Tag Archives: four healing shifts

Foundation #3: Ownership

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Sun shining through fingers

Foundation #3: Ownership. Your theology is the matrix in which healing happens. Examine your theology. Deconstruct and reconstruct as you choose.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. ~Mary Oliver

(Three foundations – embodiment, awareness, and ownership – are fundamental. The four healing shifts – more soul, more acceptance, more intention, and more creation – are powerful. But making the shifts without the foundations is like building a house on the sand. I’m diving deeper into these seven facets of healing throughout November and December. You can subscribe here.)

First, a caveat:
I write these newsletters as the “me” who knows these things I write. I am still also the “me” who forgets them. I am still also the “me” who commits to this open-ended soul pilgrimage, gets scared, and returns to the safety of culture’s prescribed path. I commit to my journey, lose my way, and then find my way back to commitment, over and over and over. This seems to be how it works for most of us. Deep change takes time, usually. Time, and continuous recommitment.   

An audacious statement:
Theology should not hurt. Theological beliefs that cause pain aren’t true. It’s that simple. If a belief or a system of beliefs hurts, let it go and choose holier, healthier, more whole beliefs instead.

You get to do this.
You are a theologian. We are all theologians, whether we want to be or not. Many of us are passive theologians—taking what we’ve been told as the gospel truth, whether these beliefs about God*, creation, and our place in the cosmos cause harm or not.

When you’re more bodyful and mindful, you become aware of what hurts. You become aware of forces and ideas you may have endured for decades, believing you had no choice. After all, you’ve been taught, implicitly or explicitly, that theology is done by other people—more qualified, authoritative, male people.

Dr. Diana Butler Bass (author of Freeing Jesus, most recently) describes a moment in graduate school when another student referred to a woman author as a “theologian.” Diana’s male professor corrected them: “Women don’t write theology. Women write memoir.” (Or self-help.)

You get to choose your beliefs. If the theology implanted in your brain before you had the capacity to think about it critically works for you, rock on! If not, it’s your calling and your responsibility to create new theological pathways for yourself, and possibly for others.

These beliefs might be hurting you:

  • God* is male, therefore maleness is superior. Maleness is superior, therefore God* is male.
  • Bodies are bad, especially female bodies.
  • Earth and earthly things are profane.
  • My sexuality is dangerous, must be controlled, and is to be expressed only in the context of heterosexual marriage, if then.
  • One marriage only.
  • Religion is about following rules, being good, and getting to heaven.
  • Sin is breaking rules.
  • Jesus died for my sins.

Some alternatives to try on:

  • God* is love. God* is in everything and every thing is in God*.
  • All bodies are holy.
  • Earth, the body of God*, is sacred. There is no such thing as “profane.”
  • Sexuality is a gift to be cherished, explored, and shared if I wish.
  • People change. People grow. Sometimes that change and growth requires leaving a marriage.
  • Religion (the Latin root means to reconnect, retie, realign) is how I outwardly express my inward beliefs. Religion is how I tie myself to the holy.
  • Sin is refusing to heal and be whole. 
  • Jesus’ radical beliefs about human belovedness and the loving heart of God* led him to the cross. His fidelity to his beliefs and his willingness to die for them are what saves.

Some ways to begin:
1. Awareness = bodyfulness + mindfulness. Pay attention to how different thoughts feel in your body. Say a thought out loud or to yourself. What do you notice? What’s going on with your breathing? Your heart rate? Your muscles, especially in your upper body? Your abdomen? Truth feels like freedom. For most of us, freedom feels expansive, light, open, and warm.

2. Remember your experiences of holiness, if you have them.
Ask yourself questions, and listen for your answers.

  • Do I really believe in God*? (Maybe you don’t.)
  • If yes, why?
  • Have I ever experienced the Sacred/More/Holy/Love/God*? (Maybe you haven’t.)
  • If yes, how? Where? When?  

