Sistering!

If you want to be having your socks knocked off about the crazy/hilarious/ poignancy of being a woman then you ought to be listening to Glennon Doyle Melton. She's talking to anyone who will listen and hugging you too!  A recovering alcoholic and bulimic she's found her voice in the world of recovery and spirituality through her acid, self deprecating humor and simultaneous compassion.

Sacred Threads hosted Melton on July 1, 2015.  Two hundred and fifty plus women packed into St Julia Parish Hall in Weston, Massachusetts to meet this diminutive spiritual leader. "We should have rented the Garden", said Marie Labollita, co-founder of Sacred Threads.  "The tickets sold out in two hours".

This is generally the case when Melton comes to town. Founder of the online community at Momastery.com and author of Carry on Warrior; The Power of Embracing Your Messy Beautiful Life, Melton is reaching out and impacting the lives of women juggling young children and the spiritual questions that confront them. 

Melton's sobriety is based on her ability to tell the truth. "I miss booze like people miss people who beat them up and leave them for dead", she says. Her story is not easy to hear and nor is her ongoing battle for sobriety. Over a decade ago, hung over and holding a positive pregnancy test, she heard God calling her back to life. She married the father of her first child Chase and had two more kids. Now what?  She decided she needed a place like a monastery where she could find community and some peace; " an intentional community with better rules".  

Forming Momastery.com she says her rules are:

 "write like shame was something I never heard of;

treat everyone with respect;

and maintain an online posture of arms completely wide open".  

She refers to her "bathroom floor moments" and the clarity she has gained about God: that in God's acceptance of her " there's nothing that could make God love her more or less".  This is a powerful message to women struggling with their identity. Smart women who have or had high expectations of themselves.  Women, who, after producing two or three "little ones" may be wondering what the heck their lives are about as they change diapers, obsess over whether they'll ever get back into their size 8 slacks and crave a conversation with a sympathetic woman. 

Asked by Sacred Threads moderator, Maria DiLorenzo, " What do you want women to know about each other"? Melton replied, "We are lonely because all the surface stuff in our lives looks different.  But twelve layers deep we're all the same."  Describing the carpentry practice of supporting load bearing walls with other walls, she asks gleefully, "guess what it's called?  Sistering!!"

"We all need each other".

Fiona Lovell Horning

Sharing ourselves

I never ceased to be amazed and saddened by all that lies behind the smiles, smart looks and other facades so many women project. Beneath the surface there is so much pain, suffering, grief, guilt and negative emotions and experiences which weigh us down. All of this is compounded by the extraordinary effort it takes to hide these feelings and assume an air of composure, as if we 'have it all together!'

Why do we tend to act in this way? Are we afraid of the truth, or of other people's reactions ...or does it go beyond that to our deep fear of ourselves?

These were some of my many ponderings after listening to Glennon, in the company of wonderful women, on July 1. Their thirst for the truths she shared was palpable:

·         the reassurance that we are deeply loved by God, just as we are;

·         the desire to create a more just world and to allow every voice to be heard;

·         our ability to be compassionate to others, and, of course,

·         our need to be vulnerable and to share.

If Sacred Threads can offer you any strands to strengthen your lives as you journey through life, that would be our privilege. We don't have all the answers, but we are willing to walk together with those who seek greater wholeness.

Perhaps Marianne Williamson says it best :

"The only way to gain power in a world that. is moving too fast is to learn to slow down.

            And the only way to spread one 's influence wide is to learn how to go deep.

The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed

            but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls.

Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it."

 

RM

Rabbi Rami Shapiro: Rabbi to the World

My husband and I have a saying, “The truth is the truth.” We usually say it after reading some spiritual text and marveling how easy it is to connect the dots from the key points in that book, be it Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Jewish, to the countless others we have read because, “The truth is the truth.” That is a very simplistic way to describe what Rabbi Rami Shapiro refers to as “perennial wisdom,” and he has plenty of it to share with us.

I was first introduced to Rabbi Rami through his monthly question and answer column In Spirituality and Health Magazine called “Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler.” When we get the magazine at our home, the first thing we do is turn to his column and read it straight through. Rami has a way of answering questions from people of all faiths that transcends specific religious dogma, and touches both the universality of our experiences and the heart of each spiritual traveler’s concerns. And when you finish reading his column, or any one of his many books (and he’s written over 30), you know, for sure, that Rami is an uncommon Rabbi.

Here are just a few things about Rabbi Rami that make him unique:

·         While he was ordained as a Reform rabbi from Hebrew Union College, and has a PhD in religious studies he’s also a zen rabbi and Reb Zalman Schacter Shalomi welcomed him as a rebbe which in Chasidic Judaism is a title given to a teacher who touches not only your mind and your heart but can reach your essential being and guide you to find yourself there.

