I remember laughing at the great 90s Saturday Night Live Skit where the two talk show hosts were so paralyzed by their need to be politically correct, that their dialogue became stretched thin and to the point of absurdity.    Instead of Christmas carols, they sang holiday carols with language generic enough to mean almost nothing to anyone listening.   This awkward comprise of language was played for laughs but many don’t find the humor in this type of cultural compromise.  Some have even called the dialogue of the skit a representation of the so-called "War on Christmas."
In the last 24 hours the northern hemisphere has emerged from its longest night and its shortest day.   Hundreds of years ago, when your livelihood depended on agriculture, and there was never a chance to head to the supermarket after work for fresh food, the return of the sun was a very welcome sign.   How welcome was the sign?   One worthy of a massive party (more like debauchery).     Eventually, cultural pressure combined the solstice with the Christian observance of the birth of Jesus.  This newly merged tradition was observed three days after the solstice.    The goal was to contain the solstice party and make it a spiritual event that was more palatable to those who saw a threat in the debauchery holiday.
Today, December 22, the sun is starting our annual process of shortening the night, which has both literal and metaphorical meaning every year.   For a desert dweller like me, the temperature dip of winter is offsetting and for many, the season is physically and emotionally depressing.    The celebration of solstice recognizes the beginning of the end of the long nights, and its linkage to Christmas joins the expectation of more natural sun with emergence of another spiritually son, notably in just three days (as in the gospel stories).
As our days begin to lengthen, the advent and Christmas calendar implore us to find all of the contemporary areas of darkness and bring light to each of them.    I believe that if the message of this season was one of offering the light of truth, justice, compassion, mercy, and hope there wouldn't need to be a discussion about the cultural disappearance of Christmas.     Instead, there is ample proof for those with reservations, suspicions, and hostility about that the Christmas holiday has little to do with the end of darkness, literal or metaphorical.   Sadly, there are too many heartbreaking and convicting examples that they can provide.   There has been much harm done in the name of Christ, in defense of Christmas, and in defense of other professing Christians.   These experiences need a solstice of the soul as well.
Tonight will be shorter than the last, and each day that follows will grow in warmth and brightness.   Each day's new light is an example of the metaphor of the Gospel of John.   In John, Jesus is the light of the world, not the "right" of the world.   There are too many examples of where the right words about Christmas and Christ have created the same kind of paralyzed banter as the Saturday Night Live skit.    We may speak all we want about values, but if the audience can only see, feel, and experience darkness, then we are perpetually at the solstice and never to arrive at Christmas.  The energy spent on the "right"  ways to talk about Christmas is better spent finding the means to extinguish the very real darkness that many live in spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

Happy solstice! Now, let us share the light where it is needed most. May the light of each day lengthen through our spirit driven action, may each person inhabit less darkness through our love, and may the light of the world shine without the distortion of our hypocritical words.    May we all declare one last war, a war not on Christmas, but on darkness!  That is what sun/son is for, after all.

I discovered mindfulness meditation in early 2016 and fully developed a daily practice this year.   As meaningful as it is, it ought to come with a warning "Do Not Try This If You Are Not Ready to Work and Become Someone New."   Sitting is the easy part, but staying seated and gradually opening space to become aware of the thoughts, feelings, and memories that come and pass is the hard part.   This book helped me to develop new tools to offer kindness, care, and space for my experience in the moment.   

As I have committed to my mediation practice over the past months, the most accessible analogy for the experience is to describe the practice as if you were developing an extra gear mentally and physically.  Driving a stick shift is becoming a lost art,  but in the late 90s I had as small Nissan pickup truck that allowed me to learn and enjoy this type of driving experience.   Manual transmission have more "pep" when accelerating and that comes in handy getting in and out of tight or congested spaces.   I used to wish that there was a gear between second and third on my truck, since I felt second was overworking while driving in residential areas and third made the truck drag.   This type of extra gear would have made coasting without speeding require much less shifting.  This is the feeling that began to emerge in the weeks and months after I committed to my practice.  In moments of true anxiety, fear,  and shame, following the prompts back to my breath became that coasting gear.    

