Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Shedding Light on Our Limiting Beliefs

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Salt can’t lose its essence, and neither can you.

The other day, while I was salting my eggs at breakfast, I had an insight about one of Jesus’ teachings that had always eluded me. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is quoted as saying: “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

Even though in our day we take salt for granted, in ancient times it was precious for many reasons. It had purifying qualities, was frequently used in religious rituals and sacrifices, and it was used to preserve food, which in the days before refrigeration and canning could mean the difference between survival and starvation. Salt was so highly prized, in fact, that Roman soldiers were paid in part with salt, which is how we ended up with the word salary.

Jesus was speaking to uneducated Jewish peasants who struggled to survive under the brutality of Roman imperial rule. By saying, “You are the salt of the earth,” he was telling them they were precious, sacred, valuable beyond measure, which was probably not the message they got from the elite of their homeland and certainly not from their Roman occupiers.

Okay. That makes sense, but it’s the next part that’s puzzling. “But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.”

That’s the part I never understood. How could salt ever lose its taste? Salt is a stable mineral, and it just doesn’t go bad. If you’re like me, you’ve had to toss out plenty of seasonings in your day, jars of herbs and powders that have been sitting in the spice rack for years, but never have I had to toss out salt because it wasn’t salty anymore.

As the salt tumbled from the salt grinder onto my eggs, though, it started to make sense.Continue Reading

Walking Away From the Game

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Let me begin by saying two things. First, I’m not really into sports. Second, my spouse, Kip, is a soccer aficianado, and because of that I sometimes learn about the inspiring things that can happen in the world of sports, one of which took place a couple weeks ago at a soccer match in Italy.

The game was being played by two Italian teams, and on the visiting team from Milan was a player, Kevin-Prince Boateng, who is a German-Ghanian. Whenever he got the ball, some of the fans in the stands would start making racist taunts. Finally, Boateng had had enough. He threw the ball into the stands at the hecklers, pulled off his jersey and walked off the field.

That alone would have made for an inspiring tale of personal courage, but it wasn’t the end of the story. Soon all his teammates followed him off the field, then the players on the home team did as well.Continue Reading

Yes, And: Life As Spiritual Improv

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What would Yes, And look like for you?

This past summer I met a woman who teaches comedy improv, and our conversation piqued my curiosity since I teach extemporaneous preaching, which is its own sort of improv. So I started doing a bit of research into improv, and what I discovered is that many of its principles — just as in the case of extemporaneous preaching — are the very same things that make for a spiritually aligned life.

The most important principle in improv is known as “Yes, And.” What it means is that when your improv partner does or says something during a scene, you accept what has been offered and then build on it with your own interesting response. By doing so you keep the action moving forward in an unexpected, creative and sometime hilarious direction.

One thing that kills improv is if one of the players takes a stance of “Yes, but” or simply “No,” refusing or ignoring what has been offered and instead forcing the scene to move in a direction based on his or her own desires which have nothing to do with what their partners have already created.

I see life as spiritual improv. It presents us with situations, sometimes quite unexpected, and it’s up to us what we do with them. If we let go of our resistance to what is and accept our situation, then we are able to respond imaginatively in a way that allows circumstances to evolve in an innovative direction.Continue Reading

Rainbow in the Night Sky

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Do you believe in rainbows?

At the end of each year and the beginning of a new one, I like to look back and do a year-end review to remind myself of the path I’ve traveled and set my intentions for the year to come. When I was reviewing my journals from this past year, I came across a dream I had last New Year’s Eve that I want to share with you.

I’m in a large gathering of people engaged in a group ritual. Each person is holding a candle, and I and the other adults are looking into the eyes of young people and singing to them. The intent of the ritual is to encourage the younger generation as they face the global challenges before them.

Then something unexpected takes place that wasn’t part of the planned ritual: the younger people reciprocate. Looking into our eyes, they sing for us, letting us know that they recognize that we too inherited warfare and other challenging problems from the past and we have worked with them as best we could. Their kindness and generosity moves me to tears.

Later, I am outside. It is night and the sky is dark. I am standing in a location that feels like the site of old ruins. Then, suddenly and improbably, a rainbow appears across the night sky. It is an incredible sight, and I weep, overcome with gratitude.

We happen to be living in an age in which old structures, systems and beliefs are crumbling into ruins. The world around us can seem dark and foreboding, and we may wonder how those who will come after us will be able to make their way through the world they are inheriting.Continue Reading

Spread Your Wings

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What would your life be like if you spread your wings fully?

A few months ago, artist Sara Steele wrote a post for this blog, Pas de Deux, describing her experience of watching a hawk take flight from its perch on a tree branch. It spread its wings, fell onto the wind and soared away. After reading it, I had a realization that has stayed with me as an important teaching.

What I realized is that, in order for the hawk to be able to soar so effortlessly on the wind it has to spread its wings — fully. Otherwise, there is no way the wind can support it, and its flight becomes aerodynamically impossible.

It’s such an obvious point, but one I hadn’t ever thought about before.

The wind is often thought of as a metaphor for the divine Spirit, the invisible force that moves through our lives, and I happen to believe that the Spirit, the Divine, the Universe, God, whatever name you choose to give that Reality which is greater than ourselves, is a force that supports us as we seek to manifest our dreams and give expression to our soul’s purpose. It is like the wind that carries the hawk to its destination.

But in order for our dreams to be supported we have to to do our part.  We have to offer the fullness of our gifts and essence, in other words, we have to spread our wings wide.  If we hold back because we aren’t certain how we or our gifts will be received we are like the hawk stepping off the branch with its wings tucked in tight.  Playing it safe, we jeopardize our own success.

