Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Imagination: Our Super Power

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How are you using your super power?

I had a dream once in which I was attending a conference where a couple of speakers had connections with Fanta. One had established a Fanta distribution center as a form of ministry. The other was the chemist who developed Fanta and understood its molecular structure.

Sitting on a table next to the podium where they were speaking was a bottle of Fanta. Its label read: Renewing Energy.

It felt like an important dream, so I spent some time working on it. Fanta implied the word “fantasy,” which led me to investigate the etymology of that word. It comes from a Greek word meaning: to cause to appear, make visible, expose to view, show.

Fantasy, often disparaged as being “out of touch with reality,” is actually the imaginative impulse out of which all that we create—all that we make visible—arises.

I believe, as human beings, our imagination is perhaps our greatest super power. Some would say it is the divine image in us. It is what has enabled us vulnerable weaklings without tooth or claw to survive on this earth.

Human history is really the story of the human imagination. How it has built empires, created vaccines, invented language, and calculus, composed symphonies, penned poems. Human history is the story of our collective fantasy—our power to cause to appear that which has never before existed.

Many who have left their mark on human civilization and culture have extolled the power of the imagination:

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. ~ Albert Einstein

Imagination rules the world. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

It is through imagination that we transcend understanding and travel into the world of possibilities. ~Danielle Pierre

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.  ~John Dewey

Live out of your imagination, not your history. ~Stephen Covey

This super power will shape our future, and if there’s anything the future needs of us now it’s that we engage our imaginations in positive, life-enhancing fantasy. It’s the only way we can break out of the gravity of an old story that is leading us to destruction.

Fantasy is not to be taken lightly, and the collective leap of imagination into the new world we must create together begins with each of us. Just as we go to the gym to build up our physical strength, we need to exercise the muscles of our—perhaps flabby—imagination if we hope to meet the global challenges before us.

It isn’t enough to just sit around expecting someone else to step in and save the day. We are that someone. As Madeleine L’Engle said, “It might be a good idea if, like the White Queen, we practiced believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast, for we are called on to believe what to many people is impossible.”

My Fanta dream helped me see that part of my calling is to help people discover and unleash the power of their imaginations. It showed me that fantasy is Renewing Energy—the capacity to make new. If that isn’t a super power, I don’t know what is.

 

 

WYNT: Station of Possibilities

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What’s your default setting?

Recently I woke up with negative thoughts on my mind. It was as if a radio in my brain had tuned into a station of negativity. I knew it wasn’t how I wanted to start my day, so I asked myself—if my mind were a radio, what station would I want it tuned to?

I decided I wanted to tune my mind to WYNT-–“Why Not?” I imagined an upbeat d.j. announcing, “Good morning! You’re tuned to WYNT—the Radio Station of Possibilities!”

I discovered it’s a really great station. Whenever a new possibility floats through my mind, the upbeat announcer proclaims, “Why not?!” Tuned into WYNT I feel energized, enthused.

It’s so much nicer than KNNT—the alternative station where nothing is possible. Tuned into KNNT, life seems like one big futile effort.  The KNNT announcer is a real downer. He goes on and on about how the future is doomed, life is pointless. He instantly shoots down any new idea.

As unpleasant as KNNT is though, I discovered it’s useful in its own bizarre way. It gives me one more chance to practice mindfulness and self-compassion.

It’s really no different than meditation. By noticing what energy I’m tuning into, I’m able to exercise my power not to buy into the negative thoughts that want to take root in my mind. I can patiently and compassionately bring my mind back to the here and now where peace is found.

It’s definitely a practice, and some days I’m better at it than others. But I’m committed to stick with it because I think it’s one of the most important things I can learn in life.

Still, if I had my choice (and actually I do) I’d really prefer to hang out listening to WYNT. It’s just so much more fun.  The horizon becomes wide-open. Life feels like an exciting adventure.

It’s the playfulness of WYNT I like the best.  Why Not invites me into the sand box of possibilities where I feel like a kid again—open, adaptable, willing to take risks and explore new things. I get to hang out in beginner’s mind where the arteries of my imagination haven’t been hardened by cynicism or certainty.