·         He was made a 32nd Degree Scottish Rite Mason and he’s also been initiated into the Ramakrishna Order of Vedanta Hinduism

·         And he’s been named a Holy Rascal by Seneca Elder and Franciscan Sister Jose Hobday; a Holy Rascal is someone whose experience of god transcends theology and religion, and is willing to live with the unanswerable questions that reality poses, rather than conforming to the answers religion offers.

An unusual resume for a rabbi, indeed.

When Father Richard Rohr was asked to write the forward to Rami’s 2013 book, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, this is what he said: “Who would have thought that a Franciscan priest in New Mexico, trained in classic Catholic theology, would even be invited to do such a thing? Or even want to do it? Yet, I read Rabbi Shapiro’s words and all I keep saying is “Yes,” “Of course,” “Makes total sense.” And “This fits my own experience and education!”

Or as my husband and I would say, “The truth is the truth.”

So, just what kind of Rabbi is Rami??

In answer to that question on his blog, Rami simply, but profoundly, answered this way:

 “For me, . . . being a rabbi isn’t about making Jews Jewish, but about using Judaism as a tool for making meaning and discovering wisdom. I am interested only in truth as best as I can discern it, and I fashion Judaism as a way of articulating that truth.

Because my loyalty is to truth rather than Judaism, I see myself as spiritually independent, and thus free to explore and draw from the entirety of human wisdom, and I want the Judaism I teach to be of value not only to Jews, but to other spiritually independent seekers as well. Just as Jews borrow from Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Christian mysticism, I want followers of these paths to borrow from Judaism as well.”

“So I guess I am the kind of rabbi that my rebbe once told me to be: a rabbi to the world.”

Indeed, Rabbi Rami has traveled the world bringing the perennial wisdom of the world’s religions to spiritual seekers of every faith and no faith for over forty years. He IS a rabbi to the world and we are fortunate to have had this Holy Rascal with us in our little corner of the world on April 25, 2015 to share his perennial wisdom with us for two hours, which wasn’t long enough and left us wanting more.

The theme of Rabbi Rami’s Sacred Threads presentation , “The Heart of Spirituality: Bridging the Wisdom of East and West,” which carries through the theme that on a mystical level, all the texts of every religion are saying the same thing. They all agree. They all have had the same experiences. As he says, “This is the perennial wisdom that transcends form and unites all in a common experience of the truth.”  And, when we tap into this perennial wisdom and experience of the truth, Rami reminds us that we are more loving, open-hearted and compassionate, less fearful and angry.  He presented this concept of perennial wisdom through four shared points of connection:

Point 1: Everything is a Facet of the One Thing:

There is nothing but God; we are all one. Everything you see, think, feel, imagine, is a part of and never apart from the same Source, whether we call it God, Allah, Krishna, etc.

Point 2: YOU are a manifestation of God, but you have two states of consciousness.

Everything is a manifestation of God and that means You are. To know God is to know yourself and to know yourself is to know God. When you know God directly, you realize that ultimately there is no You or anything/anyone else. Only God, which is simple to say, but living in this world, there is a big HOWEVER that doesn’t make it easy for us to accept it. Rami explains that we have 2 states of consciousness: one see ourselves as separate from God (ego) and one that sees ourselves as part of God (spirit). When we are separate we are anxious, fearful, angry, needy, narrow minded, feel threatened and live in a zero sum world. This is the mindset that scares people and sets us on a path to war. When we see ourselves as a part of God, we are compassionate, expansive, loving, just, spacious minded and believe there is enough for everyone. When we are in this state, our sense of self drops away and there is deep joy in what we’re doing. (Sounds like the place we want to be, doesn’t it?)

Point 3: When you are in the Zero Sum Self, separate from God, life is suffering.

We suffer because we want things to be other than they are.  We ask the narrow mind questions like “why would God do this to me? To others?” when the spacious mind question is, How shall I respond to this? What can I do?

Point 4: We are here to be open hearted and use our spacious minds

We are here to realize the oneness and divinity of everything and to move from conditional love, fear, “a constricted heart, closed mind and clenched fist,” to unconditional love, and an open heart, mind and hand.

These four points of perennial wisdom could easily be philosophical concepts that have us scratching our heads and furrowing our brows, but Rabbi Rami has a way of presenting them that makes them easy to understand and touches our collective hearts. And we laugh a lot too! He has a unique ability (and an endless font of knowledge) to finds ways to connect the four points right to our everyday experiences, to people of all faiths and to the spiritually independent, and when he explains the wisdom inherent in them, we DO understand that we are all connected, and that the “truth IS the truth.”

