Sequoia Prayer

MY SEQUOIA PRAYER

When I feel tiny, weak and trembling

Or pulled this way and that by swirls of change,

Too insignificant to be of service,

Too "uprooted" to hold my ground,

I pray my Sequoia prayer.

Sitting quietly, breathing normally, becoming centered in the present moment--

in this holy instant --

My mind's eye gradually forms an image of a giant Sequoia.

My Sequoia prayer takes form in my heart and soul

As the image forms and fleshes out to fill my being.

Centuries-old roots so wide and deep they have become part of the earth.

Supporting enormous, gnarled trunk that soars into the sky,

Eternity wrinkles carved into its surface, holding character markings for the ages,

Thick, porous bark skin covering the body, letting the trunk breathe,

protecting it from the fires that must come to support its growth.

Green leaves gushing out the top, reaching to the heavens,

Nurturing birds and other beings, offering up limbs as if in prayer.

Awareness of Spirit fills my soul.

Sequoia fills my being.

Spreading

Down into the Earth,

Deep into the Soul,

Strong into the body,

Breathing calmly. sitting quietly, praying trustingly, becoming. .

Grounded in humanity,

Rooted in Spirit,

Striving ever upward,

My Sequoia prayer fills my cells, my lungs, my heart, my brain,

my soul, my being.

With love, grace and light.

With joy and hope.

With the strength of Creator I need to go on/

Amen

From: Women's Uncommon Prayers, an Episcopal Women's Prayer Guide

D. Monteen Lucas

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A Bright Welcome to This New Year

"Release painful patterns through embrace and not through struggle. We open our hearts to ourselves, each other and to the Universal Presence in which we are sustained. On the brink of this new year, we awaken to renewed choice. We seek the thoughts, images, feelings and actions that will more clearly reflect the Loving and Peaceful Heart always at the center of our being."

~ Bet Alef High Holy Day Prayer Book

Last night began the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. This marks the beginning of a new year and according to the Jewish calendar it is the year 5770. Rabbi Ted Falcon pointed out that this is a one-year (add the numbers up until you get to a single digit). A one-year symbolizes the beginning. We are at the beginning of a new cycle right now. What kind of a cycle do we want to create in our lives, in our communities, on this planet? What impact might we have if we actively take responsibility for how we grow into this New Year? Wouldn't it be amazing if as Rabbi Ted said, this could be the "big one year" in which we realize our oneness?

And so I ask myself: What thoughts, images, feelings and actions do I want to live this year? How will I more clearly reflect the loving and peaceful heart always at the center of my being? How will I more clearly see and reflect the loving and peaceful heart always at the center of your being? Of our collective being? What does it feel like for me to open my heart more fully to myself, others and the source that sustains me and us? This year, I will discover new ways to wake up, recognize and live the fullness of who I am, the depth of my yearnings, the bright vision and sense of possibility that I see.

"This is a year that needs you to be you."
~ Rabbi Ted Falcon

These are the questions I will be resting in today and for the next 9 days until Yom Kippur - meditating, listening, setting intentions, singing, dancing and dreaming what's possible into being. I will follow Rabbi Ted's instructions that it is my job right now to dream the biggest dreams and see visions as large as I can. I will do this for the sake of being an active servant to life, nourishing love, peace, healing, and wholeness in the world. This year the universe needs me to be me. Rabbi Ted invites us to ask ourselves,

"What am I being called to bring to this time?"

I think about Chris Corrigan's recent post about intention... Now is a time to cultivate action that is rooted in intention and to keep asking, "What is my life dedicated to?”


If any of these questions spark something in your heart, please listen and follow that spark!! And if you'd like to share what emerges, I'd love to hear.

Our Oceans Are Filled With Plastic: They Are Experiencing How Bad It Really Is

Five media artists, led by photographer Chris Jordan, are traveling to Midway to witness the catastrophic effect of our disposable culture on some of the world’s most beautiful and symbolic creatures. But even more, they are embarking on an introspective journey to confront a vitally relevant question: In this time of unprecedented global crisis, how can we move through grief, denial, despair and immobility into new territories of acceptance, possibility, and wise action?
~ The Midway Journey

Chris Jordan's wish "is to get out of [his] own way for long enough that the symbolic tragedy that is happening on Midway can speak for itself, on its own terms."

