Saturday, September 28, 2013

Transformational Author Inspiration!

Amazing time on retreat in the San Francisco Bay Area, then in Baltimore, Maryland! Now I am just integrating all the amazing learnings and experiences.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

The Goal of Getting Good; Comparisons Suck


When was the last time it happened to you? I am gonna go out a limb and guess it was some time this week. At least once. Maybe twice. Perhaps even more than that. I know because it happens to me too. It used to happen more than it does, and still, in all the amazing progress and freedom I have achieved, I run into it. Bam! It hits me square in the face, or more typically for me, in the abs, legs, or bank account.

The more vulnerable I am, the more easily it occurs. Vulnerable in the sense that I am not rooted in the complete truth of my own amazing good core. Vulnerable because I am open to the suggestions that on  my own, as I stand now, I am not enough; not good enough, fit enough, pretty, smart or successful enough.

We are trained to engage in the game. I call it “The Wheel Of MisFortune.” The more we allow ourselves (because we do) to run on that wheel, the faster it spins and the harder it is to get off. The cycle of comparison continues to go round and round, conjuring up a variety of people, aspirations, targets and goals for us to measure ourselves against. The harder we run on the Wheel, the greater the rate of MisFortune, where you and I look at the lives, looks and goodness of another against which we will never win. Ultimately we are exhausted people, pretending to be all that we think we should be, while believing we are none of it.

The reason we do it is simple. Since we were young we have been told a story about what it means to be a good person, an upstanding American, a desirable woman and solid man. Our stories differ slightly depending on religion, culture and traditions, but much of what we have been told is the same. I call these stories our “Shape-Scripters;” powerful narratives that literally shape us. They tell us how we ought to look, behave and think about who we are, and who other people are, and if they are good.

The main theme connecting all of our Shape-Scripter stories is that you and I have to do something other than simply be who we are, to be considered good, desirable, acceptable and whole. On our own, in the skin we were born in and the bodies in which we exist, with the mind we conduct and the spirit we continue to nurture – we are not enough. We need something else from beyond our basic selves to prove our worth and value to the world. We need to be thinner, wealthier and more popular. The cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the restaurants we frequent and the sports we and our children play all contribute to what is assessed and judged on “The Wheel of MisFortune”.

Yuck! Enough already! Time to slow down the Wheel of MisFortune, get off and discover a new way!

You can decide to get off. Here's how to begin. The minute – the moment – the exact second you decide that You Are Good, the wheel will slow and you can turn your attention from others to your Good Core. The more you practice and rehearse owning your Good Core, the less the Wheel turns until you get to a point where it slows enough to get off completely.

I know this is true. I know it works. I have done it myself, coached hundreds to do the same and observe daily how it transforms the lives of my own family and children. It takes practice and commitment to rewrite your Shape Scripter and let go of the memorized idea that on your own you are not good. And it can be done. Are you ready?

Today – for this moment and time – start here. Before you get out of bed and before you go to sleep, say this: I am good and have the power to make more good for myself and others.

That's it. If it's too long, keep it to three words: I am good. I am good. I am good.

It is not sacrilege nor is it hypocritical. (Interested in what Jesus thinks of your Good Core? Find more here). It is perhaps the most authentic truth that can “reveal-utionize” your life!

Take the Journey to Your Good Core!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Flutters to the Tummy

I want to write. I need to. The will to do so is eking out of my fingers that are itching to get words flowing from my mind to the keyboard and on to the screen. It’s been too long; too much time reading of papers written by students and not enough time writing my own.

It is good to read the voices of others. To hear the vocabulary chosen by someone you know only as student, yet who share some of their deepest thoughts, questions and hopes. It is an exercise in listening – even as it’s done apart – physically away from the speaker. Writing gives room to mull over the sentiments and ideas expressed; space we don’t find when we are face-to-face.

Reading the work of others feeds my writing spirit and after a while, it demands something of me. Requires I stand to attention and give into the urge to be the one putting down the thoughts swirling in my mind that can flutter down into my heart, spirit and sometime, stomach.

When the wings of thought reach my tummy, they can transform into the proverbial butterflies of unknown anxieties, or, those I know too well. Those narratives of old stories I have learned since childhood: you know, the ones memorized growing up, the “old tapes” my parents would call them. The phrases that sometime echo unwittingly from my brain and move effortlessly to finally morph into the fear in my gut. The “you can’t really do this” or the “it will never happen for you” followed up by the “did you really think it could?” sentiments that play and rewind, play and rewind.

I was asked recently, if I were to write a new story for myself, what would it be? The idea was to replace the old that doesn’t work. I thought about it a lot. Again. It’s not a new concept, this rewriting my narrative that tells me who I am. In truth I have done more editing of my learned story than most: having moved from an ordained pastor to an avowed atheist who continues to find beauty and meaning in ritual, litany and spirit work. I have changed plenty. And still, I ponder the question because I find that those old routines and systems can be dogged. They come alive at moments when I am most anticipating something good: a new opportunity, a completed goal, an affirmation from an unexpected place. That’s when the terrible growling of the historic negatives rise up from the deep place of old, their ugly melody reverberating in my ears.

So I wrote it down, my new story. The one I was going to be telling with bold confidence in place of the other. It went something like this: I attract abundance. Good things happen to me. People are drawn to me. I am a powerfully positive presence. I impact whatever I do with intellect, grace and energy. I am capable, experienced and highly qualified. People want me on their team. I am strong: in body, in mind and in spirit. I am a people person. I easily build relationships. I am adventurous; risks are worth taking.

As I read back over it, my eyes moved to the writing in the upper left hand corner of the page. It said simply “New Story”. I closed my eyes and breathed deep. Something was off. It wasn’t right. I knew what it was. Turning my pencil on end, I rubbed the eraser over the word “new” and wrote in bold, strong letters “MY”. My story. This is my story and it has always been my story, how I have lived and experienced the world.

The truth is I don’t need a new story. The one I have lived consistently throughout my life is more than enough. I merely need to reclaim it. Reclaim it from the realities of the world and from what honest and open living does as we grow and learn. Experiences can have the affect of altering our perception of self, of trying to replace our own voice with another, and sometimes the shouts from the surrounding world can be harsh and loud. Too often, it is the words and narratives of others who shape the story we tell ourselves about what we are capable of and how we interact. In truth, however, those can only continue as my story, if I concur.

And I do not.

My story is about an incredible woman with a rich, diverse life that has experienced the most amazing acts of human good and progress and endured the harm inflicted by the insecure, threatened and awkwardly powerful. The result is a wise, skilled, authentic woman who is all those good things of strength, capacity, brilliance, energy and charisma, wrapped in the most elegant blanket of knowledge and experience.

Waiting for affirmation of this from others is often where the old flutters turn into anxious butterflies. So don’t. Don’t wait. There is no reason for it. The trappings of societal proof that our story is real is one of the big lies we think we need to have to authenticate our story. And here is the good, FULL news: our story about who we are, how we live, what we are capable of, and how we want to offer the fullness of ourselves to the world, stand true as long as we say it does.

It does not matter if we have a twitter following the likes of Ashton Kutcher or Facebook traffic that shoot off the graphs. It does not change our story if we get the job, are invited to speak or sell thousands more books. Our story is ours to own, to claim and to live FULLY into. No. Matter. What.

That is worth writing about! Write your story. Reread it often. Listen to the words you chose to describe your power and knowledge, the discoveries you have made and the joys and hurts you have experienced. Be bold in telling it like it is: with all of what has given you the complex, complicated, beautiful, dynamic and wise person you are. Take the space your written story gives you to ponder the character you have developed in you – and Celebrate It Now!
<a href="http://www.hypersmash.com">HyperSmash.com</a>

Friday, May 10, 2013

Mom's Day Fun



This Mother’s Day I celebrate and hopefully say good-bye to, what has been, a Season of Lice; little critters that climbed onto the heads of the blond-haired beauties who share my DNA but none of my dark hues.

It all began when one of my 10 year old twins began complaining about an itchy scalp. Oblivious, I looked through her head, saw nothing and queried her about rinsing out shampoo and conditioner fully. I wasn’t even thinking of lice. That happened to “those other people” who I never considered being among their number. My daughter rededicated herself to rigorous hair-rinsing and the problem was solved. Or so I thought.

Days later driving home from school, the same 10 year old twin said, “Mom, Cynthia told me I had bugs in my hair.”  Slightly perturbed at such audacious words from a young fifth grader, I remained steadfastly ignorant and on to home we went.

As I began putting away bags, backpacks and sweaters, my other twin decided to play gorilla and was intently searching through her sisters’ scalp. The high pitched scream was the first interruption signaling the disruption to come.

“Agh! Oh my god! Mom! Mom! Mom! Bugs are crawling all over her head!”
She was doing the creeped-out –squiggly dance while at the same time shouting at the top of her lungs. The twin with the crawling scalp screamed as well. Mayhem ensued.