The book comes with practical examples of the meditations, sets of exercises, and encouragement through some of the common challenges.   The author is psychotherapist and a Buddhist and his connection between both of these perspectives adds a great deal to the practice.  With these tools,  your reliance on external reassurances of safety slowly withdrawal and it's you and your acceptance and awareness that becomes the refuge.  To borrow a thought,  with mindfulness we can become "the ones we are waiting for."
Who is this book for?

1. People looking for a sense of inner peace.   Our biology has made us adaptable and able to survive harsh conditions.  The practice mindfulness respects the way our limbic system has evolved and applies the phenomenal benefits of neuroplasticity - changes to our environment, our reactions, awareness, and acceptance make physical changes to the primal portions of our brain that govern our fight or flight responses.
2. People, like me, who are ridiculously hard on themselves.   Ever dwell on a mistake decades old?  Do you feel you don't measure up as soon as someone more successful walks in the room?    Do you think  you are a fake, waiting to be found?   If you answered all three with "yes", I am sorry there is no grand prize (but you are probably cynical and suspected that all along).   However, from my heart to yours - there is another way.  Perhaps, an infinite set of other ways to see yourself and live your life.
3. People who think self-compassion sounds silly, dumb, or bizarre.    You may struggle with offering yourself the same quality care and love you show to family and friends.  This isn't trendy self-help advice., mindfulness is older than the western civilization that we have assumed to be eternal while blindly accepting that it alone is the container of all the possible levels of truth.
4. People who wish to cope with difficult people.   The section on loving-kindness meditation is meaningful work  and it teaches how to extend your kindness to those close to you, then to acquaintances, and finally to the difficult people in your life.   The paradox that emerges is that the kinder I can hold the difficult people in my life, the easier it becomes to extend more kindness to my own life.   Maybe, "Love your neighbor as yourself"  is good for everyone involved, after all.

Let me know if you check out this book!

I have heard that one of the most often repeated commands in the Bible is a version of the phrase "Do not be afraid."   I have also never heard those words at a moment of personal fear and been able to appreciate them.   In fact, I am so good at fear that I actually struggle with fear of strong emotions in general.     I would like to propose we reinvent our fear language.  Even though fear is a basic biological impulse designed to protect our safety, its daily presence erodes our enjoyment of life.    My friends, what should we make of fear?


The strangeness of each of the accounts in the Christian sacred text leads me to think that the real issue behind our fear is something going on just below the surface.   It is important to note the verb in "Do not be afraid" is "be" rather than the word "feel".   The difference is regularly overlooked, but vital.  Take a look at some of the accounts of individuals "being afraid", you'll find them running, hiding, collapsing, mute, catastrophizing, blaming others, etc.   These are the same things that happen when we give away our sense of being and where we have been overcome by our darkest feelings. 


Most of the commands to not be afraid come with a reason. When the truth is revealed, it's usually a unique combination of radical change and surprise.   Let's reflect on that cause and effect relationship.  The divine reassurance is provided exactly because the situation actually is terrifying.   Why else would there be a need to give an explanation?  It is senseless and even cruel to dismiss the fearful experiences of others, and even more cruel to do it to ourselves.  


I suggest we make room for the feelings of fear,  recognize its sense of alarm, and open our awareness to its source.   We can make room by first recognizing the feelings present in our body.  These feelings are the pit in our stomach, the quickening of our heart beat, and the sudden urge to fight or take flight.   It takes real courage to sit (and only sit) and acknowledge these feelings in real time.  As we make this our practice,  something amazing happens - we can learn that our feelings are temporary.   When we become a witness to their rise and fall, much like bobbing on the water from the safety of a boat, we allow temporary fear to switch places with a permanent peace that is laying just below our emotional surface.   This is how we can "not be afraid"  while still recognizing that our old annoying friend named fear has come for a visit.


Feeling fear without being afraid also means developing an awareness of true threat versus perceived threat. We cannot rid ourselves of fear, it is our body's alarm system and its warning can save our lives.  For most, there have only be a few "life or death" fear inducing moments in life.  The rest of these moments however, are often threats to our ego, despair over our lack of control, and frustration coming from our resistance to circumstances.    Giving in and responding to these perceived threats can also fit the definition of "being" afraid.  


