solitude. And then one dude decides to skin off his clothes and go for a swim buck naked, and so of course he has to holler to the others that his penis has shrunk (not the words he actually used.). Because the water is cold. In October. At 6,000 feet in the mountains. And these aren’t kids. These are men and women in their 60s. Oh my effing god.

There I sit, feet in the lakeside gravel, maroon snow-striped mountain looming over me, fuming, aware that when I get home those fucking porch lights will still be on. And they were. They still are.

I can’t seem to help it. I have a sensitive nervous system. The lights and the noise don’t deeply piss off most people like they do me, if my spouse is any indication.

So, what’s a girl to do? The world isn’t showing signs of accommodating my sensitivity any time soon.

I, swear to god, asked myself what the Buddha would do, and then I used the tools I have at my disposal. Two tools in particular have been helpful: thoughts cause feelings, and the Karpman drama triangle.

I know that it’s my thoughts causing me to suffer. (See this post for more.) I was already changing my actions by not yelling at the (probably Californians) to shut the fuck up, not unscrewing those damn lightbulbs (jury’s still out on that one), and not telling the fisherman his goddamn tent was where it wasn’t supposed to be (I’m guessing he knew). So I needed to look at my thoughts to find relief. When I did, I heard myself say things like “I hate my sensitivity.” “I wish I could be okay with this shit, like other people.” “People should be more considerate.” “People shouldn’t fuck with my peace.”

All these thoughts are victim thoughts. My frustration and outward focus, my helplessness and lack of options, all indicate that I was stuck in Karpman’s drama triangle, playing the victim role extremely well. I’m not sure how to get into the creator’s place of empowerment yet, and just noticing where I was stuck helped so much. Because it’s not going to get any easier. And giving external people and circumstances power isn’t going to help me find peace.

I feel a little better. A little more stable. A little less like I’ll flip out and hurt someone. I don’t want to overstate the state of my enlightenment. All I’m saying is that the tools are helping.

The world is our field of practice. These times are what we’ve been doing our spiritual strength-training for.

(I lifted my title from this On Being interview: Krista Tippett talks with Rev. angel Kyodo Williams. And the idea that these times are what we’ve been practicing for comes from Liz Gilbert.)

Photo credit: Barb Morris (15 October 2020)