Attend to what you know is true. Truth feels good in your body. Perhaps unsettling, but good. False thoughts and beliefs do not feel good in your body.

3. You could play with this sentence: “If God* is …, then I am …, and my soul is ….” Using my Camino deep womb-like heart experience, I might say “If God is a deep womb-like heart connecting everything, then I am a child of God, and my soul is an umbilical cord.” Here are more examples.

This above all: Trust your knowing. Trust your experience. Your knowing is more valid than beliefs formulated by others, passed along as truth. Stop trying to make yourself believe things you know not to be true. Stop pushing those uncomfortable thoughts of disbelief aside. Believe yourself. Be truthful with yourself. Know what you know, at least internally. Claim your integrity.

If all you know to be true is the sweetness of an apple, or the feel of water on your feet, or the sound of birdsong? That’s okay. That’s real. That’s authentic. Trust yourself. Believe yourself.

Stop cutting off parts of yourself to fit into others’ theological boxes.

This work is too important to delegate. Be your own theologian. Take ownership of your fundamental beliefs.

*** ”God” is a commonly-used name for unknowable, unnamable, animating energy. How does “God” feel to you? If that name feels good, use it if you want to. If not, trust your knowing and use another name, or no name at all.  

 PS. Happy Thanksgiving to my readers in the United States. I’m thankful for each of you. Here are a couple of resources if, in addition to giving thanks, you want to think critically about this day.

To know more about, and perhaps acknowledge, Indigenous people who occupied your home before you, check out this resource. Bend, Oregon, is located in the homelands of the Tenino and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, comprised of Wasco, Warm Springs, and Paiute people. Members of these Tribes, and others, live here still. 

And here’s a video by Robin Wall Kimmerer about “The Honorable Harvest,” which describes an ethical relationship with plants upon whom we depend. 

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

Is crappy theology causing you to suffer?

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Open gate leading to sun-filled meadow

“But what about God??”

Beloveds, I’m hearing this question a lot these days. I hear it from friends, parishioners, and clients.

I hear it most loudly from within myself.

I’ve stopped even remotely trying to fit the round peg of all of me into the square hole of who patriarchal religious tradition says I should be. Since my abstention from church, my relationship with God is fuller. More whole. Healthier. Holier.

I’m not fighting back so much. I’m softer and stronger. I’m more open to the God energy’s yearning to flow into me, through me, and out into the world.

 I’ve even begun using the name “God” again. Although “God” means something/someone very different that it used to mean, for me.

God has many names. There are probably as many names for God as there are humans. We all experience God energy uniquely, because we’re unique.

Other (usually male) people’s theology has supplied us names and labels, and described our experience as good or bad, in or out. Some of us fit nicely into the square holes delineated by the theology we received from our families and culture. Some of us maybe did once but we just don’t anymore. Some of us never did, and we stopped trying long ago.

Becoming an adult means taking responsibility for your own theology. Because your theology underlies everything.

Your theology determines your relationship to your body. Your theology determines how much you trust or don’t trust your desires. Your theology determines every choice you make.

I’m using the word “theology” deliberately. I’m not talking about your spirituality. I’m not talking about your religion. I’m talking about your beliefs about God, period. Your theology is lived out in your spirituality and your religion. Your theology comes first.

Every unhappiness is a result of crappy theology.

Perhaps you believe lies you learned about God. Lies that cause you to suffer.

Lie #1: Jesus died for your sins.

On the contrary, beloved, Jesus doesn’t give a rat’s rooty-poo about sin, and neither does God. God’s only care is for your love for yourself, for others, and for the Earth. When you focus on sin, you focus on what’s wrong with you, on what you don’t deserve, and on how you can prove your worth. Which you never can, by the way. The premise is rotten to the core.

Lie #2: God despises the world and “things of the flesh.”