When our sense of being has given over to fear,  we have a choice.   Living in constant reactivity to every ego slight or need for control does nothing more than induce more fear.    A better choice looks like the process of accepting fear,  re-framing our situation, and pursuing a new direction in real time (maybe this is what working out salvation with "fear and trembling" means).   These choices will not remove fear from  your life, and you wouldn't want that any more than having non-functioning fire alarms in your home.   However, It will help you remember that there are real alarms and fake ones.  The fakes ones are much more prevalent.   Even as the alarms sound from time to time, it's possible to feel fear but not permanently overcome by it.   When you doubt this check out some of my favorite fear encounters in the Bible:


Exodus 14:13    A time God followers feared that they were being led to their death by God


Deuteronomy 7:18  For the faithful and forgetful, a reminder to the same group who had already lived through the Exodus 14:13 incident


Proverbs 3:24  For the times the quiet of the night is what keeps you from sleep


Psalms 23:4 For the time it's your memory of God's previous acts that keep you alive


Matthew 1:20  For the time when one door shuts and another door doesn't open because God is removing the roof of the reality of your existence


Matthew 10:31   For the times we think we are invisible,  inconsequential,  and unimportant to God


Matthew 17:7   When you realize you had all the right facts but in all the wrong order


Matthew 28:5  A surprise reminder of God's opinion of nightmares like tombstones and mortal failure


Mark 4:40-41; 6:50  A surprise reminder of how God and nature relate


Luke 1:13  When a man named "Yahweh remembers"  learns what the name means


Luke 2:!0   When good news became the victory of God

​Brene Brown is a researcher who once almost broke the TED server with her talk on vulnerability.   I personally owe her a debt of gratitude for her insight on anxiety and courage that made me take the first of 1,000 steps to form a new relationship with both.  Her newest book follows many of the themes of previous works and is highly influenced by the current American social and political climate. 


Why should you read this book? 

1. She uses qualitative research findings to address the human experience of belonging and connection.
2. She uses folksy, recent, and highly personal anecdotes to illustrate the inspiration of her research questions.
3. Because you have considered buying plastic forks and knives for Thanksgiving just in case a political discussion breaks out with your relatives.   She writes specifically about false dichotomies that are drawn in social and political dialogues.  These create "us versus them" and "good versus evil" sides to complex issues.
4. She has a heart for those who long for authentic living and yet, are still pained by the rejection that comes with following that path.
5. She balances personal boundaries, and personal responsibility toward the well-being of others particularly well
6. She knows she's going to make some people angry with her honesty, but she carries on and sets an example.

What did I struggle with?

1. This is my second book by Dr. Brown and like the first I felt the material was strongest in the first third and became weaker as the book went to completion.   
2. The definitions of hardship are completely first world and significantly middle to upper class existential crises.   Many of the conclusions are already available in many eastern philosophies on life and conduct (or in the cheesy lines of a country or Journey song).
3. There is a lot of emphasis on being "real" and some discussion on illusion (literally a chapter on bullshit) but very little on how delusion interferes with authenticity.    For me, delusion is when we are convinced we are being real, but with unhealthy consequences that lead to our own self destruction.  Illusion takes place when we are simply trying to confuse or show off for an audience (and that's bullshit).
4. Showing up as yourself takes a lot of spirit/mind work.  The disciplines of how to make this a daily practice need more focus.

Overall, 3 out of 5 bean burritos on this one.

I imagine that being a Christian is mainly an expressive language that communicates about loving God and about being loved by God.  Growing in my faith has become an understanding that loving God means loving what God loves. Generations of prophets, the voices in the wilderness of Israel's history, and the human face of God encountered in Jesus, make it clear that God is both love and justice.   Those that have lost either are soon to recognize they are longing for both, for they are two sides of the same coin.  

God is not ignorance, repression, suppression, or oppression of love and justice.   In the trials and chaos of life, our obstacles are the void created by the absence of love and justice.  Over and over, love and justice are God's words and actions breaking into the void.     When the void is overcome with the truth which becomes evident as caring, compassion,  comfort and the restoration of the dignity of all.     When love pretends to be our motivation without a commitment to justice, our result is selfishness.    When our sense of justice has lost its source in  love then our result is self-righteousness.  God is neither selfish nor self-righteous, and living with both is to enter the void.