Running into the living room I shouted “Stop the screaming! Oh, my gosh,” I lectured, “Do not scream about this,” I repeated several times. There was no cause to bellow, I reasoned, it wouldn’t help anything. I walked over to the now whimpering long haired blond and applied fingers to hair. Pulling away the layers of golden strands, I saw, OH MY GOSH, massive amounts of moving bugs!

I screamed! “Agh! Oh my god! Oh my god!” I screeched, louder than both daughters, who now began to wail. Abandoning any modicum of calm, I yelled to my 13 year old son “bring the ipad! Look up lice! Get me some pictures of lice!” He did and we quickly understood that our day had shifted irrevocably. What we didn’t yet understand was that so would the next two weeks, and on into repeat performances for the next few months.

Moving my fingers through the jungle of her thick hair, I tried to smash, pull or otherwise decimate the nasty little critters while my son read aloud from the CDC website. When he got to “the way they live is by feeding on the blood of the host” my daughter screamed, jerked her head up and away from my hands, catapulting the precariously perched Kleenex full of the culprits into the air and all over the hardwood floor. And so it began.

My husband and I spent the next 4 and-a-half hours shampooing, rinsing and pulling small metal combs from the base of the hair shaft through long lengths of hair that inevitably got caught backwards into the comb. Tangles yanked at our daughters’ scalps (yes, both had the little buggers), and cries and whimpers accompanied the exploits of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, which we played for distraction. After hours of this intimate, painful, but necessary action, I took one look at my son and said to my husband, “Shave him”.

I have decided that lice are a life lesson. So much of what their presence brings can be applied to a variety of realities that we encounter.

-          Be flexible. Always. Living in a strict routine that speaks of safety and control is a false net of security. It simply does not exist; not in pensions, portfolios, jobs, organizations, memberships, friendships and even marriages. We cannot predict what is going to come at us each day. This uncertainty can be as exciting and full of unknown positives as much as it can bring lice and other unwanted events.
-          Interruptions can offer new perspectives. My kids changed their routine entirely because of the lice. They slept downstairs in make-shift beds and loved every minute of it. It felt like a two week long slumber party. They took on greater responsibility, stripping their beds each day and learning how to start their daily load of laundry. For days they were gentler with one another, carefully checking each other’s heads and assuring that they were “clean”. 
-          Upturning what had previously been static creates a sense of dynamism that we can too easily forget is inspiring and edifying. Lice require a life change: every sheet, pillowcase, linen, towel, hoodie and stuffed animal has to be dealt with. Linens washed and dried every day, stuffed animals bagged and stowed in the garage. The bedrooms stripped bare. In doing all of these chores, we realized how much we had. The kids were reminded of the comforts they had and my husband and I, of the years of love represented by each stuffed creature. Our static routine was no longer, and there was a different level of energy that we shared.
-          Those cultural no-no’s that cause us to feel ashamed and can morph into fears of whispers behind our backs are straw figures. The worry we assign to what other people think, and our good inner power we give away when we do, is a waste of time and energy. Life happens to all of us. The specifics of how it plays out are as much a mystery of unpredictable events as what we think we can make happen. Live your life and don’t worry about the others.
-          When faced with a situation that seems embarrassing, don’t be. Stand tall in your own story and if it carries with it a societal shame card, throw out that deck and make your own. What we fear whispered about us, is often something many people experience. Since our Season of Lice, I have encountered numerous people who’ve had the same story to tell, including Amy Ahlers (Best Selling author of “Big Fat Lies”) and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and “Lean In” author.
-          Ultimately  we are not in control, AND, we are made of tougher stuff than we think! 

Thank you, Season of Lice, and Good-bye!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Name Your Label and Live It

Jason Collins is gay, Black and an NBA Pro. After reading his heartfelt, touching article, it seems as though the only label he wants to be known for is the last one.

Words of wisdom, Mr. Collins. As the world weighs in on his choice to “out himself” publicly, he will need all of his FULL strength to maintain it. Already I have read a variety of commentaries lambasting Collins. He made a big deal out of something that ought to be private, seemed to describe himself as “the other kind of gay man” and doesn’t deserve the title of “courageous” because he waited until his career was safe to do it. As long as the story remains in our immediate pop-culture view finders (which we all know won’t be long; short attention span, we Americans), people from a variety of different perspectives will try to foist their idea of what label Mr. Collins ought to accept and they will do so with zealous entitlement.

When I was a pastor, I preached about the importance of naming. Names have deep meaning in scripture and can be powerful clues to the interior message of a text. In the Old Testament story (Numbers 12:1-16) where Miriam was made a leper for her questioning of Moses, while Aaron, her partner in crime, got away clean, her name became a map to a deeper truth. Miriam means bitter, strong, and rebellion, each of which she employed in her interaction with her brother Moses, but not in the traditional telling of her story. Miriam’s name was a key that helped me unlock the power of who she was, as well as the patriarchal preferentiality of the Bible. The take I had on this ancient story was so unique that I earned a top grade from a notably hard professor, thanks to Miriam’s name.

Names are revealing. A few weeks ago I experienced what it was like to be screeched at via email. A former member of my congregation and non-profit had replied to an email in which I had asked why she chose to no longer support the work I was doing, as it continued the good work that she had enjoyed for years. The first sentence of her reply was “You spelled my name wrong AGAIN!! Even though I SIGNED it correctly in the email!!! You, who always said names were so important, spelled it WRONG!” She was right, I had and she was right too, that it was a name I routinely spelled wrong. And yet, there was more going on in that verbal assault than the importance of leaving out or putting in a silent “e”. This time it wasn’t the misspelled name that was the clue, but rather the written temper tantrum around it.

Names inform our identity. They are the manifestation of the invisible umbilical chord that literally connected us to our parents and still does to our heritage, DNA and shared narrative. Yet it isn’t in the spelled name that the story is told, but rather the context in which the name was given and lived-out. Our names expose where we came from, our family systems, how we handle conflict, love and anger and how we were taught to think, believe and relate with others. 

Names are different but similar to labels. Most of us don’t name ourselves any more than we choose the family in which we are born or the belief system or structure of that family. Sometimes we choose labels; usually they are thrust, propelled or thrown over and on us. I was born into Lutheran Christianity. I did not choose that label, even as I became an adult in the church and sought ordination. I would be hard pressed to claim an independent, free-thinking choice of Lutheran Christianity. I was raised in it, taught it from my first day on this earth and breathed it every moment of each day. Choice would mean that I knowingly decided this was my system of belief and faith of preference, on my own through deliberation and study. My narrative doesn’t come close to these criteria. I inherited the belief. And still, in accepting the label, I told a story to anyone who met me, which would then be wrapped up in whatever their name and history informed how they would associate with my label. Phew. Complicated stuff, and when acted out unconsciously, becomes divisive and irresponsible.

We use names and labels as a way to avoid taking responsibility for our grown-up, mature, adult identity.  Both offer us loads of excuses as to why we are the way we are, why our lives turned out how they did, why we run with a certain group or pledge allegiance to another. Labels are a lazy way to shun personal responsibility for the consequences that accompany our memberships and loyalty to groups, organizations, faiths and institutions. They are easy routes to cutting off going down the road of introspection that gives us the power to both love ourselves as well as declare our weaknesses.

Last week while I was speaking to a group of women about the role religion plays in the on-going inequity of women in society, a woman interrupted and said, “But you’re an atheist, right?” If I agreed I was an atheist, my talk would have been more comfortable for her because “atheist” told a story that meant my knowledge, intellect and understanding were not valid, especially when applied to a religious critique. To get me to agree that my label was “atheist” meant she could have distanced herself from the hard reality that the church she loved and the system it perpetuated, devalued women, even today. It was easier to label me than take responsibility for her identity.

My former congregational member used her anger over a misspelled name to distance herself from owning her choices and claiming her identity. It was easier to spew anger at me over a silent “e” than it was to openly admit a change of opinion and place.

Living full of yourself is responsible living. It is growing up. It is to live consciously, fully awake and aware; thinking and choosing who we intend to be and how we will live, relate and believe. To live full is to claim your right to write your history and future, knowingly choose your labels, determine your systems of ordering and take responsibility for the realities that come from it. 

When we agree that our voices alone will label who we are, we can no longer blame or eschew the consequences of those labels and names onto another.

Mr. Collins did right by himself. He chose the time and process for how his news of his sexuality would be known. The “Gay” label is still very much under scrutiny in our world and nation, especially in the machismo arena of sports. It was smart, wise and yes, courageous for Mr. Collins to take control over the information. It is, after all, his life and he is the only one who gets to decide what labels actually fit him. If he wants to primarily celebrate his prowess as NBA Pro that kicks serious fouling ass, that is his FULL prerogative. As a responsible, mature adult living FULLY into himself, he gets to choose and reap the benefits and consequences.

Just like you and me. Live Full!

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Religion's Male Preference: Let's Be Honest

Bravo to Sheryl Sandberg risking to live Full of Herself!

I am proud of the controversy stirred up by her best selling book “Lean In”. If you’ve seen her famous TED talk, you’ll recognize much of the book. It expands from those points and offers pages of well researched studies and statistics.