Since having this realization, I have become more aware of the ways in which I sometimes hold myself back, and as this new year begins I am more deeply committed to spreading my wings fully.

How about you? Are there areas in your life in which you are “playing it safe” by withholding your gifts and who you truly are? If so, feel for a moment what your life would be like if you spread your wings fully and gave yourself over to the spirit realm whose nature it is to support you and enable your dreams to take flight.

 

 

Opening Our Veins for Newtown

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Who can fathom the “why”?

After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, my spouse, Kip, pulled his high school letter jacket out of the closet and hung it on the back of his dining room chair. I think it was his quiet act of solidarity with the community he once lived in, and the school his little sister once attended. His blue and yellow jacket hanging in our dining room was a vivid symbol of how tragedy, even when it seems far away, ripples out to us all.

I cannot begin to fathom the immensity of the anguish the families of the children and educators who were killed in the shooting were experiencing. I cannot imagine the nightmare images that must have continued to haunt those who witnessed the massacre.

For me, the tragedy reawakened the shock and grief I felt in 1999 when a similar nightmare visited the halls and classrooms of Columbine High School, a place where I had taught briefly in the 1980’s after returning from the Peace Corps. It was so inconceivable that such an ordinary school where ordinary teenagers showed up every day and did what teenagers do — teased each other, went out for the football team, played in the band, griped about having to learn Spanish verbs conjugations — would become the scene of such senseless carnage, where SWAT teams converged, racing against time to stem the slaughter.

Given these personal connections, I have felt a desire to write about what happened last week, but I have been unable. The truth is, I don’t know what to say. I could talk about the horror of these tender, innocent lives being annihilated in such a meaningless, violent way, but there is no need for me to state the obvious. I could talk about the violent nature of our culture and the danger of free access to guns, but others are speaking about that more powerfully than I ever could. I could talk about the roots of fear that give rise to our need for guns, but that would be a book, not a blog. I could talk about our deep longing for safety which we seek in different ways, some people by arming themselves, other people by wanting to do away with arms.

I could talk about how safety is an illusion we cling to in this temporal life. And yet, on the spiritual plane, it is a given. To paraphrase the apostle Paul, there is nothing that can separate us from the Love from which we have arisen and to which we shall return. Nothing. Not even a mentally unstable person wielding an automatic weapon loaded with 30 rounds.

When these tragedies unfold I am always reminded of the phone conversation I had with my mother the night of the Columbine shooting. She was with some friends at a mall about a quarter of a mile from the school when it happened, and she described the sirens of police cars racing to the scene, and the din of helicopters circling overhead. “Now,” she said, “they’re asking the people of Denver to go to the blood banks.”

It was that last sentence that got me. When there is nothing more that can be done, we open our veins.

I don’t know what to say about what happened at Newtown or at Columbine. I can’t get my mind around the “why” of any of it. All I know is how I wept when I heard the news, how my heart felt so broken for the vibrant lives lost and the shattered lives of those who remain. All I know is that, in the end, what I really want from this life of mine is to find a way to stretch out my own arms and bare my own veins, to somehow offer myself for the healing of a broken, frightened world.

 

Hurricanes, Nightmares and the Ego’s Illusion

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Climate change isn’t simply a political or economic issue. It’s a spiritual issue.

As I write these words, I, along with millions of other people on the East Coast are wondering just how bad Hurricane Sandy will prove to be. Outside my front window I see a gray, steady rain. The branches of the trees are beginning to sway and bend with the increasing force of the wind. I am hoping our old, very large sycamore tree in front of our house can weather this storm.

Last night I had a dream. In the dream I was in West Philly. The sky was clear and sunny, and I thought perhaps all the hype about the storm had been just that: hype. But then I looked to the east and saw an enormous dark funnel cloud moving through the heart of Center City. The glass debris of skyscrapers was flying through the air. I wondered if Independence Hall would also be destroyed, and I considered the symbolic weight, should that happen, of seeing the very icon of the United States’ democracy being ripped apart in the juggernaut of nature’s force. In the dream I knew that the magnitude of the storm was related to global warming. I managed to get on a bus headed safely north of the city, but I and my fellow passengers watched with disbelief and horror as we witnessed our city being destroyed. The devastation we were witnessing paled the attacks of 9/11.Continue Reading

The Mind’s Haunted House

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What monsters populate your Terror Within the Mind?

The other evening, just before sunset, I was walking down our street to meet my spouse, Kip, for dinner at a neighborhood restaurant. Coming towards me on the sidewalk was a man dressed in a black and white striped prison uniform cradling a large mallet with both hands. His face was painted white, fake blood dripped from the corners of his mouth.

The first thought that crossed my mind was how bizarre this would seem to someone from another culture who had no context for this scenario. As for us, we’re used to ghosts and ghouls wandering our neighborhood this time of year. We live near a historic prison, now a museum, and every fall as a fundraiser the Friends of Eastern State Penitentiary put on a haunted house inside the prison’s massive stone walls that loom like a fortress in the heart of our neighborhood. They hire actors to play the parts of gruesome prison guards, blood-thirsty convicts, and all manner of haunted and haunting characters.

People flock to Terror Behind the Walls from all over the region, many arriving on the Ghost Bus that shuttles them back and forth from outlying parking areas. As Halloween draws nearer they often stand in line for hours, their anticipation mounting as they get closer and closer to the smoke-breathing gargoyles lurking above the gateway to the prison.Continue Reading