When we look at the stories from the sacred scripture we see example after example of our responsibilities toward one another.   If you were to ask Malachi and James what the definition of pure religion is, you will find particular instructions that represent universal values.   You will not find the moralizing and rationalization that defends the prevailing oppression of the day, whether it be the harsh realities of imperial dominance, economic injustice, or patriarchy.   As John Dominic Crossan points out, to a patriarchal society love and justice require that we care for the widow and orphan (and much more),  in a tribal society they provide for the resident alien (like Ruth),  and in a market society they provide aid  to the poor, sick, and hungry.      Since the time of Jesus, progress has been made and also lost on all fronts, in a dizzying yin and yang of human development.


I grew up in a tradition that emphasized the birth and the death of Jesus.  Even the most famous creeds make these two events preeminent in their assessment of his purpose and vocation.     The gap between birth and death,  however, was often minimized or not discussed at all.     The result is the same void we encounter when we lose sight of the love and justice.  This is to me the greatest tragedy of current Christian practice and worship.    In our effort to categorize, philosophize, and proselytize we have reduced the holy art work of a lifestyle love and justice into a mechanical expression of self-serving ideals.   


This error can and must be undone and it starts with encountering, once again, the human face of God on earth.   The face that demonstrated love and justice by walking toward things labeled "unclean",  by eating with and creating relationship with "sinners",  by defying gender roles and demonstrating that many society's structures are often built for the powerful few, who exploit the many, and are blamed on God.    Instead, the human face of God is the one who is waiting as a father to the prodigal and the older son, who is sitting and waiting for the shame ridden woman to visit the well, and who is ready to offer a parable to a self-righteous Pharisee who mentally judges the tearful embrace of Jesus by a sinner.
To love God is to love what God loves which is to act in a way that restores and protects the innate dignity of all beings, cares for the sick and hungry,  comforts in the reality of pain and death,  and loves so thoroughly that it provokes the embrace of the sinner.     This is what you find between his birth and death.   If you can read this, you are still between those two events, too.   May you fill your days with the same ethic of compassion known by the names of love and justice. 

Mark 12:30-31  
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.”

In the past weeks, I have been part of multiple discussions on finding common ground with others during this time of social division. I am not shy in pronouncing and working toward my own personal ethic of compassion and love. However, I should be more shy about discussing how well I follow through. It’s been too easy to simply brand the other side of any argument as unloving. I’ve been on the giving and receiving end of this accusation, as many of you.

This saying of Jesus is perhaps quoted as much by other faith groups as it is by Christians. It’s easy to stay on love and forget the self. It’s also very common to start with the first half and see your intentions became a train wreck by the time you read “as yourself “. It seems to me that many who draw the ire of others are indeed following this saying without even trying. How is it so easy to be so disparaging, hostile, and angry? Because you hate yourself. You live in regret, remorse, denial, and never ending self judgement. You can’t help acting with such malice toward others because it’s how you treat yourself moment by moment. A living hell on earth.

How shall we cope with those where we find angry disagreement? First, by seeing them as people who may be hostile because they live in self hate. They may be unloving to their neighbor just as they are to themselves. This type of seeing is the start of the compassion in this saying of Jesus. It works because it revives our humanity. You simply can’t love another until you’ve made the peace treaty with your own inner self war which then creates the foundation for acceptance. Maybe then we can strive toward social progress and to peace with our neighbors.

I started to meditate after reading Tara Brach's book Radial Acceptance.  I later was introduced by a therapist to Jon Kabat Zinn and now I am off with different styles to try daily.    Meditating has become a true refuge for me but it hasn't been easy.   Below are the stages I described to a friend who is starting her own mediation practice.  These stage cover the first 18 months of my practice.