I am so pleased about the fray the book has pulled from the mythic tapestry we have laid over the subject of gender equity. We need some messiness around the topic of what it is honestly like for women in the work force, and in the structures and traditions of our society.  For too long young women, middle-aged and older, have ignored the reality that today, still, in 2013, women are less valued than men. It’s time we talk about it, even when we don’t want to.

This is not a new idea. In fact, it’s knowledge we’ve had and swept under the rug by the very gender stuck with getting rid of dirt we don’t want to see: women. In agreeing to do the clean up for Patriarchy, women have ourselves to blame for being stuck with our hand on the broom handle: and not because we can hop on it and fly away.

In reality, our wings have been clipped, to keep women solidly on the ground of undervalue and underachievement and we have been part of making it happen.

In 1991, after I returned from serving 23 months in the United States Peace Corps, I accepted a job at my alma mater, a university in northwest Washington as Director of Student Activities. Among the speakers we hired during that time was Naomi Wolf, author of the then famous “Beauty Myth”.

As Ms. Wolf sat around a lunch table with me, female faculty and students, she told us about her next project: Women in Leadership and the lack of young women college students who wanted it. Traveling the nation, speaking and listening to women, she was shocked and dismayed to discover that the majority of women had little to no desire to put themselves out as leaders.

I listened with rapt attention. I nearly had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t jump up screaming “I want to! I want to lead! I’ve wanted to be President since grade school! I want to be that leader! I have always wanted to be the leader! I do! I do! I do!”

I did and I didn’t. I was President of my university student body; I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa; I worked in the Clinton Administration; I became an ordained woman pastor. In all these professional roles I reached for justice, founded organizations that sought equality and changed the governing rules of institutions. I have been a leader; strong, smart, assertive, demanding, committed and charismatic. And I have been crucified for it, by men and women alike.

I was first told I had been crucified on the altar of religious patriarchy while living as an intern in Jerusalem. My American supervisor was a frightening, small and insecure man who despised me the minute he greeted me and my husband at the airport. As months went by it became clear that not only would he not be one of the supportive male mentors Sandberg had throughout her career, but the opposite. His goal was to tear me down. Because of his blatant misogynist actions, I was removed from my position in Israel. As one woman said, “You’re being crucified for being a strong, smart woman who refused to take shit.” 

Through my ten plus years as an ordained pastor, I learned that there is a religiosity of male preference and female diminution; God ordained the hierarchy of men over women. This moves the discussion beyond Sandberg’s assumptions, stereotypes and traditions and into a far more complicated source of the inequity: the divine. God, via Bible and other religious holy books, is understood as elevating men and placing women under their rule, while at the same time warning of women’s sexual prowess and a need to be governed, directed and protected by men. As a result, if a woman pastor is outspoken, ambitious, assertive and insists on remaining a woman, being the powerful woman leader “Lean In” hopes for, becomes a religious struggle.

I love being a woman. I love my red lipstick, high platform shoes and pencil skirts. I like my curvaceous body and long, dark curly hair. As a pastor, I didn’t want to tone down or reject my sexuality. I enjoyed the power of my sharp mind and charisma and my easy ability to speak, motivate and inspire. I was and am a natural leader and the young woman who could barely contain herself in the presence of Naomi Wolf didn’t contain it as a pastor, which led to the end of my leading in organized religion.

In the church there were not male colleagues who gave me a hand up or encouraged my voice. There were not women who joined me in my quest to create an equal place for honest female leadership in the church or in exploring gender neutral language and naming of the divine. In the church, the type of powerful woman I was and would not reduce, was not welcomed. The divinely ordained teaching that women are beneath men is ingrained deep in our collective psyche and is the root of all the weedy blossoms of gender inequity. 

“Lean In” nudges up to the truth that most women who do want to be leaders don’t often make it, but it never fully digs down deep as to why. Religion is not mentioned once as a part of the problem. Sandberg gets a lot right in “Lean In” and still, there is much she does not even broach. Finally, it needs to be said that women do want to lead. There are other women, young, middle and old, who like me, can barely contain our desire to do so. The reality is, however, that the “right timing” or “well placed mentors” along the career route that Sandberg experienced, are rare. For many of us who are in male dominated professions, being a strong woman leader can be the death knoll of our very intention to do so. Simply wanting to be the woman leader is not enough to make it happen, and not only because of conflicts between motherhood and marriage, but because of the deeply seeded belief that women should not rise so high.

We need this book. We need this discussion. We need to disagree, feel uncomfortable and courageously look at our complicity in the reality of what “Lean In” reminds us: women are not equally valued, do not have equal opportunity or choice. Together we need to unearth the roots of Patriarchy, face the truth of religion’s role in it, and move forward to replant the ground of our practices with seeds of balance and equity.




Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Living Like It's Your Last

I don’t know if it’s because I am an avid, fairly serious runner, but the terrible events of Monday in Boston have reached in to my gut and yanked, pulled and jostled me. I am deeply sad.  I am angry. I am consumed with a blankness of incomprehension. Searching through the reason of my intellect I cannot locate anything that makes sense. There is no seeming pay-off for this random act of terror. It stands without any philosophical undergirding or idea that might, even in its terrible wrongness, at the very least, give some sort of explanation to the standing query of “why?”

What happened Monday in Boston is simply and profoundly, ugly. It is meanness at its most sincere; literally ripping apart the lives and bodies of people gathered to run, cheer and challenge. For no apparent reason, life was harshly interrupted.

So yesterday when I received an urgent text from my husband that one of our 10 year old daughters needed me to take her to the doc, that she had had an accident, I reacted from the anger and sadness I felt about the Boston event. I was amped for a sudden, surprising happening that could change our life forever.

It didn’t. She had tripped and fell hard into a tree root that hurt her elbow. She will be fine (exhale). She will run again. She will laugh and she will be whole.

We will never know when those unexpected occurrences that change our life or end it, will be. We don’t know. It is out of our control. In that knowledge is total and complete Full-dom! Fullness of absolute freedom to live with outrageous passion, energy, and full-tilt for this thing we call life.

When my dad was sick and in his final weeks of life, we talked about the idea of living everyday as if it were your last. We laughed a little and scoffed more because we agreed that if we were to actually do that, we would disregard much of what we do and replace it with what we love and enjoy most. “If I were to live like it was my last day,” I had said, “I would never go into work again”.

But wait, maybe it’s not so silly. Looking back to that talk almost two years ago, I had been in a job I disliked that produced heaps of stress in a toxic environment. It was not a place that nurtured the fullness of my professional capacity and worse yet, it depleted me in every way.  If it really was my last day living, no way would I keep working in that awful place. Even more, as I walked confidently out the door, I would have said what I thought without couching it in safe, inoffensive language.  

That is what I ought to have done. It would have been the right, healthy decision. I didn’t do it because I had been caught up in the perceived sense of safety and the idea that my fullness, my good self, was defined by my work and career. I was unwilling to walk away from a position beneath my wisdom and capacity and move instead into my own, good, fully capable self because I was not living full of me. Instead I was filled up with societal expectations and the unstable voices of others who, in their lack of full living, sought to reduce me in mine. 

Living full of yourself is trusting in you. It is taking the risk of listening to your good wisdom and experience, to your gut, your hopes and your needs more than any other.

The question, “If this were my last day, what would I be doing?” can serve as a Full-dom check: Am I living fully into who I honestly am and truly want to be? Am I filled up with my desires, loves and hopes? Am I using my full self to fill up the world with beauty, justice and joy? If the answer is yes, than celebrate! If there are any “no’s” than good, honest reflection is in order.

Knowing that any day could be our last, that life is unexpected and in reality, operates largely outside of our control, is a deep breathe of fresh, healing and invigorating air. It releases us to eschew all that holds us down and back in our lives. Actually, it nearly demands it.

“Stop!” truth says. “Stop spending this precious life being mean to yourself. Stop telling yourself “I can’t, I’m not enough”. Stop allowing voices of others to determine how you think about yourself. Stop giving in to expectations that are limiting to you. Stop yielding and get out there! Fly! Be Free! Stretch those arms wide and reach BIG! Reach for your full, big, unique self and fill up with the beauty of who you are and the truth that this world is here to explore, to love and to mend. Get those legs moving and run! Run into the fullness of possibility and do not take no for an answer.”

Life is yours to command, until it isn’t. And then, my darling lovely dear, it is too late. Now… today… it is not.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Awake and Aware: Guns, Schools and Violence

Conscious living is a choice, albeit one that many people in our culture choose not to make. To live consciously is to live awake and aware. It is to engage with the happenings, events, choices and questions that take us beyond the confines of our own personal crib.

When you intentionally seek information that is not directly about what’s happening in your home, your day-to-day life, your relationships and finances, you are living aware. When you decide that the world is complex, big and filled with nuances, ideas and truths that sometimes contradict one another and require an open mind to digest, then you are living awake.