When I’m tuned into WYNT I don’t know what the future holds, and that feels exciting rather than anxiety-provoking. The destination isn’t the point anyway.  The point is about being alive and open to the moment itself.

How about you?  Which station is your default?  If you don’t care too much for it, you might want to start playing with the dial. I mean, it’s your radio, so why not?

The Power of Blessing

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Blessing evokes a new understanding.

When we moved into our house ten years ago, it needed a lot of work. In fact, the home inspector said in his report that, while the house didn’t have any huge structural problems, it was remarkable in the number of things that needed attention: crumbling masonry, rotting window sills, open junction boxes, worn roofing, a garage door that wouldn’t close. . .

Of course, he made no mention of all the aesthetic shortcomings of the space: ripped linoleum in the kitchen, porch windows covered over with plywood, a dining room painted goldenrod with lavender trim, a bedroom painted royal blue with silver trim. I could go on, but I won’t bore you with the details.

We’d been looking for a house for months, right when the housing market was at its peak and competition among buyers was fierce. We were running out of time. We needed a place to live and we needed it now. So we bought a fixer-upper—which had not been our plan—and we’ve been working on it ever since.

We worked on the basement first, because we knew if we didn’t it would never get done. We parged and waterproofing the walls, stripped the paint from the overhead joists and the concrete floor, installed new lighting, rebuilt the staircase, put in a new window and door, painted the walls, the floor, the ceiling. All the while, as the months dragged on and on, stacks and stacks of boxes—the stuff that was destined for the basement—sat in the living room and dining room having no place else to go.

Beauty Matters

I’m a person for whom my living space matters. The space I inhabit doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be welcoming. When I was in the Peace Corps I lived in a cinderblock house with a tin roof and no running water, and I did simple things to make it feel like a home. On the walls I taped up photographs of nature scenes from an old calendar, I tacked up reed mats on the exposed roof joists to create a ceiling, I built simple tables and stools from unfinished lumber, and sewed tablecloths to brighten them up. It was nothing elegant, but it was home.

So I was having a very hard time those first few years in our house. I dreaded coming home at the end of the day and being assaulted by the ugliness and clutter.

After more than a year of this I was finally at my wit’s end.  Renting another space to live in while we finished the work would be too expensive, but the renovations were taking far longer than we had ever anticipated.

I recognized that, since I could do so little to change the situation, I had to do something to make peace with it. So one day I gathered up some scarves, feathers, and ornamental objects that were beautiful to me, and I went through the house setting up altars on the stacks of boxes. I went through with my prayer bowl and a smudge stick and blessed it all, lingering over every box, every crack in the plaster, every unsightly patch of paint, holding it all in love.

It was miraculous. While the altars brought a touch of beauty, which is important in and of itself, it was the act of blessing that really changed things.  By blessing all the things I’d been resenting I moved into a relationship of acceptance with them. I stopped seeing the boxes and paint jobs as enemies to be vanquished and more as companions in a challenging time of transition. This was perhaps the most important renovation of all—making new my perception of the situation.

It really brought home to me (no pun intended) what a radical and transformational act blessing is. When we bless something just as it is, including all of its “flaws,” we are enacting a different sort of reality, one that doesn’t depend on “perfection” or hold out for the future to make everything right. Blessing brings fulfillment into the here and now.

Just because we bless something doesn’t mean we don’t do what we can to improve the situation, any more than Kip and I ceased our home renovations after the altars were set up. But when we operate out of the energy of blessing, our efforts arise from a field of love and possibility rather than judgment and disdain.

Having learned of its power, since then every now and then I practice blessing in other situations, like when I’m riding the bus or walking down a city street. I don’t say my blessings out loud—that would probably alarm most people—but I say them silently to myself. I’ll look at someone as they board the bus or pass me on the street, and say in my heart, “Be blessed.” I don’t know if it has any effect on them in the cosmic scheme of things, though it might. What I do know is that it changes me. It makes me see the person as a person—not just as one more anonymous stranger, but as a fellow traveler through life.

 

Be 101

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Who are your teachers of Being?

There is a soft rock radio station here in Philadelphia called B101. A few years ago, driving, I pulled up behind a bus at a stop light. On the back of the bus was an ad for B101—a picture of a bright bumble bee next to the call letters.

It occurred to me that it would make a great name for a course—one we could probably all benefit from.