On the contrary, beloved, God IS creation. God IS your flesh. We are made of God, and God is made of us. We and God are interwoven. You are holy. Your flesh is holy. Your desires are holy. When you believe God doesn’t love your body, you don’t trust your desires and, because you live in a body, you’re never good enough. This self-loathing is quadrupled at least for women, because we live in bodies that change all the dang time.

Lie #3: God has a plan for your life, and your job is to figure it out and follow it. You have to strive mightily for your purpose and meaning.

On the contrary, beloved, Creator God is always at work. This means that who you are, as a member of God’s body, is always changing. Your job is to be the fullest version of yourself you can be in this moment. And then this moment. And now this one, too. Forever and ever until you die, and maybe after. Your job is to ride the wheel of change with trust and joy, grieving what’s dead and fully becoming the new you being born.

I could go on, and I will. Stay tuned.

So notice where you’re suffering. Then look beneath your suffering for the flawed theology causing your suffering. I promise you that it’s there. (Want to look together? Here’s how.)

We need you to do your grown-up theological work, and we need you to share your conclusions with us. When we do this work together, we strengthen each other. We find community. We create a new world, a world closer to God’s dream for Creation. We envision a new future, and together we find the strength and grace to incarnate it.

PS. Our first Community Conversation happens on June 17th at 9:00 am Pacific. Subscribe to my weekly letter for the link.

PPS. I’ll be sending emails only to my weekly letter list beginning on July 1st. Email subscribers will get new content, coaching opportunities, and notifications of upcoming events delivered straight to their inbox. You can subscribe here, and thanks!

Photo by Nikola Knezevic on Unsplash

When your Yes becomes No

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Woman sitting on a rocky beach

Do you want to say No to people, situations, and commitments that used to be Yes? You’re not alone. This is a common theme with my clients, especially as we re-emerge from Covid.

These “used to be Yes” items run the gamut from the immense – a marriage, at least in its current form – to the seemingly small – dropping out of a small group or unsubscribing from an email list.     

Why is it so hard for women to honor their new No?

Here are two stuck spots my clients experience. A third, women and our discomfort with our power, is a subject for another newsletter!

1. You feel afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Fear of hurting someone’s feelings is actually just avoiding conflict. Underneath the avoidance of conflict is the belief that your own desires and priorities aren’t as important as the perceived desires and priorities of the person whose feelings you’re afraid of hurting. And this belief you have, that your desires and priorities aren’t as important as other people’s desires and priorities, is bullshit perpetrated on you and other women by the patriarchy. (See last week’s newsletter for more about trusting your desires.)

2. You feel afraid of the emptiness and openness created when, not knowing what might emerge to take its place, you honor your No. This fear of unknowing, of emptiness and openness, is actually the belief that you can’t trust yourself, your desires and your priorities. And your lack of trust in yourself is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s nature and your connection to It.

We’ve been trained to believe in a linear, patriarchal, masculine, capitalist model that we’re one and done. That the goal of life is to figure out what we’re supposed to do, go do it, and then maintain this state, kicking and screaming if necessary, until we die. That there’s one correct answer and our job is to figure it out. Get it right or die trying.

This false, toxic model underlies that question we ask kids: What do you want to be when you grow up?

This false, toxic model also underlies the questions we ask ourselves as adults: What’s my purpose? What’s my calling? Who did God create me to be?

Beloved, this is NOT how Creator works. The God who is constantly making all things new asks us very different questions: Who am I called to be right now? How can I respond most fully and joyfully to this moment?

The answers to those questions almost certainly aren’t what they were ten years ago, ten days ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Creation and the force continually creating it, aka God, is always birthing, dying, and being reborn. Always. As members of that matrix, inextricably entwined in this holy cycle, we are born, we die, and we are born again. Over and over and over.

No is as holy and as necessary as Yes, when your No is rooted in your soul. Listen to your No. Trust your knowing. Trust your desires. Trust God to be at work in you, continually creating you, continually making you new.