Living awake and aware is one critical aspect of living full of your good self. First, to choose to live full of yourself is to disregard the traditional teaching that to do so is wrong. I can hear the voices echo in my mind and memories. “You are too full of yourself young lady!”

My great work is to loosen our cultural knee-jerk agreement with this idea: that living full of yourself is somehow bad, wrong, sinful, prideful and arrogant.

No it isn’t.

Living full of yourself is exactly what we ought to be working toward and teaching, empowering and assisting our children to do. It’s what the world needs: more women (and men) who claim and affirm their good, unique, powerful skills, intellect, and insight and who use it to make more space for everyone to flourish.

Conscious-Checks are good for the full-soul and the truth that the world is bigger than what we see and touch each day. Conscious-Checks encourage us to apply the Fullness of all that we are to the betterment of our world, society and community.

Conscious-Check for April 15th (no, not taxes) is an appeal to apply the fullness of your mind, reason and compassion to the issue of guns, education and violence.

My kids love the TV show Glee. Since we do not watch television during the week, it is a ritual to record it and watch it together on Friday or Saturday night. Last Saturday the program began with a warning that this segment would include violence in schools. After checking in with my kids and establishing ground rules (the pause button gets to be pushed whenever someone needs to stop), we proceeded. Most of the show was typical Glee – love, friendship, music and quirky side-stories – until a gun-shot rang through the halls. Until the students clamored for safety and huddled in corners. Until close-ups of terrified faces filled our TV screen. Until one character was shown standing on top of a toilet seat silently crying to herself, alone and afraid.

My kids cried. They hid their eyes. We hit pause. We talked. They shared how afraid they were of that happening in their school, of the truth that the shooting in Connecticut was still on their minds. They didn’t understand why adults loved guns so much. We talked about hunting, about their grandpa who hunted pheasants, about our beloved neighbor who is an avid hunter. “I still hate guns,” one twin stated. “All of them."  “Why do they have to be so easy to get” the other asked?
“Why,” my 13 year old wanted to know, “can’t President Obama protect us from these things?”

Why indeed?

Living in fear of guns in our schools does not create space and opportunity for our children to become full of their good intellect, responsibility and care for the world. Watching the leaders of our nation not negotiate, not discuss and not find ways to eliminate the easy access to assault weapons, is not demonstrating the fullness of what it means to lead for the sake of the whole. 

We can do better. We can help our kids discover their full, good, strong character and express their opinions to their leaders. We can role model the behavior of a fully involved citizen and call our congressperson, senator and the white house to urge passage of strict gun regulation. We can write a telephone script with our kids and help them call too. We can open this discussion up among our peers, colleagues and families. If we can’t pass stricter gun laws, at least we can make sure the issue of gun violence and easily obtainable guns is not allowed to disappear or be ignored. We need to fully keep the conversation going. No matter what.






Thursday, April 4, 2013

Is Living Full of Yourself a Sin?

One of my female students asked me yesterday, "Isn't living full our yourself bad? I mean, I was taught not to prideful or arrogant. When I hear "Living Full of Yourself", that's not a positive.

I agree. The idea of being filled up with the good of your own good self has been preached, taught and directed as negative, a sin.

In Greek "sin" is "hamartia", which literally means "to miss the mark". When pleasing God, following God's law and living in a way that meets God's expectations is the mark, anything we do that takes us away from that is considered sinful. I suppose in that sense, if one believe that our whole being, our thinking, feeling, smelling, tasting and touching selves ought to live for one being only, God, then I guess getting filled up with our own good self could be missing the mark.

But wait! If you do believe in God and wish to follow God's ways, it is God who gave you life, right? God who made you who you are, yes? I grew up seeing different versions of the "God don't make no junk" poster around the homes of fellow Christians. If God is your creator, the one who gave you all of your unique blessings, skills, intellect and quirks, than wouldn't God want you to be filled up with them?

If you do not believe in God, or are working your way beyond traditional belief, roadblocks remain. In the habits and traditions of society, we come to understand that women ought to live for everyone else. We are the caretakers, the nurturers, the ones who sacrifice. Society and religion together give women limited roles that define us, telling us who we can and cannot be. To be filled up with our feminine characteristics, sexuality, intellect and power is not the kind of woman our culture promotes and greets.

It's true, even if we don't want it to be. Women, we are often our worst enemy! We judge and poke at other women, especially those who grow into power or seem to be living beyond what a "good woman or girl" are supposed to.

To live full of ourselves means a lot of things. It means first believing in your inherent worth and value. That right now, in this moment of reading these words, you know and claim you are good. Beyond good, you are of value. You are worth being around, listening to, laughing with and learning about. Right now, without any other voice affirming it, without any other entity agreeing, you are amazing.

From there, from that precipice, the juicy, explosive, sweet energy that is uniquely women's, flows out and down from our center, opening up more and more space for love, ideas, problem solving, playfulness, affirming and arousing sex, and ultimately a deep connection with the divine.

Living Full of Ourselves is the opposite of bad, negative arrogance. As my student decided to name it: Women Full of Themselves Positive Pride. And so much more!

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Living Full of Ourselves!

When I was little I dreamed big, fat, unruly dreams. Do you remember those? I know you had them too: those wandering fantasies that led us into great adventures and allowed us to dance in the fullness of our hopes. Those dreams where there were no limiting interruptions of “You want to do what?” or whispers that warned of failure and looking silly or insipid. No, when we were young, we were yet undamaged by the conditioning of our culture. We were still pleasantly full of ourselves.

I recall that little girl and your little girl too, and I invite her to be present again. We need her freedom, her complete willingness to believe in the possibility of everything and the way in which she so profoundly believed in all of her! It’s time for women to affirm and be full of ourselves!

When did it happen? When did we learn that being full of ourselves was prideful and bad? That somehow being full of ourselves challenged the idea that we could love, honor, hear and follow the direction of another? That being full of ourselves meant that we had no ability to allow space for another?

How wrong those ideas are. Being full of yourself is the surest way to giving space and freedom to another. Being full of your good core self gives you the confidence to open up to the good core of another and will be the energizing dynamic that assists the flourishing of others. When we are full of ourselves we are honestly able to engage all the good qualities that are unique to who we are, and see those that are particular in another.

Being full of ourselves is the deepest, most profound connection to the divine within you and to the energy of all that is around us. Becoming Full of Ourselves is the way to loving your body, your mind and your spirit. It is the way to connection with your sisters, lovers, mothers and friends. It is the practice of breathing big, expanding arch ways of opportunity that beckon you to adventure, to new ideas, deepening old loves and knowing yourself more lovingly than ever before.

Follow me on this new way and find out how to Become a Woman who is Full of Herself!

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Conscious-ness is a Choice



It’s happened to me since I was in high school. At least that’s when I first began to really notice it: the rolling eyes, shaking heads and sometimes, the blatant arm reaching out to turn up the volume, drowning out my words. I care about what’s happening in our community, state, nation and world. I always have and I naively thought that as I grew up, gained in numbers and maturity, advanced into adulthood, that others would too.

How wrong I was. Even when I worked in D.C. in the Clinton Administration, the after-hours conversation was almost always focused on gossip, who was sleeping with whom, how it was benefitting their career and how else we could find our way to the top of the heap. It was pure power and the yearning for it that drove that crowd. I was disgusted and disillusioned.  My quest continued.

“There must be a group of people, an organization, an institution that cares about the world”, I hoped, “about what’s happening to people, the poor, the disenfranchised, the gender inequities.” I turned to my church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and spent 4 years in graduate school earning a Masters of Divinity (ya, I know… 4 years for a Masters! Don’t get me started) and became an ordained pastor.

I reasoned it this way. Having grown up in the church, I had taken a particular interest in Jesus and his focus on justice, equal distribution of wealth and his actions to even things out. I had come to know a radical Jesus, and so, I thought, the church could be the avenue through which consciousness, awareness and action can take place.

Wrong again. Really wrong. Members of the congregations where I was pastor did not want to engage their faith, their music, their pews, church or parking lot with the realities of the world. They did not want to hear Jesus, God, Bible or spirituality connected to what was going on in the newspaper, on the radio or TV in anyway. There were a few exceptions, but overall, the message was strong and clear. “Preach what people want to hear” and “Make me feel good about myself and my life”. Period. End of discussion.

It is work to live conscious. It is critical to live conscious for the benefit of our world, our nation, our communities and for our sons and daughters. Living in a bubble of our own making does not give us the information, challenge or wonder we need to progress, move forward and improve our society and world.  

I stand in the same place I did so long ago in high school. Eyes continue to roll when I speak about what I most care about: women valuing themselves from inside their own good core. Women don’t want to be Conscious about the realities facing women today as much as men want to pretend its all better and everything is fine. I disagree with both approaches. It is more urgent than ever for women to choose to live Conscious.

In an earlier blog I wrote about how we are obsessed with being busy. “Busy-busy-busy” we buzz as we move through the motions of our day. We hum it to confirm that we are living right, good and correct. The busier we are the better we must be doing. What is the saying we love to quote? “Idle hands are the devils tools?” So we buzz from one task to another while patting ourselves on the back.