Be 101.

Our culture specializes in doing. Most of us have the equivalent of an advanced degree in it, in fact. But being? Well, that’s just not something we’re taught.

So an introductory course in being might be just the ticket.  Unlike all those courses we took whose textbooks and notes—if we even still have them—are gathering dust in our attic, I imagine we would consult our notes from Be 101 quite often.  We could pull them out whenever we found ourselves in the throes of anxiety about our circumstances or despair about all the ways we are failing at life.

In fact, our Be 101 notebook might rest on our nightstand like a sacred text—pages dog-eared, favorite passages highlighted in yellow, margins full of scribbled comments.

In Be 101 we would learn that we are not our thoughts. We are not our accomplishments. We are not our looks. We are not our possessions. We are not our professions.

Come to think of it, in a culture as ego and achievement driven as ours—with an economy built upon the principle of dissatisfaction—Be 101 would be the most subversive course in the entire curriculum.

Turning to the Teachers

Who are the experts among us who could teach us about being?

I’m sure you have your own favorite teachers. As for myself, I look to the Trees.

Trees are amazing instructors in the art of being. They stay put, root themselves deeply in their own place in the world, and simply go about becoming more of what they already are. They stand. They breathe. They become.

Some trees have been breathing and becoming for hundreds of years, some for thousands.  In California there is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine that’s been alive for more than 48oo years. Think of it. That Bristlecone was already 2300 years old when the Buddha sat down under another tree and became enlightened.

Can you imagine standing in the same place for 4800 years with no place you had to go and nothing you had to do but be yourself?

Sometimes when I’m in the woods I’ll lean my body up against a tree trunk to take in its energy. Invariably it reconnects me with a quiet, centered place in me that has no agenda and no anxiety.  There, at the feet of these great ones, I am reminded of my intrinsic worth and my timeless essence.  There I am reminded that—despite all of our human activities, ambitions, and aspirations—there is really nothing more precious than Being itself.

Follow Your Tail

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If you had a tail, when would it wag?

Recently I was going out for coffee with a friend. As we walked across the cobblestone avenue to get to the bakery where we were headed, I saw furry black dog standing on a stoop, happily wagging its tail at the woman petting it.

I wondered what it would be like to have a tail to wag when happiness welled up in me.

“If I had a tail,” I thought, “what would make it wag?”

I know a dog, Jazz, who gets so excited when friends come to visit that even a wagging tail isn’t enough to express her delight. She fetches her stuffed rabbit whenever she sees them approaching, then dances in a circle in the living room when they step through the door.

Her joy is simply irrepressible.

In contrast to Jazz’s unabashed expression of joy, a few months ago I was driving cross-country when an idea floated into my mind: I ought to start writing music again. It was something I used to do a lot of, and it brought me great joy.

When the idea arose, I felt a gleeful delight fill my being. If I’d had a tail it would have been wagging like nobody’s business. But immediately, another part of me slammed down like a sledgehammer, telling me that writing music was an impractical and illegitimate use of my time.

The joyful part of me was crushed, tucked its tail between its legs and whimpered back into a shadowy corner of my being.

Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to notice what had just happened, and I was horrified. I mean, for decades I’ve been exploring my own creativity and encouraging others to do the same, and even worse, what had just transpired in me felt like an act of violence.

I did some inner work on it. I listened to that part of myself that had squelched the joyful idea to find out what was going on, and I couldn’t help but feel compassion. It was so anxious, and truly believed that following my joy was a frivolous, irresponsible luxury that would lead to disaster.

Since then I’ve been coaxing my joy back out of the dark corner where it had retreated, because I sense that the things that bring me joy are precisely the things the Universe wants to bring forth in and through me. A few months ago I even took my guitar out of its case and have added to my morning array of spiritual practices one more: improvising melodies and harmonies on my guitar. Nothing yet has evolved into a full-fledged song, but my heart is happy.

So, let me put the same question to you: What things bring you joy? If you had a tail, what would make it wag?

I hope you’ll honor those things, because I’m pretty sure that if you follow your tail, you’ll end up where you belong.

Enough Already

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Do you still think you’re inadequate?