 1. Wow this 10 minute guided meditation lasts forever
2. Yes! I made it to the end, but I lose focus so I must be doing it wrong
3. What if the kids see me do this and think I'm weird?
4. Alright, the breathing really settles me quickly and now I know to not worry about focus just come back to breath
5. Hey this guy made me mad at work and I started to breath like when I meditate and the anger passed
6. Ugh! I have the same negative feelings each time
7. Oh I see, don't judge what's there just give it space
8. The long body scan didn't make my fear go away!!!
9. Wisdom is knowing what feelings are present without being lost in them.
10. You can walk and meditate?! Cool!
11. I can imagine the good feelings from meditating at the beach and it's now my calm place I turn too when I'm afraid.
12. Mediating with others is different and powerful even though its in silence
13. People want to know what's up and want to try meditating!
14.  Yesterday's was so much better than today's, ugh!
16.  And so on...

The door to peace today 
is locked by the past 
I give a turn and twist
forming a new path

I see the child
once me and ever still
the past has no answer
despite my wish and will

Yesterday recorded
new message received
the child's worth recovered
by a memory thief

I embraced the one
lost and hiding inside
when I learned to love him
​it was me who smiled

Memories are the picture frames of the mind. Both the good and bad scenes from our life can exist as vivid snap shots complete with a loaded burden of emotion. My negative frames always appear at the worst possible time. If things have been chaotic, depressing, or painful some of these framed memories come for a visit. Sometimes they appear randomly and other times they are recurring reminders. Some of the reminders are of mistakes made, regrets held, and others are of harm done to me by others.

How do we change our mental picture show? Is it possible? First, this type of change is possible but like Jack Kornfield has said of the mind "it's like a dark alley late at night, you best not go there alone"! If neglect, abuse, and severe loss are your frequent visitors this work should be done with a qualified therapist, someone with the confidence and skill to treat trauma.

Without being conscious of it, I have been living with mental pictures that were of two groups, traumatic memories and semi-processed pain. For the past several days, I have had visits from some painful scenes that are semi-processed. That is to say, they are familiar, have been shared, and have been discussed within a supportive network. Even though they appear infrequently and less painfully, they have not completely disappeared. The next step in my process is to re-frame them. This means taking our negative experiences and developing neutral statements about their meaning.

One example is my recent change in my life. For a list of reasons, my memories of the years spent within a particular group are painful and still make me angry. To work through this I had to develop a re-framed summary of that time and that entity. After my therapist suggested this, it took me four days of wading through judgments to come up with something neutral. Now, when my thoughts turn to that old hurt I insert that neutral statement e.g. "ABC is fun place for children to play." I repeat the neutral statement as much as is needed while I sit with whatever sensations exist in my body. I don't resist my feelings, I simply allow them to be. I am learning to let these mixed feelings coexist and I am becoming comfortable with holding a neutral sentiment where resentment used to live.

Now my quest is take other sources of pain, and even the ones where I resent a younger and more immature version of myself because of some painful. I can develop a neutral statement about myself, something like "I am evolving and developing, moving toward good in all of my relationships" and like my other old mentally frame, I let my thoughts and sensations coexist.

Perhaps the only way to make peace is to end the civil war that wages within our hearts. First, we need to see it's an endless war where we constantly supply both armies. Then we decided to fire the first shots from each side and get hit twice as much as we expect.

You.  Right there, right where you are, with all of who you are.  You are the first.    This is not a medal stand or coronation but unveiling.   By daring to stare into the weather long enough and remain present you have seen the crowds break apart.     What was once weather is now passing away, and the bright light of the sky beckons.   It belongs to you.

This bright and peaceful sky has always been and will always be yours.   But now, with sunlight finding its way to you, warming your soul, the bright light now shows the shadows of those around you.  Some are looking desperately at the weather believing they only have the choice to fight it or to run from it.   Still others wander aimless, unaware that there is anything overhead because their necks are strained from being turned down in grief.

As you see the light, others will begin to see you and notice the difference.  In the beginning it may make others afraid, or jealous, or resentful.    These are the usual hallmarks of darkness.     We remember them too, and also how we found the light.

We came to the light shared from another who journeyed ahead with an open heart and let us borrow from their illumination until we realized we had been glowing all along.     And now, it's our turn to look around and offer to those who seek something greater, deeper, and more fulfilling than the delusion of stormy weather.    They are waiting for some new, someone who looks as bright as you.     Each one that finds you will always know that you  were first.