To pretend that the chores, errands and responsibilities of our daily lives excuse us from interacting with the issues that face our society, particularly those concerning the equity of and opportunities for, women, means to live ostrich-esque; burying our mind deep in the proverbial sand.

We need to wake up. Consciousness is a Choice. It is discipline. It is the willingess to face truths that are ugly, uncomfortable or hard to hear. Like the fact that “According to Pentagon research, a quarter of all women who join the military are sexually assaulted during their careers.” Like the fact that rape remains the number one under-reported crime in America. Like the reality that women still make less than men do for the same work. Like the truth that the majority of our religions are male-centered with a male deity watching over, giving blessings and discerning prayers.

Like, like, like…. Obviously there is much more that could be said. The number of women and girls who struggle with an eating disorder, the studies that continue to find young women are still not raising their hands to ask questions in any sort of equal ratio to boys, and so it goes.

It’s not necessarily fun to be Conscious. When we choose Consciousness, it complicates our lives. It makes it messy. We can feel overwhelmed and impotent.

Wrong. We can make a difference. Simply by choosing to be Conscious, you are making a change in the environment of apathetic complicity. Simply by opening your mind to hear the realities that face women today, you are taking up space in the matter and requiring the truth to be told.

I think the need for Conscious Action is more urgent now than ever before. I believe that for all the progress made on other justice and equality issues, the rights for women and progress toward gender equality has turned backward and lessened over the last two decades. I want to change this. I want to be honest about the truth that we live in a system that does not equate the presence, power, worth and value of women with that of men.

I believe in a new vision; a new way for women to discover and rediscover, reawaken and shake-open their inner good-core, sexy-power and authentic beauty.
I see a movement of feminine energy that is dynamic; that arouses a sense of wonder, intellect and connection beyond our selves.
I see a new way to gather, to connect, network with each other and the world.
I hear words of ritual, appeals for hopes, desires, safety and calm that are feminine centered, gender neutral, said in poetry, music or as daily mantras.
I want to rewrite, reshape and reform the world of spirituality for women, to women and with women.

A Conscious, Feminine Centered Way of Living in Spirit, Mind and Body.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Dear Sister,

I know you. I am you. I have lived with you, sat and counseled with you. I have sung next to in choir and encouraged you from outside the dressing room at the clothing store. I have listened to your pain, the stories from childhood that continue to haunt you. I have written prayers for you, appeals to the healing balm of truth that you are good, you are treasured and you are valued. I was with you when the wounds from long past flared; when your dad ignored you and the kid in class called you fat or when that boy told another he wished you were as good looking as your sister. I touched the hurt deep inside and together we took it out, learned from it and found ways to reimage it with love. Self love. Love for you from you. Love of all that you are because you are good. You are a goddess woman.

Our culture, traditions and religion don’t make things easy for girls and women. The idea of male preference, male domination and male superiority leaks from nearly every pour of our institutions, organizations and systems of belief.

Just today I heard a story about a woman serving in the military, raped by a colleague serving in Afghanistan, ignored and re-victimized by the authorities. The perpetrator went unpunished. The report listed many more similar incidents.

Media attention clamors over the group of all male religious leaders who have gathered together in Rome to elect another male leader to the position of highest and holiest, to lead a world-wide community of followers, more than half of whom are women.

In religion or out of it. Claiming the name of feminist or rejecting it. Loving traditional worship and music or wanting alternative options, it doesn’t matter. Women yearn for something more… for a deeper, intimate and consistently loving connection than what we can find in the options our male-driven society offers us.

We need another way. I know. I am one of you. I have been with you, walked, listened, taught and counseled you.

We need another option. A way to add to the religion we love. A different set of poems and prayers to integrate with those from our tradition. An alternative voice offering information, energy, challenge and ideas of truth, beauty, love and life.

In or out of religion, in love with the church or healing from wounds inflicted by it, living by reason or faith – women need an alternative.

Come Circle-Up with other Women and begin the journey. Give me a bit of your time and I will abundantly gift you with beginning steps along the new way, to apply to your daily life and to remind you, always, how good, valued and needed you are.

For Northern California Women! Circle-Up with me and other women next Saturday, March 23rd in Lafayette, 10 – 2pm. You will be received, dear sister, with a gracious welcome, beautiful space, nurturing ritual and inspiring, mind-enriching content. We will be together in safety, self care and celebration of women. For this Saturday, you are my special guests. Please do invite friends and family to come along. Over the next two months, these workshops will give opportunity for filming, interviews and giving voice to the too-long silent desires of women.

Circle up with me individually. Come with me on guided meditations written just for you. Speak openly in a safe, nurturing, one-on-one environment that is totally built for your good core blossoming. Watch your life shift with self-love and respect, clearer desires and hopes and concrete ways to get there.

Circle up with other women and join your beautiful, wildly competent and imaginative minds with theirs. In a MasterImagine group, I create ritual practices especially for the group, its focus, goals and hopes of what needs and wants to be created. Groups can range from parenting, finding a balanced life, self-love and love for others, finding and releasing passion, to professional satisfaction and purpose.

Create your own Circle Up of Women. Use meditations written especially for women gathering together, watch short video blogs of teaching, leading and wondering together and spend time in your own circle reaching further in and discussing. Engage with the ritual practices for a new way of a feminine-spirit life and discover how to integrate them with your traditional religious practices.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Rockin' 47!

Today I am 47 years old. 47 sleep and wake-up cycles. Forty-seven openings to the new day and emerging sun stretching out its long limbs of warmth. Today I celebrate the profound mystery and mess of life lived for 47 years.

Happy Birthday to me!

“Forty-seven” rings in my ears, it reverberates in the womb of my center. I hear it call to me, sometimes shouting and other times whispering. The loud voice declares “You rock” and I wonder from which decade that worn out phrase comes? Was it the 70’s when I was still a young kid with the future stretching endlessly in front of me? When I was adorned in the macramé vest made by my mom, and the shag haircut that replaced my long, thick flowing locks that proved to be the home of too many rats’ nests? “It has to go” my mom had said. I cried too much and too loud for beautiful hair to stay. “We’re going to get that cut,” and off we went to sit in a chair where I emerged an hour later looking like someone I didn’t know. The next morning lining up on the playground at the start of another first-grade day, Ms. Cox didn’t recognize me either. “Oh Amy!” came the exclamation. “Your hair!” Yup. I had changed. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Maybe it was the 80’s, the years of high school, homework and unspoken humiliation. Anyone looking on thought I had it all: cheerleader, popular friends, good grades. Reconnecting with high school colleagues now, none of them agree that I was an outsider with the wrong clothes and ugly body, feeling as if I was missing a vital piece of information. “What was it?” my forty-seven year old voice whispers. If I can pinpoint what I felt I lacked in high school, maybe I can find it now, when I still feel the pressure of living up to, proving my worth, worried about what others think. “Go deep,” my years of wisdom urge, “be honest and clarify your longing so you can give the secret to your children, so they will never feel lost, alone or unwanted.”

Deep. Where is that? Deep in the recesses of my choices, or the way I felt when a boy I like gave me attention? Or when my best friend settled into our friendship the way it feels to slip on that worn, loving sweatshirt? Deep down into the core of my being? To that place where I hid the secret that I was a bad girl, a sinner, a daughter who could never live up to where the eyes of her father hit each time he looked at her? Ah yes, there, that’s the spot.  “Go” my years direct, “to the profound origin of my affirmation, to where I went when I was looking for the answers.”

For decades that was God, Heavenly Father, Him, His and He. I wanted to please, to be good, to make myself in His image, like the Bible says, like I heard in church from the lips of my own father. But I wasn’t in His image and never would be, no matter how hard I tried, how earnestly I prayed or how intently I worked to cover up my womanly curves. Later the two would merge: Dad and Father, Father and Daddy. They became intertwined and soon included other men in my life: Pastor ________, Teacher ___________, Youth Sponsor _____________, Brother ______________ and finally boy ____________, boy _______________, and boy ________________.

“That was not rocking,” I say from my 47 years of knowledge, enlightenment, feminism and courageous acts of power. I have earned the right to state boldly the presence of patriarchy in my family, my church and religion and now, everywhere in my country, culture and world. I no longer wish to live up to anyone’s idea of who I am or ought to be, or what it means to be good, bad or otherwise. When I go down to dig this time, I will bring along a shovel of substance that will, I tell my 47 years, finally unearth the remaining remnants of the patriarchal lies. “I will get them out” I affirm. “Tomorrow, they will be gone.” That is the secret, I understand. “I am good, I am brilliant, I am beautiful – without any God, man or affirmation from another.” I am good because I am me.

“You rock!” must be from the 90’s, when I began this journey away from dependence on the admiration from men and women. It was then I began to allow myself to actually “rock”, to move my body without inhibition or fear of being improper or overly sexed. Learning the truth of the existence of a male-centered religion, culture and world began the to-and-fro that eventually would release me from its grip. “That is no longer you” I hear now from the core of my good self. “Now,” the voice grows in strength, “You rock!”