PS. I share news, dates for upcoming free Zoom conversations (our first one is June 17th!), and coaching opportunities through my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here.

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Why don’t you trust your desires?

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I’m sharing a sister coach’s writing today. This is Karen “KJ Sassypants” Hawkwood, from 2018. KJ expresses beautifully and cogently the fourth healing shift I teach my clients: More Creator, Less Victim. I hope you enjoy KJ’s take on trusting our desires.

“I think we have created a crisis of agency. I could say a LOT about this (and probably will over time) because there are so many angles to it, but that’s what they add up to.

We. Do. Not. Trust. Our. Own. Desires. Much less our ability and right to ACT on those desires.

(If you were socialized as a female being, this is times eleventy-billion.)

Among one of these angles, I’ve become increasingly troubled by the spiritual approaches that essentially advocate for “total surrender” (to whatever/Whoever.)

The premise for this seems to be that anything we try to do for ourselves is “just ego” or “just selfishness,” etc., and therefore is to be 100% distrusted and dismissed.

Instead, we’re supposed to let “God(s)” or “the Universe” or “our guides” or [whatever] tell us what to do. How to live our lives. How to make our choices.

This bothers me because I’ve finally realized it’s the stance of a child. *We* can’t be trusted, *we* clearly don’t make good decisions, *we* are adrift and misguided, so someone/something else is going to have to take the wheel.

It’s also a reflection of the OBSESSION we have – especially in modern Westernized cultures – with NEVER MAKING MISTAKES. Never getting it wrong.

Whatever “mistake” or “wrong” actually means. But even when we don’t know what it means we fear it with sweaty, trembling, vomitous terror.

Believe me, I know what it feels like to make choices that have turned me pale green when I look back on them. I know what it feels like to choose from fear, from insecurity, from desperation, from the greed that layers like mold over all those things.

But to have that shatter our trust in ourselves, so that we have to shamefully hand over the reins of our lives to ANY other force that we believe somehow won’t do that?

I’m really not OK with that anymore.

Since surely someone will bring this up, I’m also obviously (I hope anyway) not advocating for the just-as-shitty mirror image – the patriarchal, white, capitalist, Western attitude that “I am the captain of my destiny and all before me is mine for the taking.”

I don’t think I have to say more about why that’s a problem.

But we’ve gone too far in the other direction. And that’s becoming just as much of a problem, in my eyes.

My teacher’s work has influenced me strongly on this, and he talks about moving through life as an “active participant” – and further, approaching life as a process of “call and response.”

I find this stance, this footing, to be FAR more alive, more generative, more effective, and just more *real* than this “leaf on a stream” thing.

I think most of us are scared absolutely shitless of what would happen if we actually OWNED what we WANT and set about bringing it forth, all the while paying careful and wise attention to the conversation with All That Is. We’re so terrified of our own strength, our own clarity, our own potency that it’s easier to just skip all that and believe we can’t trust ourselves.

Our job is to call, and then listen for the response, and *decide for ourselves* what we want to do in turn. But we need to CALL, not whisper, not whimper or beg or tentatively see if it might be OK if. And then we need to stay standing up straight to hear the answer, even if we don’t at all like what we hear, and then call again. And we need to not take that response as a Command From On High or Infallible Guidance From Somewhere That Knows Better Than Us.

And we need to understand the interlocking truths that: 1) this does NOT mean we will not faceplant, sometimes horrifically, and 2) those faceplants do not mean we cannot trust ourselves or give us an excuse to abdicate our own sovereignty.

What would it look like to move through Life as an EQUAL to it?”

PS. I’m shifting my coaching updates and news to my newsletter. Subscribe here for current writing, events, and offerings.

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Blessed are the nice, for they shall be liked.

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Girl sitting in a field of flowers with the sun shining on her

The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.

Last week I wrote to you about the first healing shift I teach my clients: more soul, less façade. I gave you lots of high-falutin’ reasons why soul-based living is better than going through the façade-based motions of living.