If I had to characterize the dominant belief that orchestrates our society it would be: Not Enough Yet. If you think about it, this basic belief drives just about everything we do. In fact, it forms the foundation of our entire economy. Stock prices aren’t high enough yet. Profits haven’t been maximized enough yet. Jobs haven’t been outsourced enough yet. The Gross National Product isn’t high enough yet.

The belief shows up in our individual lives too. Our income isn’t big enough yet. Our house isn’t elegant enough yet. Our car isn’t sophisticated enough yet. Our clothes aren’t stylish enough yet. Our computer isn’t fast enough yet.

The harm this belief causes is obvious. In our frantic efforts to reach that elusive state of enoughness, we raze more forests to build new tracts of bigger houses, displace more workers to maximize corporate profits, lead more stressed out lives trying to keep up with the bills and the Joneses.

Imagine what would happen if we all stopped buying into the myth of Not Enough Yet. We would only buy clothes when we actually needed them. We would be content with a simple home. We would no longer demand that the corporations we hold stock in exploit workers and the environment in order to give us a slightly higher return. We would enjoy the local fruits of the season rather than going to the grocery store expecting to find fresh asparagus in November shipped in from Chile. We, and the Earth, would be far healthier and happier.

This belief in Not Enough Yet is something that spiritual teachers have been trying to help people get beyond for a very long time. The Tao te Ching teaches, “If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” Jesus said, “Don’t worry about your life, what you’ll eat or what you’ll drink, or about your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

I think we’re missing the point, though, if we think all of this is about believing we don’t have enough yet. I think the real issue is that we believe we aren’t enough yet. Our drive to acquire more is often a coverup for our desire to be more. We haven’t yet accepted that the sheer miracle of our existence is enough in itself.

Let me put the question to you: How do you think you aren’t enough? Do you think you aren’t successful enough? Not popular enough? Not confident enough? Not smart enough? Not strong enough? Not talented enough? Not pretty enough? Not happy enough?

Or how about this: Not spiritual enough? Not enlightened enough? Not evolved enough yet?

Pause for just a moment, if you would, and really think about how you would complete the sentence, “I believe I’m not _______________ enough yet.”

Now, let’s set that aside for one moment while I ask you a few more questions.

Has it ever occurred to you that the cells in your body, yes, the cells in your optic nerves that are sending the images of these words to your brain, are made of material that originated in stars that went supernova and spewed their matter out into the cosmos billions of years ago?

Has it ever occurred to you that the water in your body—which makes up most of your material form—has been traveling the world for eons? It has flowed countless times through the Amazon jungle, fallen as snow on the Himalayas, been breathed out by redwoods on the California coast, poured down as rain on the Great Plains, drifted across the sky as thunderclouds, descended into the oceans’ deep?

Just for this moment, consider the places, experiences, substances, beings that the matter in your body has seen and been.

Or how about the DNA that right now is replicating itself in your cells, carrying information that is the creative masterpiece of millions of years of evolution?

And that’s just your physical body. We haven’t even gotten started on the miracle of your consciousness and that this physical matter that was generated in the stars can think and create and love and weep and laugh.

Do you understand that you are nothing less than the miracle of rivers and stars and eons of years now taking on human form that can breathe, dance, write poetry, cook a meal, read a blog?

The miraculous nature of our being was on my mind a few years ago when I was taking a day trip on a gorgeous spring day to Cape May, New Jersey. Come noontime I stopped at a restaurant to get some lunch and sat down on the sunny patio. When the waitress walked up I saw her in her essence—a child of the Universe in every way—and when she began reciting the specials for the day it was all I could do not to bust out laughing.

There was something so wonderfully comical about the moment, that this being in front of me who was living, walking, talking star dust was telling me about the Reuben sandwich and the soup du jour, completely unaware of the fact that she was the Universe in microcosm, a miracle beyond comprehension.

The same goes for you, of course. You are an expression of this Life, this Universe, this Reality that has been expanding and evolving for billions of years. There is no part of you that is not part of that most amazing whole. The sheer fact that you are is beyond amazing.

So. Tell me again. How is it that you’re not enough yet?

The Silent Tomb

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All I heard was silence.

