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.

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

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

Instinct

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a pair of Vibrams lying on wood chips
We are born instinctively knowing a lot of stuff.

When I lived with my wife in small-town Missouri in the 90’s, I tended a big garden where I grew edible yummies:  snap peas, string beans, tomatoes, onions, southwestern chilies and Silver Queen corn – the works.  I loved picking the corn and running it straight indoors to the boiling kettle on the stove.  During one of my periodic telephone garden reports to my Pop, he once kidded me that he had half-expected me to say that I had taken the boiling kettle outside to the garden so as to reduce the ‘pick-to-pot’ time so that the sugars of corn ears wouldn’t turn as quickly to starch.  As a meticulous gardener, over the years I amended the soil with gypsum, sand and compost, ogling the tilth like John Deere himself and fretting over slugs, cucumber beetles and aphids.

The small town gardener has only one potential problem associated with tending lovely  soil:  feral cats love to shit in it.  After doing so they then scratch up the soil surface  — along with recently planted seeds and seedlings – entire rows of carrots, destroyed.  Have you ever planted a carrot seed?  It’s no more than a fleck of dust under a thin film of sifted soil. One cat swipe buries those tiny seeds too deep for the sprouts to ever surface.Continue Reading

Praying for Rain

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“Pray for Rain. Please pray for Rain.”

In the dream Thunder and Lightening came to introduce me to their daughter Rain. Rain was in her late 20’s, a thin woman, dressed in a knee length tunic made of long torn strips of fabric in muted hues of light blues and greens, exactly the colors, I discovered, of Van Gogh’s painting titled “Rain.” She looked like the colors of the painting, except that this was not Rain falling on a French countryside in 1889. The woman, Rain, had streams of watery soot that ran down the strips of cloth. She looked quite ill. Thunder and Lightening saw that I saw that and they asked me, as only parents of a very sick child can, “Pray for Rain. Please pray for Rain.”

I have been praying for Rain for the last several years. Praying, not that Rain come, not that it rains, but for Rain herself, daughter of Thunder and Lightening. Sometimes I meditate and then when my thoughts are dancing around a little less, I invite Rain into the quiet space. I sit with Rain and listen. Sometimes she speaks, usually she’s quiet. I have sometimes prayed for her soot streaked dress, held out my hands to allow a wave of small kindness to wash through the poison. It was then I discovered that the black rivers weren’t just on the cloth, they had seeped into Rain herself, ran in her blood. This week, I want to make a healing place in my garden for Rain, a place where she is welcome, a spot to rest in, soot streaked and all.

We know, of course, why Rain is ill. The sulfur and nitrogen from our cars, factories, and sources of electrical generation have changed her. Yet Rain, in order to be who she is, must fall. Rain cannot not Rain. This I can tell you from the times I’ve sat with her, she grieves when she falls. She knows she is ill and she does not want to carry the poison in her blood into the trout filled streams or the mountains’ trees or the soil’s loam. She knows, also, that she’s needed.

Praying for Rain is not about results. There’s no “so that” in this prayer. It is, if anything, about taking ourselves out of the mode of efficacy and entering into the place where we are unfettered enough in our thoughts and assumptions and desires to hear what is: the world, whom the Lakota call mitakuye oyasin, “all our relations”; brothers and sisters who fly and swim, who hop and run and crawl; Mother and Father, Earth and Sky; Grandparents, among them, Lightening and Thunder; and, of course, their daughter, Rain.

So we pray for Rain or for Earth or for that particular Cardinal or Finch or Tree outside our window. We pray for them, not as one in charge, but as one of them; a being of sentience, intelligence and beauty. Who knows, we might surprise ourselves. We might discover that it is we who change.

 

Lawrie Hartt is a dreamer and tender of dreams. She works with those seeking healing and a soul-filled life, listening for what will assist the journey towards balance, beauty and sustainability. She has been a spiritual counselor, retreat and workshop leader for over 25 years. She co-teaches SoulWisdom with Patricia.

 

We the Poets

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How long will it be until you call me sister?

It’s a typical afternoon at Al Aqsa Academy in South Kensington, Philadelphia. Back from recess, 30 third-graders burst into the classroom, carrying stories, alliances, and scuffles that began in the playground. Calmly, their teacher reminds them that it’s time for poetry, and we begin. I tape up a poster of N. Scott Momaday’s The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee, which uses metaphor to capture the poet’s self-awareness and relationship to the world outside himself.

I am a feather on the bright sky
I am the blue horse that runs in the plain. . .

Its powerful repetitions are very pleasing. Students tap their feet to the rhythm of each line. Thinking of Walt Whitman, as well as my own Hebrew Sabbath prayers, I wonder if the children are reminded of Islamic prayers. Walking around the classroom, I glance at first drafts as students compose. Two wonderful poems stand out, written Zubair and Zayd. These thoughtful twins have written poetry for three years, since I begin lessons in first grade at this large Islamic day school.  When asked about the title of his poem, Zubair says that this is the poem of his life. His brother, Zayd, is quite concerned with the environment and what he can do to care for it.Continue Reading

lightfastness

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What brings your soul to life?

What brings your soul to life? How are you taking time to heal and be whole?

For me, what is essential is spending time outside in the early morning hours. Being awake at first light gives me sustenance and kindles my hope and joy. Those early morning hours are when I can best hear the Spotted Towhee scratching in the dry leaves and grasses beneath the Sumac as it repeats its buzzy trill che zheee, che zhee. They’re when I can most clearly listen to the Pacific Tree Frogs announcing the imminent arrival of rain. In the dawn hours, I can watch the stars fade and the firmament of sky move from violet-blue to pale silk blue

“Take the breath of the new dawn
and make it part of you.
It will give you strength.”

This Hopi prayer fills me with gratitude. I continue to learn what it is to live in the “new dawn,” to “take the breath” and allow the prana, the life force of the morning to flow through me. And in those moments, I remember that the universe is synchronistic, and that I am a part of the whole. In those moments, I am healing.Continue Reading

Bearing Witness

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Together hopefully we will share the light of love.

When Patricia asked me if I’d be willing to write a guest blog, I was honored and also a bit daunted. I didn’t quite know where to start, or how to follow her beautifully laid path. She suggested that I might write about my work as spiritual practice, and possibly share an excerpt from my newly written book Find the Medicine: How Theater of Witness Reveals Stories of Suffering, Transformation and Peace. So I offer the Prelude of the book and some subsequent thoughts:

I am crouching in the wings of the theater watching the performance of Children of Cambodia/Children of War. From the side angle I see Hong Peach’s graceful silhouette balance as she perches on her right leg and her hands glide through the air in slow motion. Her fingers touch and trace invisible lines in the soft blue light. Her beauty is pure and lingers like perfume. Then with a boisterous shout, the Cambodian teen boys bound through the space, cajoling each other as they flip and jump over higher and higher ropes before collapsing into a pile of limbs on the floor, laughing before one turns serious:Continue Reading