I do. Today, I rock. I rock hard! I proclaim my good core that I know will direct me where I ought to go, take actions that will create more good and make choices that create life, love and progression of thought. Today I know I am bigger, louder and stand taller than I ever have in my life! Even when I fail.

Today I embrace my stumbles, fall and failures. 47 years of being cautious, careful and worried about what effect a straight-up failure would have on how people see me is enough. Today I commit to not only embrace the letdowns and missteps, but to announce them! “They are mine!” I roar. “It was my good core efforts and belief in all that I can become that helped me risky vulnerability to be seen by women who need what I have to offer! It was my wisdom and skill that gave me the tools to build the ramp up which I have been rising, allowing for a fall at all!” The tone from my 47 years builds in momentum, energy and passion. “I will not be quiet or shushed!” it declares, remembering the endless battle with my strong, loud, charismatic voice.  “No more of that,” I agree with my 47 year old rockin’ self!

I am the Good-Core Goddess! I am loud! I am bold! I am open to all the universe has for me! I am a woman on a mission: a womanpreneur who will risk it all to show myself to the world and give what I have learned and earned throughout these years of work, joy, study and play. I will put my Good Core Goddess self out-there to be received and I will not be shy, afraid or deterred. When I fail, when no one attends, when the room is empty, when my TEDx numbers do not go viral, when my workshops are not full, I will keep moving. I will offer it again. I will speak again. I will write again.

Forty-seven years of knowledge, wisdom, love, sex, tears, agony, loneliness and all the grit and gratitude of life and I have arrived! “Stand tall” my inner Good Core declares, “as high as you can reach, as loud as your voice can go and as bold as you know you are worth. Rock it!”




Sunday, February 24, 2013

Get Knocked-Off!

Blog – February 22, 2013

I almost got knocked off.  It’s happened to me before, and it can be disconcerting, especially when the road you are on promises unknown twists and turns.  I wonder if this is what the Apostle Paul felt like as he strode down his road right before the vision of the resurrected Christ knocked him off?

But Paul was certain. He was clear about the road he was on and the mission he intended to accomplish. Paul was all about persecuting the communities of people who had come to follow the teachings and way of Jesus. We call them Christians now, but then they were Followers of the Way. Paul didn’t much like them. He was a serious Jew; a zealot if you will. The idea that Jesus, a Jew himself who had been turned over to the Romans for crucifixion by Jews, could be the long awaited Messiah was preposterous, heretical, and blasphemous.  Paul, or Saul as he was then named, knew his was the true message and he was walking with it on the only right road that existed. He knew he was right.

That is, until he got knocked off. Bam! A flash of light and that was all she wrote: off his feet, blinded and without any sense of direction.

When there is only one right way, getting knocked-off can be the worst thing to happen to you. When you are walking down a path, confident you know every crevice and pot-hole & have all the answers about its twists and turns, sure where the road leads, then getting knocked off of that certainty can be quite a blow.

That’s what happened to Saul turned Paul. He got knocked off because in all his blustering certainty, it turns out he was wrong. The direction he had been going was incorrect, the mission to enact mistaken, and the entire way in which he understood the world, false.  Saul wasn’t right at all.

When there is only one right way, getting knocked-off can also solve all your problems. If there is only one way to get from point A to point B, where you went wrong is easy to pinpoint, allowing you to move from a wrong idea to the only right one! Praise be God! For Christians everywhere Paul is a hero, a divine example of coming to one’s religious senses because as we all know, there is only One Right Way.

Right?     Wrong.

Paul is supposed to stand as a testament to the power of the truth, the right and absolute only way of Jesus the Christ, but I think this misses the real message and meaning of Getting Knocked Off! After the unexpected light blinded Saul’s vision, he was taken to what we might consider “re-education sessions” with a dude named Ananias. The end result being that Saul gets knocked from one absolute no-question-about-it-this-is the-right-road of belief to another. He literally got kicked from making the mistake of not thinking for himself to doing the same thing on another road. He went from the absolute of Judaism to the absolute of Jesus Christ.

Religious stories are powerfully seductive because of their over-simplicity. Give me simple! Show me directly! Point it out to me as clear as it can be and don’t leave any holes through which I may have to peer or question. Outline the boundaries, specify the do’s and don’ts and put up signs along the RIGHT Way I am supposed to follow.

Simple, uncomplicated, straightforward: that’s what we want.
What we want is not always what we get.  Sometimes it’s not even what we need.

When I was a young woman struggling to find my way, I would beg God to show me where He wanted me to go. I remember walking alone on a path near my college campus, praying, talking, urging God to respond. Nothing. I finally stopped, looked up to the sky and screamed “Send a God-Damned letter then would you! Tie it to a rock and fling it at my head if you want, just show me the way!”

It never came. I was never hit in the head, struck by a white light nor did I receive a direct text from God telling me where He wanted me to go. I never had the good luck of Getting Divinely Knocked Off. Then again, maybe I came out ahead. Getting divinely knocked off one’s path is not the same as Getting Knocked Off by one’s own accord. Engaging our minds, asking questions that aren’t easily answered, being willing to listen to a different point-of-view are all elements that can result in a Good Knocking Off!

What if Saul-Paul’s Knocking Off story is really about the power of new ideas, risking being wrong and the willingness to go down a different path? What if Getting Knocked Off ones way is understood as life giving rather than frightening, blinding or disorienting? What if we live willing to Get Knocked Off and we do the exercise needed to sustain ourselves through it?

The Saul-Paul story has one big hang-up that doesn’t fit this scenario. Paul moved from absolutely right to absolutely right. He didn’t get Knocked Off to then go exploring. Instead he got knocked off by a divine bully who wanted to use Paul’s power for His own supernatural ends. Paul’s story isn’t about human minds engaged in the world of realities, listening to the needs of the other or wondering how to improve it. It’s about the One Right Magical Supernatural vs. the Other One.

Getting Knocked Off can be a great thing, which is why when it almost happened to me again today, I saw it as a gift, an opportunity & a chance to wonder if I am on the right track. Years ago when I first Got Knocked Off, I finally stopped begging my “One Right Supernatural Being” for direction & instead began to determine my own.

Getting Knocked-Off is a source of power that opens up the world & encourages you & me to depend on our Good Core and enjoy the messy complexity of life!

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Jesus: More FAT than fear!

I want to live FAT all year! FAT Tuesday ought to be a world-view-way-of-being.

Fat Tuesday! I love the name. It fills up my mouth when I say it. I can almost taste the whipped cream and chocolate overflowing the edges of my entire being. Today FAT is good.  A day when abundance is celebrated and for a moment in time, we give ourselves permission to go for it! Why shouldn’t it last?

Oh yes, Lent: the season of depravity, giving-up, minimizing and living pinched.
Lent exemplifies the practice of scarcity, which I know all too well. I have lived from the place of “not enough” my entire life and I am sick of it.

Where does it come from? Why is there so much “not-enough-ness” in our lives? Why do Lent? The “church line” is: give up something for Lent because Jesus gave up his life for ours. Oookaaaay. He gives his life & I give up wine, ice-cream or Facebook. That makes sense.

Not.

What is the real reason the Church wants you and me to feel deprived and wanting?

For the sake of the moment, let’s suspend the question of whether Jesus actually lived or not and behave as if the story of his life & death is true. I think we’ll find something compelling.  

A quick jaunt through some of the Jesus stories will demonstrate that Jesus is more FAT than fear. 

First, look at Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.  The crowd brings her to Jesus, insisting he weigh in on her fate, reminding him the Jewish law says she ought to be stoned. In the gospel of John (8: 1 – 11) Jesus responds “straightening up”. Think standing tall – filling up the space with all his fullness. He then says, “Anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  No one does. In the end Jesus tells her that he does not condemn her either.

Totally FAT! To a woman who by religious law(!) was decreed as being only worth killing, Jesus says “No! There is MORE GOOD here!” Even when we screw up – make an unhealthy choice or just do something unthinking or stupid – we have MORE GOOD in us! Our poor choices do NOT define us!    FAT Tuesday!

How about the Wedding in Cana (John 2: 1–10)? The best wine is saved for last. Why serve it if you’re not going to get play from it?  When the guests have already sauced up and won’t know the difference, who in their right mind serves the best? The one who lives from Abundance! Giving GOOD isn’t about looking good or making status. It’s about living from the plenty of ones’ GOOD heart, love and hope. Abundance is an Unreasonable and Irrational way of living and seeing the world. It is FAT Tuesday everyday!

What about the story of Jesus healing a paralyzed dude? (Mark 2:1-12, Matthew 9:2-8, Luke 5:17-26) A guy is paralyzed; his friends bring him to Jesus but can’t get to him, so they creatively go through the roof. Anyway, Jesus tells him “Your sins are forgiven” and the guy gets up and walks away.

Do you get it? The man was paralyzed by his sin – unable to move, breath, rejoice, dance, run and celebrate because he was consumed by worry, anxiety and fear of his sin - of his “not- enough-ness”.

