Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Love’s Marathon

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Martin Richard, 8 years old, was one of the victims in the Boston Marathon bombing.

The evening of the bombing at the Boston marathon, I went to my meditation space to pray for the people of Boston. As I sat down on my cushion, something took hold of my mind insisting I pray for those who placed the bombs. Something—I’ll call it Love—was aching for the wholeness of the perpetrators. Something—I’ll call it Love—was asking that I embody it by refusing to exile anyone from its circle of care.

At first I found it offensive. How could I pray for people who do such things, who plot the killing and maiming of innocent people? And yet I sensed there was a wiser spirit at work that I trusted and wanted to heed, and so I did.

As I prayed for them, I seemed to be taken to another plane— to Love’s vantage point—where I could see the tragedy in its entirety. Not only the horror of the casualties, but the tragic brokenness of anyone who could carry out such an abhorrent act. My heart ached for them all.

In my understanding, the fundamental spiritual truth is that all things and all beings are interconnected. We are all part of one Reality—I’ll call it Love—that animates the Universe. Atrocities such as the marathon bombing do violence to that fundamental truth of interconnection by enacting a story of division. They are assaults on Love.

But because Love is the Reality of complete oneness, even those who enact the story of division are not—cannot—be cast out of Love, because there is no “outside” of Love.

Once when I was walking a labyrinth on retreat, I received a teaching. “There are no enemies,” it said. “There are only those who do not know who they are.” There are only those who are not conscious that they are cells, as we all are, in the one body of Love.

And yet it’s hard to hold onto the consciousness of Love when we witness actions that inflict devastating suffering. In the face of attack we tend to go on attack, and thus lend our energy and intention to the very script of violence and division we abhor. In other words, we, too, take on the role of enemy. We, too, forget who we are.

In moments like these I remember that Jesus told people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors. There was a time when I understood his words as a command, something we should do if we wanted to be good people (better, that is, than our “enemies”).

But now I see that he wasn’t issuing a command or even admonishing people to claim the moral high ground. He was pointing the way out of the madness, like an illuminated exit sign above the door of a burning theater. “Here is the way out of the nightmare,” he was saying. “Love those who are playing the role of enemy and enacting the violent story of division and, by the very act of loving them, you nullify the story that has them in its grip.”

I wonder what it would be like if, whenever one of these horrific attacks occurred, we all banded together to pray not only for the victims, but just as fervently for the perpetrators—for their wholeness and that they might remember who they truly are. I know that those who engaged in such prayer would be changed. So too, I suspect, would the perpetrators.

I’ve never run a marathon, but I know people who have. I’ve heard how grueling it can be, how intense the training is, how you have to press on through the pain, how you have to keep running just when everything in you is screaming to quit.

And I’ve been thinking how maybe the reason we’re all here on this planet is because we’re in training for Love’s marathon. We’re here to press on through the pain, and the weariness, and the heartache. We’re here to learn how to stay the course of Love—to remain in the truth of Love—no matter what.

I’m pretty certain that whenever any of us manages to cross the finish line of Love’s marathon, we bring Martin’s dream of peace that much closer.

Of Crosses and Crocuses

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of crosses and crocuses
There are two realities available to us: imperial reality and divine reality.

Last week on March 21st Kip and I celebrated our 21st anniversary. These last couple of weeks I’ve been recalling our wedding, which was a small, intimate gathering of immediate family and close friends. The ceremony was nontraditional. We wrote our own vows, friends and family members sang and played music, read poems, did liturgical dance and at the end of the ceremony each person came forward and gave us a blessing as they placed ribbons across our shoulders.

It was a wonderful gift to be showered with the well-wishes of our loved ones, and later Kip wove the ribbons of blessing into a wall hanging that hangs in our home to this day.

Of the many blessings we received that day, two stand out clearly in my mind. The first was, “May you have many crosses to bear.”Continue Reading

Which Dove Will You Feed?

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The power to choose is in your hands.

Several summers ago, when Kip and I had just gotten home from vacation, I went into our second floor office that evening, flipped on the overhead light and startled something that fluttered outside our window. I went over to look and there, lying on the window ledge, was a bird’s nest with two small eggs.

I didn’t know what kind of birds they might be, since the adult that had been sitting on the nest had been startled away when I turned on the light, so the next morning I tiptoed into the room to find out who was roosting there. I was amazed to see a mourning dove sitting on the nest, peering in the window.Continue Reading

The Beauty Inside You

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Imagine if we were all taught to see the beauty within.
Imagine if we were all taught to see the beauty within.

This past Sunday I attended worship at a Quaker meeting. Quakers, who believe that the divine light is inside each of us and can be accessed by each of us without need of a mediator, usually don’t have a structured worship service, nor a clergy person who delivers a sermon. Instead, the community gathers and settles into a prolonged period of silence, and then, out of that silence, anyone who feels prompted by the Spirit will rise and speak what is on their heart.

Although it was a chilly morning outside, the meeting house was warm and made warmer by the crackling fire that was lit in the fireplace as worship began.

After a prolonged period of deep silence a few people began to rise and speak, and one of them delivered a message that moved me to tears.

She described how, when her son was three years old, they had a bedtime routine that included her reminding him, just as he was preparing to go to bed, to look for the beauty inside himself.