"This morning I took off early by bike with camera gear on my back, and explored an abandoned World War II runway littered with the decaying carcasses of albatrosses—virtually all of their bellies filled with plastic junk. Talking and reading about it from home was one thing, but seeing it here in person carries a much different feeling. I made my first photograph, and felt myself sink one increment into the profound story that this island has to tell." ~Chris Jordan

"According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife rangers, albatross bring almost five tons of plastic to Pihemanu/Midway every year. The ocean is permeated with plastic and, like dust floating in the air, it’s mostly invisible to us. Albatross concentrate this plastic junk in their bodies and deposit it on land when they die. A Hawaiian elder counseled us not to view the albatross or the islands as victims of plastic pollution. They have called this problem to them, she said, to deliver us a message. We are hit with this message every day. When can we say we’re receiving it?" ~Victoria Sloan Jordan


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Letting Be

"I thought about... how nobody is perfect. How we just have to close our eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is."

~ Sue Monk Kidd in The Secret Life of Bees








photo by baloulumix

Celebrating Mr. Clean, Celebrating Life's Force

In case you've been following the story of my dad's health, here's the exciting update. He was photographed on Tuesday (cat scan). Technology peered into his body to articulate the progress of his recovery. The image that came back invites deep celebration as he is clean with no signs of cancer in the picture!! Yippee!!! Sweeth breaths of relief!!! For more details, hop on The P Train. For my own learnings and reflections, keep reading!

Leading up to yesterday, I felt the intense anticipation, fear and anxiety so many people were holding about yesterday's doctor's appointment... How much significance it had... The messenger delivering the verdict of my dad's state of health... A defining moment when a specialist would read the results and share his prediction of the state of a man's life. Each time I would feel into this scenario, I was struck with confusion. That just doesn't make sense to me. Regardless of some person's expertise, how can another human being have so much power and control to define how alive a person experiences themselves to be? How did we as humans get to a place where we allow other people to discern for us the quality of our life, the amount of hope that we should or shouldn't have based on the data?

I have no idea what it's like to be in such an incredibly vulnerable place where there is some unknown aggressor attacking my body and I am forced to join a fight that I wasn't even aware was going on inside my very own skin. I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be a person who is told that I have cancer or some other life-threatening idea*. Should a day like that ever visit my life, I don't know how I'll respond.

Yesterday, however, being in this process with my dad, my family, people I love deeply and my own reactions, I learned some important lessons. I felt my dad's life force. I felt the strength and power of the human life force. The current of creation, vibrancy, beauty, yes!, generative movement forward, LIFE. As I try to articulate that now, I feel the pulsing vibrancy in my own being. Wow, that's magical... that we each have that, we each have access to something so sacred, so powerful, so uniquely our own and so universal to each of us.

I called my dad yesterday and extended an invitation to him that was something like this:

I invite you to take a moment before you get to the doctor's office to connect with your life force. There is a force inside of you that is so alive. I can hear it in your voice. I can feel it in your writing. I imagine I'd see it in your eyes if I were there with you. You have a life force that is vibrant inside of you and will be there when you walk into the doctor's office and will be there when you leave. I invite you to connect with that and stay connected with that, including whatever it is that the doctor shares with you. And no matter what anyone tells you, you are the only one that really knows what that life force feels like, how strong it is, how alive it is, how vibrantly it is moving through your body. No one can tell you about that... only you can connect with and know its presence and strength.

I thank the universe for the arrival of that message through me. For me, it is powerful and inspires me greatly. An invitation that I hope to really integrate into my own being and believing, further allowing me to share that vibrant radiance with myself, others and the world. What a gift that we each have!!

And then, after the doctor's appointment, when my dad shared the news with me.... sweet tears of relief, bubbling with excitement. His life force gets to shine on with the medical world's blessing of a clean cat scan. THANK YOU!!!


*As I was proofreading, I was shocked to read the word idea there as I didn't consciously use it. I meant to use some thing like a life-threatening disease or condition. But I'm struck. Are these life-threatening diagnosis ideas? There is concrete fact and data that there is something going on inside the body... but the notion that it is life-threatening... is that an idea? Our life is always threatened just by the nature of being alive... hmmmm....

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Healing as an ongoing, instinctive process

My dad has been blogging at The P Train. Here is an excerpt from what I found to be an inspiring recent post illustrating how life continuously provides us with opportunities to recognize the gift of being alive.

Cat and I listened to a CD of various speeches from cancer survivors and this particular one was from a woman who expressed her wisdom regarding the difference between treatment and healing. Treatment is what the medical community provides us when we are ill. It is logical (at least in attempt) and "fix-it" oriented. It usually will involve pills, maybe surgery (or multiple surgeries), multiple office visits and treatment to cure or improve what ails us. Healing is the moral obligation we have to research, discover and implement those practices that dramatically supplement the medical treatment in positive ways. It involves attitudes, alternative and/or holistic paths, involvement with other members of our community, discovering what is new on the horizons for one's particular illness and the list can go on and on. It is an obligation we have unless one prefers to give in to the affliction. I am sorry that the importance of the healing process has become so prominent to me as a result of my diagnosis. I say this because there is nothing that I am doing now that I should not have started doing a long time ago other than the specifics regarding my cancer. Healing should be an ongoing instinctive process that is encouraged in us all at a very early age. It would not turn us all into "buddhas on the mountain". It would just make us healthier and happier people on the planet. To me healing can be defined as anything that will add positive meaning and greater health to your life. Happy healing to all of you.