I get it because I’ve been there. In my TEDx Talk I share how my scarcity seed got started. It took root when I began to notice boys and have all those GREAT FAT Feelings of desire. Instead of dancing in them & getting FULL from them; rather than standing up TALL in these new feelings, I was consumed with guilt and shame. I knew that what I couldn’t STOP thinking about, the church called sin. That’s when I got fat. Not the good Abundant FAT, but the kind of fat that comes from the weight of shame. The fat that is opposite of the FAT Tuesday FAT. The fat that requires me to look for my worth and value outside of me. This is the fat of a young girl understanding that without the divine blessing from the male God, she is small, minimized, unworthy and deprived of the GOOD. This is Lent and it is controlling. It is why the Church practices it. It keeps us entangled in the ritualized dogma that convinces us we cannot be good without it. To give-up what we love & like keeps us hooked into the belief that we don’t really deserve the FAT GOOD. But we do.

The ULTIMATE FAT Tuesday Abundant Act from Jesus, is how he died.

Lent tells the story like this: Jesus “gave it up”, sacrificed & suffered. So should you.

No. Jesus, full-on standing tall, straightening up, looked the religious leaders of his day in the eye and said “No. Not today. You do not get to tell me who is worthy and who is not. You do not get to define value by degrees of sin or forgiveness. ALL are GOOD. ALL are WORTHY and ALL will be released from the worry of missing the good mark .” Jesus died boldly and in the FAT Abundance of our human GOOD!

The Jesus message actually is that you can’t miss the FAT GOOD because it is ALREADY in you! We do not need or require a church, a god, a man, a high social status…to be GOOD. We already ARE!

Jesus didn’t take anything away – he ADDED!

This Season of Lent, don’t give something up. ADD something! ADD something beautiful, comforting or tasty to your life.

ADD an extra walk or run each day.
ADD a piece of dark chocolate each night.
ADD the permission to read a good book that has nothing to do with anything but is a good story!
ADD talking sweet to yourself, like you do a lover.
ADD the mantra: “I am GOOD and have in me the power to make more GOOD for myself and others!”

ADD away and live FAT!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Making Good Trouble!

At a recent women’s retreat I was asked to state my intention for my work and my business. What was I going to be about? What mantra was going to inform my work? We stood in a circle – as women have done since ancient times – holding hands and preparing to go into the night after a first day of intense learning, meditation and work. “Don’t give it too much thought” the leaders said. “Say what comes to your mind. Give your inner wisdom (what I call your inner good core) a chance to speak.”

I fussed a bit mentally. “What would I say? Will it sound good? How will mine compare?” Then I began to listen to the other women, to really listen: to hear them. I got caught up in their vision of making the world a better place and suddenly it was my turn. I opened my mouth and this is what came out.

“To make good trouble and make good money doing it!”

I have always made trouble, gotten in trouble, been labeled as a trouble maker. This has been attributed to me when I’ve pushed the boundaries beyond the established, accepted rules.

As a Pastor I stirred up trouble when I wondered why, if we all agreed that God wasn’t actually an anthropomorphized male person, did we continue to use only male language to describe “Him”? As a way to engage in the insistence of the members of the church that “nobody actually believes God is a man” I suggested we use a rotation of personal pronouns to describe “Her” as often as “Him”. That was a no-go. I then decided that I could use She, Her, Mother in my preaching and sermons. They were my work, my analysis of scripture and they reflected the direction I believed Godd was taking me.  Some people appreciated it; more, actually than not. Still, those that were the keepers of the “truth and the way” did not. Trouble. 

I have made trouble because I asked questions where it was common knowledge no one did. Those items of belief and assertions of “absolutely right” were what I could not easily accept. It didn’t make sense to me why my friend at school was going to go to hell because she wasn’t baptized. It seemed utterly wrong that I was born with a naturally bad seed inside of me called “sin” and that no matter how much I loved God and Jesus, I would battle against it my whole life. That after we die, if we believe in the right religion and keep the right rules, we would be saved – and those who didn’t, wouldn’t – seemed cruel and unfair. As a devout young Christian, these accepted ideals did not seem to reflect God’s love or Jesus’ actions. So I asked, pushed, and wondered. It was then I received the label of Trouble.

More honest-to-Goodness Trouble followed in my years as a college student. When I was President of the student body I worked an entire year to get my all-white school that stood in the middle of a gritty and diverse urban center, to look at the question of racism. In the end a Presidentially Commissioned Task Force on Racism was established (President of the University, not student body!). Today that task force has expanded into a university department that deals with issues of race, diversity  and equity.

Good Trouble plants seeds.

After working in West Africa in the Peace Corps, I returned to my Alma mater as Director of Student Activities. More Good Trouble: STARR (Students Taking Action Against Racism) was formed. Along the way I met one of the few Black students at the school. He had come to the university to play basketball and one day stuck his head in my office out of curiosity. He later confessed to me that he wanted more than to be another Black BB player. He was a funny, energetic, smart guy who needed some support off the court. I gave it to him. He decided to run for Vice-President.

The good trouble came a few days later. Students, who had been planning their campaign for a year and believed they had it locked up, were furious this outsider was in the race. They blamed me. “I only encouraged him to run” I remember saying. “He has to win.”

The next week I was called in to meet with the President of the University. A racial harassment suit had been filed against me. I was being accused of racism against my own race.

Good Trouble indeed. The Black student won the race, worked well with the other student who was elected President and together they made inroads into what had been a previously all-white student body government.

Good Trouble bears good fruit, even as it requires sweat, toil and persistence to do so.

After I became and ordained Lutheran pastor, I quickly realized that I, myself, was a member of an oppressed group: women. I had talked about it before, of course. Thelma & Louise had been my favorite film. I considered myself a feminist. Yet it was not until I stepped into the role of Pastor that I became aware of the deep-seated and all encompassing power of Patriarchy.

It is time for some more Good Trouble and this time, Patriarchy is the target. Simply using the “P” word makes women and men squirm. Most deny its presence, paving the way for one of the biggest lies that permeates every aspect of our existence. It is in our economic structure, our religions, our workplace, homes and relationships. It harms women and girls, boys and men. 

It is time to plant some Good Trouble, train to sweat, toil and nurture and reap some crazy GOOD fruit!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Red Lipstick, Goddess & Kick-Ass Shoes!

Back to red lipstick, Goddess, jewelry and kick-ass shoes. Yes indeed, I have been given a gift of re-membering myself, of returning to that portion of my spirit, physicality and intellect that had begun to sink deep into my own feminine divine nature, but which I turned away from and tried to forget.

In 2008 I had let it go. Literally, I packed it all up, flipped closed the lids fastened to the sides of the clear plastic boxes and locked it away. To the deepest recess of my garage they went, and that’s saying something. They disappeared forever to be buried beneath my broken heart, bitter anger and exhaustion.

In my book Religion Made Me Fat, I tell a portion of this story. It is the one that begins with Jesus as the divine Christ and my exploration of his interaction and role with women.

As a female pastor I was having a hard time – bah! I was dying inside - because of the way in which the church treated women. It wasn’t just the hierarchy of male superiority, or the use of the male language in sacred ritual, or the out-and-out rejection of even considering the occasional use of She or Her instead of He and Him. It wasn’t only the fact that more times than I can count on one hand, couples who I had been preparing to marry backed out when their parents discovered I was a woman, or the statements that were made about my pregnant-pastor-self sullying the holy altar while I was with child.

It wasn’t even that after years of working my ass off and doing, being and creating profoundly positive change, increasing membership, tripling volunteers as well as financial giving, the old pillars of the church colluded against me so that I would not be voted in as Lead Pastor. I needed, they told me, “A good strong male Pastor to ‘help’ me along the way.” All of that was bad, hurtful, soul-deadening and wickedly harmful to my female strength of self. It percolated within my breasts that stubbornly insisted on outing me as a woman while the church defiantly wanted to pretend I was really a man. I was angry, hurt and starving from lack of good affirmation of my gender. So I began a deeper search within the stories of the one person I most loved, most deeply, honestly admired: Jesus.

How had he related to women? Was it biblical fact that Jesus insisted women were less than men, that only men could follow him and be leaders along side of him? Did Jesus agree with the misogynistic world view that men were closely associated with the realm of heaven, divinity and intellect and women with the dirty, shame-filled earth? I went looking.

And what did I find but the Goddess! Awakened was I to truths that I had never before known. Embarrassed that after living, working, breathing and experiencing on this earth for 30 plus years I had not known about the long history of the Goddess tradition, Goddess centered villages and matriarchal communities. How did I not know about this? Why is it that all I had been told was that God was man, Jesus was man, Peter was man, Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin (how did that happen!?) and Mary Magdalene was a whore? How?!

I screamed inside and often out loud. I wept, sobbed and pounded my fists on sofas, pillows and the strong chest of my confused but loving husband. I was mad. Pissed. On fire with rage at the church that I had known my whole life and had trusted to tell me the truth but that had ultimately betrayed me. The divine isn’t just male. It hasn’t always been that way. The Bible couldn’t be the only document of human history because communities existed LONG before it came to be.  I fumed.