One night, unexpectedly, he changed the routine. Wide-eyed, he pressed his forehead against hers and reported the beauty he saw in her.  “It’s like diamonds, mama!”

I was overcome by the beauty of the whole scenario: by the beauty of such wise parenting that trains a child to see his inner beauty — and consequently nurtures his capacity to see beauty in others — and by the thought of what the world would be like if each of us had been taught to look for the beauty within.Continue Reading

Waking Up to the Waking Dream

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Have you ever experienced a moment that felt like a waking dream?

A couple of weeks ago I scheduled a blog post — Unplugged — to be published while I was away on retreat. The following week, when I was back, I went on my website and had a little surprise.

My website displays my most recent blog posts on the homepage, along with the image that corresponds to each of them. For the Unplugged post, I used a photo of an electrical cord, unplugged, lying on the red carpet of our living room.

But somehow on the homepage a different photo appeared: a photo of a white feather (also on our red carpet) which I had used in a collage once in which the feather was representing a writing quill.

Now, I’m sure there is some logical explanation of how that happened, some glitch in the software program that accounts for it, but when weird things like that happen I like to pay attention to them, because often they are communicating something at a symbolic level.

Nighttime dreams, of course, weave elaborate and sometimes bizarre symbolic narratives that reveal something about our lives, our souls, our reality that is outside the view of our conscious mind.  When I take the time to listen to my nighttime dreams and work on them, I find they can be tremendously helpful, and in some instances life-changing.

Every now and then, though, my waking life has bizarre moments too that feel like a dream — in fact I call them waking dream moments — and I frequently work on them much the same way I do my nighttime dreams, pondering their symbolism and interpreting what they might be conveying to me at this point in my life.Continue Reading

Living by Heart

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The Heart creates from the limitless possibilities of uncertainty.

I’m recently back from retreat, and once again I am convinced that taking time away from the incessant noise of our society is good for my soul. I can hear myself so much more clearly when I’m unplugged than when I am constantly navigating and responding to external communications and distractions. I can tune in more completely to the wisdom of my heart that perceives possibilities that my analytical mind is simply unable to access.

While on retreat I always do a drawing or two by heart — meaning, I let my intuition guide the process — something I wrote about in a previous post, The Life of a Heartist. This year on retreat I again immersed myself in the fluid ways of intuitive knowing, and in the process I saw more clearly that when we live guided by the heart, we must by definition live in the field of uncertainty.

Our society values certainty. We live in a very left-brained culture that believes that in order to accomplish anything you must have a clearly laid out plan and you must focus your attention on numbers, statistics and “proven” strategies. All of that has its place, but only if it is in service to the heart’s desires and the heart’s guidance. To live a life in alignment with our deepest values and soul purpose, the heart must be in the driver’s seat.

I suspect one reason we prefer to live out of the analytical left-brain is that we feel more secure. If we can head out the door knowing exactly where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, we feel safe.

To live by heart is to live very differently. When we live by heart we center our lives not in certainty, but in trust. We don’t know ahead of time what the outcome of our actions nor the destination of our path will be. We simply follow the step-by-step leading of our intuition.Continue Reading

Unplugged

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Information and wisdom are two different things.

Each year in early February I take time out for a spiritual retreat. It’s a time when I unplug from just about all the external sources of information — news, Internet, email, phone — so that I can plug into the inner sources of wisdom that come from journaling, meditation, prayer, dream work and other spiritual practices, and the rejuvenation that comes from walks in nature.

So much of our life is spent responding to external stimuli, and when we’re constantly attending to what’s coming at us we can’t really listen to what’s already in us.

The plugged-in world is a fabulous source of information, and I learn a lot from what it has to offer. But information and wisdom are two different things, and I know I have to get in touch with my internal bearings on a regular basis so that I can be selective about what I take in from other sources.  Otherwise it’s just too easy to get lost in the deluge of trivia that, in spite of its fascination, may not benefit my own development or nurture my own spirit.

How, you might ask, am I posting a blog while I’m unplugged? Well, I wrote it before my retreat and scheduled it to be published automatically. It’s a wonder, isn’t it, what we are able to do these days?

So, during this time of winter, when nature invites us to hibernate and go inward, I wish for you moments when you too can unplug so that you can tap into your inner wisdom, the wisdom of your soul.


Walking Through the Invisible Fence

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Are you ready to take off the collar?

I like to go for hikes in the woods along the creek of the Wissahickon that flows through the northwestern part of Philadelphia. The place where I often enter the park has a large home surrounded by a lot of land where a couple of large dogs roam. Every now and then the dogs get excited when someone walks by and they race toward the road barking ferociously, but because there is an invisible fence around the yard they never go any further.

The way invisible fences work, in case you’re unfamiliar with them, is a wire is buried along the edge of the yard that emits a warning signal and then a shock which is picked up by a small receiver on the dog’s collar. Both of those elements need to be in place for the fence to operate: the wire hooked up to a source of electricity, and the collar on the dog.

In last week’s blog I wrote about limiting beliefs and how we can become more conscious of them so that we can begin to move beyond them. Sometimes that movement will happen naturally. As we become aware of them, the limiting beliefs will just fall away and we will experience freedom.

Sometimes, though, they don’t. Sometimes, even when we know they’re there, our limiting beliefs continue to confine us, like a dog that’s held captive by an invisible fence.Continue Reading