Stretched

Love is the willingness to extend yourself for the purpose of nurturing your own and another person’s spiritual growth.

~M. Scott Peck

My Favorite Way to Look at Love

During the time I served as a family and relationship therapist (1985-2007), I found this description of love most meaningful. I attempted to inspire my clients to extend themselves in this way and to do so in my personal relationships. It isn’t easy. When my daughter moved in with me in 2016, I was gifted with the awareness that this was to be my role in her life now … to make up for all the neglect she received during her growing up years. I stretch myself every day to be faithful to that calling.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dies

I rushed in from my meditation room to the living room as I heard the Breaking News. “Oh no, oh no, oh no!” Tears flowed as I watched in horror. I knew what this was likely to mean for poor women … like those I met while serving in 1976 as a volunteer at a Planned Parenthood Clinic … for struggling Americans who will in all probability lose their healthcare insurance. My disabled daughter may be among them. These are the ones who stand to lose the most.

For a long time, the only time I came close to tears is when I witness ordinary people being kind to other ordinary people, especially poignant during this time of pandemic isolation and quarantine … like those Glorious Gladiators in Woburn, Massachusetts featured on Steve Hartman’s CBS News segment. Thankfully, not all news is bad.

During RBG’s funeral, I sobbed. A commentator says that our system of government depends on the goodwill of its leaders. I didn’t just sob for the loss of RBG. I sobbed for the lack of good will … for the callousness and hostility aimed at those who are not white and male and wealthy and privileged. I sobbed for our democracy’s decline … for the potential end to our 244-year “experiment.” 

I knew in my bones an even darker period of chaos and turmoil is before us. It seemed too much to bear, especially now when access to friends is so limited and their comforting hugs non-existent.

In an effort to avoid facing my powerlessness, I wrote letters to members of congress, reminding them of the words they uttered in 2016 and 2018, challenging them to act on principle vs power-hungry bids. My words made no difference.

I wish politicians would let go of their hunger for power and wealth. I wish they would extend themselves … stretch themselves … commit themselves to grow in their capacity to love.

Listening for Wisdom

Wisdom is drummed out by the cacophony of the news reports about hard-hearted political wrangling. It took up too much room in my head. I stopped tuning in to the chaos. My internal system calmed.    

I fell silent. I had no words. I had nothing of value to offer to my readers. I couldn’t write.

I have been asking for some time:

• What are we to learn from all that confronts us?
• What message is the Universe sending?”
• How are we to think about this?
• How are we to respond? 

Not for the Faint of Heart

A friend from church invited me to join her in taking an online class focusing on Teresa of Avila through the Center for Action and Contemplation. While I love Teresa of Avila, I felt more drawn to learn from Cynthia Bourgeault, a contemporary mystic with wisdom and intelligence far surpassing my own. I knew she would stretch me, but I had no idea how. Four of us registered and are deep into our learning. It is such a contrast to the dissonance of the political realm.

The class is based on Christianity’s lost Wisdom Tradition. The point of the class is to

• Ask always, “What am I here for?”
• “See” from a higher place inside us in order to raise the vibration of the collective
• “Awaken” us and “transform our consciousness”
• Become a whole, balanced human being aware of the “cost” to the world of our being alive
• Come into direct engagement with this cost

Cynthia is called to structure her Wisdom School around three lineages:

• Benedictine Monasticism and their discipline of remembering the holy throughout the day … finding a way to fit that into our daily lives and circumstances.
• Gurdjieff’s Three-Centered Awareness … Intellectual, Emotional, and Bodily Movement. The idea is to be present in each area in order to be truly awake.
• The Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian text that didn’t make it into the Bible when Christianity became a state religion and orthodoxy rendered some in and some out. It contains some of Jesus’ most profound wisdom … at least for those of us who are more concerned with the transformation of consciousness than the establishment of an institution.

Stretching: A Stabilizing Perspective

As if Cynthia’s 2015 teaching through our on-line course isn’t stretching me enough, hearing her current perspective on Terry Patten’s podcast, “State of Emergence,” brought it to a whole new level.

These two wisdom figures talked about facing death … the death of our planet as well as their personal deaths and how to walk a steady versus a wavering course in the midst of witnessing brutal diminishment and human darkness during these past four years.  

Terry faces evacuation and the possibility of burning alive. He lives in the midst of Northern California’s fires. He said to Cynthia, “It seems like Armageddon.”

Cynthia is aware she could catch and not survive COVID 19. While not being reckless, she refuses to live in fear of others, forgetting what it means to be a human being in connection with other human beings … forgetting the importance of extending love and reclaiming what is truly just and noble about humanity. For her, forgetting would be worse than death.

She takes comfort from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s geological timeframe.  In its inherent wisdom, the earth may be pruning and rebalancing our metastatic cancerous species for the health of the whole. She believes something incomparably finer will emerge.

Cynthia points out that the beautiful challenge of being human is taking spiritual energy and distributing it in difficult situations as love, blessing, peace, and guidance in order to stabilize the whole. She points out that transformation always happens outside our comfort zone.

Those who do their spiritual work attune to the energy of great mystics, spiritual masters, teachers, and elders, even those who have passed on. They gave their lives building something they wouldn’t see in their lifetimes. They placed their concern for the emergence of the collective over their own personal enlightenment. Cynthia counts on their help, guidance, strength and hope.

On the eve of the 2016 election, a group of monks who had been massacred communicated to her that “Shit happens and you must know that beauty and stability can be wiped out in a flash and you must find something in yourself that can take it.” She knew the results of the election before receiving the morning news.

Cynthia walks a path that leads … in consistency with what her heart sees … even when that isn’t popular. She trusts she is accompanied … the field is relational … our solar system has a heart that sees us. Even though we as individuals are not special and thus overvalued, our particular value and contribution comes from being a part of the whole. In this she finds her greatest liberation.

From the Personal to the Collective

And so I end where I began.

Love is the willingness to extend yourself for the purpose of nurturing your own and another person’s spiritual growth.

~M. Scott Peck

I do believe my guides led me to Cynthia. Now I see more clearly that extending myself has to be beyond my personal relationships … my personal satisfaction.

Love is the willingness to extend myself for the purpose of nurturing my own and my community’s, my country’s, my world’s spiritual growth.

~Linda A. Marshall with thanks to M. Scott Peck and Cynthia Bourgeault

For now, my answer to “What am I here for?” is to accept the beautiful challenge of being human. I pray this blog post distributes spiritual energy in our difficult situation as love, blessing, peace, and guidance. I offer it as my small contribution toward stabilizing the whole.  

I will continue to work on centering myself in preparation to meet whatever the future holds. I’m not there yet. Two friends called this morning with news that 45 has contracted COVID. My first reaction was not in alignment with this beautiful challenge. I quickly stabilized … hoping that whatever suffering he might experience leads to his developing compassion for others. That would be movement toward stabilizing the collective. As Cynthia wisely imparts … transformation always happens outside our comfort zone.

If you have read this far, I thank you. You have definitely stretched yourself. Please extend yourself further and give me your wisdom in the comments. We need each other more than ever.