For me, Anxiety is like an annoying semi-acquaintance who knows exactly when it would bother you most to call and how to make that conversation as awkward as possible. Ring, Ring, Ring!     Ugh.....

At first, I would mute the calls but Anxiety knew that I was there trying to avoid the calls.   The calls would come in one after another, sometimes at odd and inconvenient time.    First, I silenced the calls, then I put the phone on permanent vibrate, later I learned to turn off the phone.    However, as soon as I turned the phone back on, a new call come in.   Avoiding the calls only made more of them.

One day I answered the call and said "Hello" and heard only breathing on the the other side of the line.    "That's creepy,"  I said as I hung up. 

The next day I left the phone on and waited for the call.   When it came I asked it to speak and tell me why it was calling.  After a long pause anxiety said, "You called me."  This made me angry and I responded by saying,  "There is no way I called you, stop calling me"  and I hung up.

A couple of days went by without calls.  During this time I couldn't stop thinking about how Anxiety had  thought that I called them first.    It was time for a plan.    Anxiety liked to call as much as I hated to hear or even see the phone.   I decided to be proactive and call first with a list of questions that I hoped would close the matter.  My questions and the answers were:

'Who are you?"    Answer:  I am your conditioning. Your thoughts have made a comfortable place for me to live.  Remember how you decided that thinking was the only way to solve and avoid pain in your life?

"Why do you keep calling ?"  I miss you if it has been too long, I grow weaker without reminding you of the pain that you ignore.   Remember how you learned to stay level because it wasn't long before trouble returned?

"Why are you calling?"  Because you keep ignoring me, we are connected and we need each other to survive.  Remember what it's like to feel like you aren't going to make it?

"Why do you call so often and so randomly?"   We have to keep up our guard, the world is hostile and other people are unstable and some of them want to hurt you.   You need to be reminded that it is just us against them.  Remember how many people have let you down?

I didn't sleep that night. Neither did Anxiety.    All of my life I had felt something troublesome was always around the corner.   It didn't help that anxiety told me that what I am  afraid of most is me and my painful memories.   The next day and the days after I called first.  I decided to use my phone not to avoid, but to listen to my conditioning,  to feel its hidden pain, and then speak back words of acceptance, respect, and love.    

At first, these calls were very difficult and anxiety often screamed at me in return, only to crank call me later.    As weeks turned into months, I learned to look forward to collecting my feelings and thoughts before the calls.     My new experience taught me that how I think determines what I feel and how I behave.   At its most destructive, this pattern had made me equally isolated and lonely.    I chose to accept those feelings as being real and true and that living my life to avoid the calls from my conditioning  only made them stronger.

These days I initiate the calls most of the time and fill the dialogue with commitments to gratitude and loving awareness - especially on the days when circumstances tell me I shouldn't feel those things.   I even call some trusted friends who understand and now I listen when they call, too.   Anxiety still calls sometimes but when it does, I greet it with love,  respect, and understanding.      With practice, it's possible create an environment for your life that turns down troubling noise of fear.   We need only self-love and care supported by our allies.

My little sister was an escape artist. Once when she was three or four she disappeared during a family trip to Montgomery Wards. My parents were distraught after they tried to leave the store only to discover that our group of four was now a group of three. A few minutes later my sister was located, gleefully grinning as she pretended to steer the large riding lawn mower in the power tool section of the store.  She hadn't the slightest clue as to how much her disappearance act had traumatized my mother.

I came to accept that this was just something my kid sister did for fun, so I took it upon myself to keep an eye on her.   After all, it's your siblings who really know what kind of trouble you are capable of.  A couple of years later she did it again at our local  grocery store.  We had made it through the check out and back to the car and that is when my mother realized we couldn't find my sister again.  I ran back in the store to find her saw her walking away from the front door, hand in hand with a strange man.  Immediately, I wanted to scream "Hey, that is my sister!" but I played it cool.  I figured that there was a chance this stranger was actually helping my sister.   However, this scene occurred in the 1980s amidst the rows of milk cartons with the photos of missing children which made me aware of the danger.  To be safe, I ran toward her while making a plan on how I was going to get an employee to help me if the stranger meant harm.