Religion Made Me Fat is the story of how I finally let go of the weight of all those lies: that my body was dangerous, my sexual desires dirty, my non-Christian friends damned and all the other untruths I had learned over four decades of being in the church. It is not the whole story though, of why I let go of Goddess. That story, as much as it mimics the leave-taking of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an ordained pastor, is different.

After leaving the church, along with 50+ family units, I founded and led an experimental community of people trying to “do religion” differently, without the bad habits of the large, organized, religious entities. We wanted to do away with righteous exclusion, male hierarchy, judgment of sin and instead release into the power of Jesus’ justice and message of equality, especially toward women. We wanted to be rid of the bad habit of gossip, cliques and whispers behind the backs of others.

It was a wonderful three-year-and-some-months journey where much good was birthed. Along the way we learned a tremendous amount about what it meant to be free and outside of the doctrine and dogma, the pension plans and church conferences so that we were able to ask real questions. We eventually changed our name from Way of Christ Community to Way of Compassion because we understood we no longer believed in a divine Jesus, but rather chose to focus on the human story of a radical guy with a big heart and courageous choices. Goddess became as welcome as God and pagan ritual, Native American spirituality, Buddhism and other thought leaders taught us about the world and our own good selves. I was in love with Goddess, the dark womb within me that had the power to create life – not just my children – but the womb of the Great Woman that is fertile with possibilities.

The community bubbled with energy and dynamism. And then I began to feel it. It was just as John Irving wrote in The World According to Garp. The UnderToad was subtly and quietly pulling me down and under. I didn’t know where it was or what form it took, but months before it happened I had felt it. What I did not know and the force that hit me so damn-fucking hard that I buried the Goddess away forever, was when the UnderToad revealed itself to be the woman who had been my closest, best friend for 8 years.

It’s an old story. Two women become close. One leads the other to find her inner power, voice and strength. The other begins to change, grow into her own power and not accept everything as it had been told her. That woman’s husband gets nervous, anxious and eventually angry. Stories are made up. Private conversations between the two friends get perverted and the jealous, scared man lashes out, threatens the woman who leads other women (and men) to find their great inner power. He tells his wife, my friend, that she must choose between me and him. He is manipulative. He is cunning. He spent months priming other weak members of the community to collude with him that I was dangerous, narcissistic and a cult leader bent on emasculating men and reducing my father.

I was crushed. Broken. Defeated. I felt betrayed by Goddess, by women and our weakness to go along with men and believe they are the originator of our worth and blessing. I curled up in a ball, shoved the Goddess and all my spiritual expansion into those boxes and walked away.

Since publishing Religion Made Me Fat last July, I have slowly been returning to Goddess, meditation and the good, amazing, strong power within me. Last weekend at a Great Work Retreat with Amy Ahlers, Christine Arylo and Shiloh Sophia McLoud, I fully climbed back into the lap of Goddess. It is a relief and a love affair I shall never again doubt, neglect or give up on. I now know that to love Goddess is to love me; it is I who am divine, I who house the good capacity to produce love and me whose crazy brilliant mind will think, create and be an artist for women’s power and good.

I am back to all that I LOVE about women: red lipstick, expressive jewelry, sexy curves, strong thighs and wills, creative, artistic risk taking, great shoes and beautiful, gorgeous me. 2013 is the Year of the Sexy Goddess Warrior Doing It! The “It” is my Great Work: guiding women on the courageous journey to unlocking their natural inner good-core that has been suppressed and depleted by the systems of patriarchy. The how will be in gathering women together in a variety of ways and opportunities. Stay tuned! I will be coming near you – especially if you wish to be part of losing the weight of patriarchy and living in your beautiful, big, inner good core. Contact me below if you want me to come to your area and we will make it happen!

For now, enjoy your favorite color lipstick, play with your womanly dress-up, sweat and make your curvy body strong and healthy! Love your Goddess in You!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Dear Mr. President!



Dear Mr. President - 
Great party yesterday! I am proud to have you as my leader-in-chief. I do not agree with all of your choices, which is as it ought to be. The idea of “Yur either wit’ me or agin’ me” defeats the foundational strength of our democracy: desire for complete agreement is misplaced.

When we disagree and have the respect and regard for the good in each other we make our most profound movements forward as a people. To disagree with the idea of another while also affirming their good core enables you to be open to listen & compromise. Before you know it, we have a discussion grounded in reason and the common desire to make more good for more people. We become problem solvers who share a powerful core good.

This is the good stuff of what our democracy is all about.

I think we have lost our way. To loosely quote Brian Williams from NBC during yesterday’s inauguration, “If you have kids home from school today for the MLK holiday, get them in front of the TV. This is a chance to watch Americans behaving well, which we haven’t seen for some time.”

We are a nation divided, Mr. President, and not simply because we have different ideas about the role of government. We are divided because we do not rehearse, repeat and affirm that as human beings we all share a basic core good that will give us the power to make this nation and world a better place for all: with or without any religious affiliation.

  • We do not regularly claim boldly and publically that inside every human is a core of good that we share together.
  • We routinely do not assert this as a shared truth for those who disagree with us or who claim a different way, truth or path.
  • We do not, then, take responsibility for our actions or lack of action.
  • We relegate the prayed-for-goals of cooperation, compromise, tolerance, respect and regard to a blessing from a Divine Being who yesterday in the inauguration was described by you and many others as “God” who is a Male He, Him and Father.

The majority of you who stood at the impressive podium at the Capitol:
  • Used God as the reason our nation is a place of freedom and possibility. “He” gave it to us.
  • You also seemed to agree that the way in which humanity came to exist is through the decision-making process of God; the Father who birthed humanity. Hmmm.
  • None of you made reference or tipped a hat to the reality that there are “fellow Americans” who choose with intellect and critical thinking, not to engage in a religious faith tradition. 
  • Finally, the Benediction said it all.  A few lines is all that is needed to see the message delivered. It’s in the refrain:

 “We pray that you (God) will bless us with (God’s) presence because without it….
  • hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts. But with your blessing we know that we can break down the walls that separate us.
  • distrust, prejudice and rancor will rule our hearts. But with the blessing of your presence, we know that we can renew the ties of mutual regard which can best form our civic life.
  • suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our rule of life. But with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God's grace, unprecedented, irrepeatable (sic) and irreplaceable.
  •  we will see only what the eye can see. But with the blessing of your blessing we will see that we are created in your image, whether brown, black or white, male or female, first generation or immigrant American, or daughter of the American Revolution, gay or straight, rich or poor.
You get the point. Unless we have God’s divine blessing of God’s presence we humans are not going to be able to do anything good.

If God is not around, then we are going to be infected with hate and arrogance. We will mistrust each other and be filled with prejudice. We will be suspicious of each other while afraid of anyone who is different from us. We will only “see what the eye can see” – which I guess means the outside appearance of ones skin color, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

Wow. It’s a good thing God has been blessing us or we would be a nation that doesn’t listen to each other, that has absolute ideals about what is right and who is wrong, and gasp (!) would have various groups of people using God’s name for competing truths about who is actually created in “His” image or not.

This Benediction accomplishes two things at one time: It removes us mere humans from the responsibility of actually making a commitment to do those good things that build a good society and two; it rejects that all on our own we have the power to do it.  

I wonder who will Fact-Check this Benediction. Will we be watching to see if in fact God has blessed us? What will be the measure? If we pass immigration legislation that what?... allows illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship? Will that be evidence of God? If we overturn DOMA, does that mean God has finally decided (after all these years) to bless us?  What are we to conclude if DOMA stands, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, if women continue to be underpaid for equal work, if Black men continue to be the largest ethnic group to be locked up… what then? Can we boldly proclaim God has refused to bless us and then, “Oh well,” there’s nothing we can do because we humans don’t got what it takes to make it happen without God?”

I am profoundly sorry that among the beauty, pageantry and good tradition of the most powerfully good country, there was a distinct message that (a) we are a Christian Nation with a (b) Male Deity who has (c) chosen the U.S. to give Freedom and (d) without whom we as humans cannot make any moral shift to a higher ground of acceptance, equality or compromise.

Perhaps the most disconcerting facet to all of this is that most Americans don’t care. There will not be anyone following up on this Benediction or measuring if God is actually with us. That is, until a group of Americans do so with a vengeance of righteous validation for whatever their position is that purports the “real truth” of what it means to have God “bless our nation”.

It is a dangerous game we are all playing: invoking the Divine Being as the source of our life, freedom, wealth and all that is Good while ignoring the ramifications of what that actually means when segments of society do take is seriously.

Why not begin practicing that We Are Good? You and me, fellow Americans, fellow citizens, community peeps. We got the Good and all the powerful capacity to meet the demands of our future. With a religion or without one – all humans have the good to get it done.

Declare that We are Blessed with our own Good presence and insist that our Core Good show up so we can get this ball rollin!