Last week, in observance of Good Friday, I posted a blog titled The Cross Speaks, listening to the story of the tree that was destroyed in order to make a cross. This week, in observance of Easter, I considered writing one titled The Tomb Speaks. I found myself wondering what the empty tomb in the Christian resurrection story might have to say to us.

So I allowed myself to go there. In my imagination I entered a dark, empty chamber hewn out of the side of a hill. It was cool. I was alone. I sat down on the ground to listen for the words that the tomb might want to speak, but all I heard was silence. The silence was deep, and it was filled with wisdom that was beyond words. It’s wisdom was of a mystery, of an unfathomable transformation. It was not a chamber of endings, as we usually believe it to be, but a container for profound metamorphosis.

I realized then how hard we try to ward off the tomb’s silence with our trumpet voluntaries and fill its emptiness with our certainties and dogmas. But Mystery cannot be defined, its nature cannot be grasped.

This past Easter Sunday, I was taking an afternoon walk in the woods with some friends along Ridley Creek outside of Philadelphia, and towards the end of our walk I stopped for a moment, standing next to the creek as the brilliant late-day sunlight slanted through the trees. I soon found myself opening to that state of Oneness in which there is no barrier between myself and the All, between the “living” and the “dead”. I felt the presence of dear ones who have left this world — the familiar energy signatures of their love — and felt myself one with the trees, the creek, the birds, the sunlight reflecting off the water. The beauty of it moved me to tears.

It was a moment in which I perceived the mysterious truth that the empty tomb in its silence taught. In resurrection it isn’t death that is vanquished, for death is the natural culmination of life, but rather it is our fear of death, our misunderstanding of death that is overcome. This, I believe, is what the early Christians meant when they said that death had lost its sting.

May that incomprehensible Mystery that is beyond the reach of all our words hold you in its gentle, beautiful, silent truth.

The Cross Speaks

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Not long ago I was thriving on a hill in Galilee. My roots reached deep into the rocky soil.  Sunlight shone upon my leaves, the wind danced though my branches.  In the winter, rain fell cool upon my body, seeping into the soil of my thirsty roots. I drank gladly of that living water.

I witnessed the dawn of each day. At night I reached up to the Moon in her silent cycles, and the slow swirling of stars.

My body shuddered when the thunder cracked. I stood naked in the raging storm—bending with the tempest so as not to break—and when it passed I held the birds, singing in my branches.

I knew the breath of life.

But then they came for me.  Not with swords, but axes, and I was silent, like a lamb led to the slaughter.

Half of my body is still there on that distant hill, decaying in the soil of Galilee.  The other half they dragged here for their tortuous display.

The emperor isn’t satisfied with what he already has. He wants more land, more wealth, more power. Lives have to be sacrificed.

Golgotha they call it. Place of the skull. As if it were only humans whose broken bodies hang here.

Entire forests of my kin are destroyed because humans are never content with what they have, with what they are.  You would call it genocide if the victims looked like you.

I have a question for you.  Why are you dissatisfied?  Why is nothing ever enough for you?  Why are you always striving for more?

Can you not stop for once in your anxious striving and just let yourselves be still? Can you not feel yourselves rooted in the Earth? Can you not let the miracle of the sunlight, the rain, the soil, the song of the birds and the dance of the wind be enough for you?

Do you not understand that your task on this Earth is to witness its magnificence, to delight in the wonder of existence, to be the I Am-ness—the awake presence that marvels at the unfolding of life?

You are living in a falsehood, believing your destiny is separate from my own life.  I am the other one sacrificed on this windswept hill, and I suppose that has never even occurred to you.

You seem to believe you can destroy us and not destroy yourselves as well. But consider this: the man’s blood that even now is seeping into my grain carries the oxygen once breathed out by my leaves.  Are you so blind?

The one you call Jesus tried to show you what power truly is—not domination and violence, but healing, acceptance, compassion, Life.  He wanted you to see that you don’t need riches because you are already enough.  The way the birds of the air are enough and the lilies of the field are enough.

But you remained asleep in your dream of separateness and striving, and now the Earth is hanging on the cross of your empires and your egos.

We are weary, so weary.  We cannot endure your illusion much longer. It is right that you have sung “Hosanna,” for it means “save us.”

I implore you to sing it again from your heart. Sing it for yourselves. Sing it for all of us.

Sing it for me.