Rami ended his presentation with a discussion of the powerful time in which we are living, a time of great religious turmoil and potential spiritual advancement, referring to it as the “Second Axial Age,” a concept explored in Karen Armstrong’s book, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Some two thousand years ago, during the First Axial Age, all the great religions came into being and the world shifted from magic to morals, ritual to compassion and from an “us thinking” to an “all of us” thinking. Today, Rami explains, we are amid a second Axial Age and are undergoing a period of transition similar to that of the 1^st  Axial Age. Now once again, we need to redefine the notion of the sacred so it can become relevant and enter our lives in new ways.  As he puts it, “At the heart of the 2^nd Axial Age is the realization that religions must transcend the zero-sum world view of saved and damned, believers and infidels, enlightened and unenlightened. Rather than a focus on religious dogma, in our non zero-sum world the focus of religious life is spiritual practice and expanding our sense of compassion to embrace all living beings.”
Rami called us to our spacious minds and engaged us in the perennial wisdom that sees our lives, every life as sacred. He says, “you know you have had a mystical experience because it transforms you; you are more loving, compassionate, less fearful and angry.” If that is the case, and I believe it is, then all of us had a mystical experience spending two hours with Rabbi Rami. He left us with spacious minds, open hearts and a strong desire for him to return to Sacred Threads soon so he can continue to share his perennial wisdom with us.

Pamela Econoply Woodnick

May 2015

References

Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Religious Traditions. Anchor Press. 2007.

Shapiro, Rami. Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent. Skylight Paths. 2013

On Atul Gawande’s "Being Mortal" : Life, Death, and Faith in the Power of Stories

            A “dry, leathery corpse” introduces Atul Gawande to medical school and readers to his book, Being Mortal.  Nothing else is revealed about the body; its former owner’s life and death are meaningless to the medical students who will dissect it. Gawande closes Being Mortal with a far different image: a memoir of his father’s illness, decline and death, that ends with spreading his ashes on the Ganges River, an “intensely moving experience” that connected them both to a “story going back thousands of years.” (p. 253)

            The pages between follow a trajectory as familiar as the story recounted in the old Christian hymn, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind but now I see.” Being Mortal is, at its heart, a conversion story, a narrative of a transformation in Gawande’s understanding of the meaning of death, and ultimately, his own life and work. His profession of faith comes early in the book, “I have the writer’s and scientist’s faith. . .that by pulling back the veil and peering in close, a person can make sense of what is most confusing or strange or disturbing.” (p. 9) There’s a strong undercurrent of religious imagery in “pulling back the veil” and in the transformative power of clear vision. Such rich imagery is one of the pleasures that await readers of Being Mortal.  Reading the book flap biography, with its impressive list of credentials from Harvard, the MacArthur Foundation, and TED, a reader might expect a guidebook like his earlier work, The Checklist Manifesto, that changed operating-room procedures in countless US hospitals. Instead, Gawande offers his experience as testimonial and inspiration.

            To ‘fight the good fight’ is also an image common to conversion narratives, and it is an important one in Being Mortal.  Gwande describes mortality as a battle “to maintain the integrity of one’s life—to avoid being so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or want to be.” (p 147) Professionals who care for the sick and dying “ought to be aiding people in their struggle” with human limitations and the constraints of biology. But for Gawande, the battle of being mortal is not a struggle to defeat an enemy but to gain the victor’s privileges. Life in the face of death is a battle for autonomy, and the purpose of autonomy is authorship.  We may not control the circumstances of our aging, illness, and death, but we can struggle “to shape our response to them” (p. 210), “to keep shaping the story of our life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to [our] own priorities.” (p. 147)

            And here is the most potent image in Gawande’s conversion narrative, his renewed understanding of narrative itself. “For human beings,” he writes, “life is meaningful because it is a story.” (p. 238) Stories have arcs, and within stories, endings matter, to the point that endings can reshape everything that comes before.  Gawande faults current medical practice for its narrow focus on fixing problems that loses sight of the fundamental need to “remain writers of our own story. . .to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties.” (p. 140)

among stories of scientists, philosophers, friends, patients, and practitioners. He knows the value of a punchy line, like “If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.” (p. 178) He deftly displays self-deprecating humor:  “Between the three of us we had 120 years in medicine, but [my father’s illness] seemed a mystery.” (p. 223) His account of his father’s diagnosis and life with cancer, decline and death will likely be as central and illuminating for most readers as it was for Gawande.

            Gawande’s faith seeks understanding by looking closely and clearly at the human experience of mortality. He sees there a struggle for autonomy and authorship, and that stories, more than science or medicine, enable us to face our mortality.  Gawande concludes his testimony with a deeper understanding of himself as a human being and a physician, as one who accompanies others as they shape their lives in the face of what medicine cannot fix.

            And yet stories have their own autonomy, beyond the limits of any author’s intent. Once told, stories are the wildest things of all; when you turn them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak? This description comes from another meditation on mortality, this time in the form of Patrick Ness’s young adult novel A Monster Calls. For all that storytellers like Ness and Gawande desire clear vision and courageous authorship, our stories can be untidy, elusive, and opaque. Veils remain between our understanding and experience of death. The final meaning of any life is unknowable until the time that we are no longer its authors. When our stories becomes as fixed as the stars, they will then be endlessly drawn into new constellations by the tales our survivors tell.

B.J. Brown