Lately I've felt really proud of both of my parents as they seem to be finding a new source of meaning in life, experimenting with new ways of connecting with themselves and trying out different ways of being and perceiving in the world. It is such a gift to have parents who can model for me life's continuous journey of opportunities for growth and new learning. Thank you, mom and dad.

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Fear, Nourishment and Beauty

Last week my heart was nourished as I spent 5 days in Atlanta with family and friends. A place of intimate relationship and comfort with a dear friend of mine was restored. I am beyond words with gratitude. I am touched with love’s grace.

Fear
I also went to the oncologist with my dad and his wife to learn about his chemotherapy treatments that begin on June 5. It's time for me to make friends with cancer. I figure it’s here so we might as well get to know each other.

For me, being directly connected to cancer generates a lot of fear while also illuminating much beauty. I’m witnessing and am an integral part of this story where a cancer diagnosis of someone I love initiates transformation and growth to many in his circle… touching hearts wide open and inviting expressions of life and love to travel closer to the surface. For this I feel thankful. At the same time, I feel guilty for feeling thankful. (My judgment towards myself can be quite harsh.)

And still, there is the big fear of Cancer.

Being back in Seattle, I noticed last night that it feels good to step away from that fear for a bit. I also feel guilty that I am able to take a break.

Cancer is scary. Cancer is powerful. Cancer is unpredictable. Cancer is unknown.

What am I afraid of?

I’m afraid that my dad will fall into the sickness… that he’ll be taken over by being sick and fall away from being alive.

I’m afraid that I won’t have my dad in my life for a long time to come… that I won’t always be able to depend on him to answer my questions, to gather family together, to dazzle people with his charm, to be my little girl’s daddy. That’s a big one. The little girl inside of me won’t always have her daddy around.

I’m afraid of seeing him suffering… of being held hostage to the helpless feeling that there is nothing I can do to relieve his suffering… that he is in pain… that is the reality… and I must just accept and be with him in the pain. I’m afraid that I will be overwhelmed with my own pain… that I will be flooded.

Nourishment
My friend was recently at a workshop for compassion fatigue and she reminded me again of how we can’t take away another person’s pain. No matter how much we would like to, we can’t change what is for them.

Yet we can support them by making the space around them as nurturing as possible. We can be aware of where we focus our own attention and how we tend to their physical space, psychological space, relationships, etc.

I think about creating sacred healing space around someone who is ill (physically, emotionally, spiritually). To me sacred healing space does not mean that it’s somber and serious with New Age music playing and people in deep meditation. Sacred healing space varies for each person. What is sacred to you, what is healing for you? For my dad, I believe that having music playing is healing… it creates a sacred space. Sometimes that music is southern rock, sometimes folk, sometimes world, but music seems to churn his soul to a place of familiarity when it might otherwise be spinning in a realm of fear or anxiety about the unknown.

Sacred healing space has some element of comfort and familiarity. I believe it’s not just comfort for the obvious person in need of healing, but comfort for the whole. Who are the stable figures in the scene and what elements in the environment are a source of comfort for them? For me a prime space of comfort is in the psychological realm. I feel a nourishing deep breath of peace when I have some knowing of what is going on inside of others… when they communicate how they are experiencing our shared moment. This is healing to me, it invites me to surrender to this moment more fully, it expands my perspective to embrace not just my sense of the whole but also a validated knowing of how others are experiencing the whole. What makes an environment feel comfortable for you?

Beauty
If I could make a wish for my dad right now… it would be that his heart would keep opening and surrendering to life’s beauty and this moment’s preciousness. For me beauty is not an idea, it’s not even a perspective (“I find this beautiful, you find that beautiful”). For me, beauty is a profound and embodied resonance of YES!, WOW!, AHHHHH… Life’s Beauty is a sense of completion, perfection, harmony. I feel something is beautiful when my soul knows it. When I relate with something and as a result feel more alive, I know it is beautiful (or our relationship is beautiful).