But it’s hard at first, isn’t it? Making this shift can be hard because we’re afraid of our loved ones’ reactions. And even strangers’ reactions, to be honest. And we’re all about honesty around here.

If you’re worried about what other people will think or how other people will react when you start living from your soul and telling the truth, you’re not alone. You’re just human, with a human brain.

Culture, a web of constructed social systems, depends on its members caring what other people think. We’re taught to be nice from the cradle. Especially women living in a patriarchy.

Not only are we trained into scoping outward for approval, we’re also hard-wired internally for belonging. Our brains have evolved to fear disapproval and disconnection, because to be cast out of the group back in hunter-gatherer days was almost certainly to die. Our ancestors who cared deeply about belonging to the group lived to reproduce, while those who flouted the group norms were left to die lonely, hungry deaths on the savannah.

Hence our brains that go batshit crazy when they think we’re going to be disapproved of. Disapproval = death, at least to that part of our brains. And that part of our brain screams like a banshee.

Here’s how that shift and its accompanying fear are playing out in my own life right now. I know some of you will relate.

I’ve quit church. This goes deeper than COVID-related church attendance restrictions. I’ve begun checking the “none” box on surveys that ask about religious affiliation, because the “Christian” box no longer fits.

Leaving church has been easier during the pandemic, but the jig is about to be up. Come this fall, when it’s safe to do so, those who want to will be able to attend church in person again. I will not be among them. If history is any guide, this will be “a thing.”

I don’t know why it’s so important to members of my husband’s parish that I attend church. All I know is that when I’ve taken sabbaticals in the past, folks get worked up. I think sometimes this is just affection and concern for my welfare. But when someone I don’t even know asks Jed’s parish administrator, “Is Barb sick? I haven’t seen her lately,” something else is going on. They ask Jed where I am and if I’m okay. Parishioners see me out and about and say how much they’ve missed me. It’s a thing. Maybe it’s more of a thing in my brain than in real life. The result is the same.

My fear of others’ reaction has kept me silently complicit and out of my integrity for years now. My truth: I will no longer sit silently in the pew while God is referred to as “He,” texts are read that perpetuate violence against women, and our holy Earth is denigrated.

My husband does his heroic best to mitigate these messages with his preaching and his presence. He does as much as he can, within the constraints of his ordination. It’s no longer enough for me. Patriarchal, misogynist, dualistic language and doctrines are built into the structure of the institutional church. The institution seems unwilling to look seriously at the damage it’s done and continues to do.

I’m over it. When I imagine sitting inside a church on Sunday morning, my body feels icky – tense, hunched over, closed down. And when I imagine mountain church or river church, I feel strong, free, and peaceful. I feel happy.

Because my happiness matters to me, I choose myself and my priorities over being nice and propping up this harmful system with my presence. By the way, this is the same choice Jesus made – to speak his truth and live his integrity. His choice led him to the cross. Mine only leads to braving my own discomfort and judgment of others.

So, my friends. This shift from façade to soul with regard to church is scary for me. Jed and I have had some uncomfortable conversations. He supports my decision while also feeling the loss of my presence on Sunday mornings. More uncomfortable conversations are probably heading my way as we emerge from our Covid cocoons. And that’s okay. I can handle them, because I’m confident in my decision. My body is telling me the truth, and I believe her.

These are the trials and the rewards of integrity, of living more from my soul and less from my façade. I feel more scared, while also feeling more powerful, whole, and free. That’s how this goes.

When you make this shift and people don’t like it, that just means you’re doing it right.

PS. Want to talk more about the four healing shifts and coaching together? I offer a free, no-strings-attached clarity call. Contact me here to schedule. I’d love to connect!

PPS. My newsletter is where I share the latest updates, like new coaching offerings, classes, workshops, and easy ways to work together. I send it weekly, and I promise never to spam you or share your address. Your info is safe with me.

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