Beauty is everywhere, everything is of the essence of life and existence. Regardless of how nasty and gnarly or evil and deceitful it is, it is of the fundamental patterns and origins of life. There is always a way to look into something and see the wholeness of what is currently in a not-so-whole state. To see the beauty in the pattern of a pile of shit… or the beauty of an innocent child and the brilliance of human defenses that have given way to a hateful adult. This is my optimist speaking, this perspective is the force behind my shaman. If I slow down and settle into the moment, life is cloaked in beauty and alignment with beauty and grace is effortless.

And so, of course, how can I have this wish for an opening, surrendering heart for my dad without it being a wish for me? At the core of my purpose, it is also a wish for you and all those that walk this earth now and in generations to come. How can we cultivate a sacred healing space for ourselves so that, in turn, we may help shape sacred healing spaces for others?

These are a few of the many questions and conversations keeping me company these days!

Love, Courage and Being Human

We’re so human.

Sitting in the hospital has the effect of causing me to think a lot about being human, having a body, how the body works, how we humans are connected to each other, and particularly the many, many different life experiences that we each have, the infinite possibilities that there are.

I’m in the ICU waiting room right now. Sleeping relatives, people reading, conversations, pacing,cell phones, tappering fingers at the computer, reading the newspaper, staring. What brings them all here? What is their loved one experiencing? How long have they been in ICU? Was it a planned visit like ours is or was it an emergency that brought them here?

A question passing through my head… How does each person cope?

And then I hear a laugh, and a woman somewhere on the other side of the plants says, “Ahh… you’re such an optimist!”

I woke up this morning thinking about bravery, courage and love. My dad continues to astonish me with the courage that he’s showed throughout this entire experience. Coming out of major surgery, he baffled all of us with his completely lucid, spirited, curious and informative self. Really, this guy just spent four hours in surgery. He had his stomach opened and then his entire digestive system was re-organized (gallbladder removed, part of pancreas removed, part of stomach removed, bile duct removed, and a tumor removed). Everything was sewed back together in new ways and his stomach stapled shut. Now he’s asking if we took a picture of all of us in the waiting room, he's telling us about the synchronistic connections with the anesthesia doctor and making jokes with the nurses. How is that possible? How amazing is our human spirit and the ability to not just survive but to do so with the will to flourish.

I really believe that a lot of his success has to do with his bravery and courage. I would say he walked into this surgery open-heartedly. For me an open heart has trust and is available to connect with what ever is coming its way and even surrender to it. I continually see him taking in the facts, meeting what is known about how he (and his body) are experiencing life, and then being with what arises. That includes being with his fear, his nervousness, the hinting inevitable ‘what-if’s. Being with it all… and not stopping there… having the courage to push beyond what-is to hold the perspective of what could be – healing, fast recovery, his own bed, LIFE!

As I write now, it is day 3 after the surgery. He’s out of ICU. This morning he took his first walk around the nursing station. This afternoon he made three laps. One by one the tubes are coming out and at the moment his legs are dancing under his covers to the Keb Mo playing on the CD player!

He believes that so much of his progress is from his huge network of love, support and care. He is a man well loved and respected by those in his life.

And so the questions that sit with me right now… How might each of us touch that place in us that feels well loved and respected (especially loved and respected by ourselves)? What happens when we live from that center? How do we allow that to be medicine that empowers us to have courage to move towards the possibilities of what could-be that feel alive and vibrant?

And as for my dad, you can follow his journey on The P Train.

Paper Towel Purse

A purse made out of paper towels was left in my office mailbox. No name, just a precious gift from a child. It wasn't necessary to receive recognition for making the gift. It was given with a pure heart. I have purchased a shadow box for the purse and will proudly display the purse in my office with the following poem. For those of you who have been blessed to see a child's heart:

Anonymous giver, follower of heart,
Treasure of imagination, creativity untaught,
Soul is your voice, voice is your soul,
Healing hands work as inner light unfolds,
Dancer of wonder, spirit pure light,
Silent love prints, heaven on earth's delight.

Comments:

Oh Patti! How precious,scrumptious,simply divine is your poem! I must have read it 5 times. Why is it that kids can simply melt me away and take me to a place where i feel wonderfully safe! where i can join my heart with theirs! thank you! sweet patti! with love,maria maria | 01.08.05 - 11:56 am | #

patti, i join maria in praise and delight of your poem... i had no idea you were such a poet. i know you have a poet's soul, it's so beautiful to see it expressed in words. it makes me wonder about the many ways and opportunities that we have to anonymously give... all that we can give... anyone want to share an anonymous way of giving that tempts your soul? makes me think of corrigan and his daughter and the rocks they scatter about through their lives... are you out there, chris? much love to you, patti, and gratitude for sharing here. sincerely, ashley | 01.09.05 - 6:28 pm | #