As I got close, I yelled her name and both she and the strange man turned around. Thankfully for us, there was nothing but concern on his face as he turned to me,  he had only planned to walk my sister to the store manager. That day, with streams running down her face, my sister first met the terror of her escape artistry.  Overcome with boredom, as kids at grocery store often are, she had wandered off and when she realized she was alone, she began sobbing in the store.

It is easy to blame an incident like this on child's play except that this kind of escape artistry seems to be a specialty for the most mature adults, too.  Meaninglessness, self-absorption, and pain leave many people with strong desires for immediate relief from their discomfort, so they hide. Some hide in illusions (even ones with noble intentions) others in substance abuse or through physical isolation. Escaping and hiding are choices of Individuals who have come to believe that their future only offers more pain.

As I have been working toward present awareness, strange echoes of the past like this story about my sister bounce in my mind from time to time. What I remember most from this incident isn't my sister's choice, but rather my instinctual need to run to find her while carrying feelings of anger that a stranger had my sister.  Opening up in awareness has given me the space to feel the same way about those I encounter who are in the midst of suffering. If awareness is the goal of meditation then affectionate care is its outcome. When we stop to listen and see long enough, we will notice the modern escape artists who surround us. Life is difficult indeed, and those with unwelcome (but familiar) visits of fear, sadness, and despair often withdraw, become distant, or disappear altogether.

How do we help someone who is hiding?   With the opposite of hiding, our affectionate presence.   This takes the shape of listening, understanding, and the delivery of an open mind and heart.    Like the grocery store incident, you can only be found by people who believe, with all of their heart, that you belong.  Compassion in action requires that we run toward our lost brothers and sisters with a motivation that knows that the direction where they are headed toward is not where they belong.   When someone belongs with you, it's natural to feel scared and sadness for them,  but it's more important to remind them where home is - even if they just tried to leave it.

*Image courtesy of pixabay.com

I was eight or nine when I first remember  my parents watching the John Ankerberg TV series.   He was a well known christian televangelist that would hold a talk show that would invite experts on the Bible to defend the accuracy of christian faith.   Watching this show had a powerful effect on me and now, I recognize that it was the public attention these experts received that hooked me into wanting to enter christian ministry. In every church I have attended the pastor was a pseudo-celebrity and I wanted that kind of attention.   Over the years, it became evident that the kind of attention these families gained was actually a serious burden.   Each church I have attended in the last twenty years has suffered a leadership scandal, usually of an illicit sexual nature.  One pastor I knew coldly preached his morning sermons then met his girlfriend that Sunday afternoon and never returned to the church or his wife and kids.   His choice was devastating to his family, sad for the church, and was met by strong  condemnation from those who knew him.   I kept wondering, what about the position of pastor made this type of desperate escape so necessary?

I graduated from Bible college and briefly attended seminary while I worked with youth at a local church.    I enjoyed the connection with teens and young adults and I have continued to work with them professionally for last twenty years in various organizations.     What I didn't enjoy was the hierarchical leadership structure that usually gave one person (usually a man) vast power over the organization, its mission, as well as regular access to the most fragile and hurting members of the community.   By design, church ought to function in a community as a beacon of hope.    Unfortunately,  I began to see that the so called spiritual elite were still saddled with the same human traits of selfishness and impulsiveness as everyone else.   It is hard to see hope in that.

I do not intend this post to serve as a pro/con statement about church attendance.  I do accept, however, that my experience resembles the suffering called "special person" by Tara Brach.   In her book True Refuge she describes the attitude of special person as someone with strong desires to be in charge, to be looked up to,  to be revered.  When It becomes a near obsession,  it creates separation from others and eventually a form of emotional emptiness.  Much of this attitude led to my initial desire to enter ministry and still fuels a lot of my professional goals.    To be clear, I am not saying aspiring to or even holding leadership or authority positions are wrong, per se, or that this special person suffering is only found in church communities.  It just happens to be were it first awakened in me.  Regardless of the cause, I think we could be better served by examining the motivations we have for wanting (or needing) that kind of attention.

I once heard a retired CEO answer the question "what was the biggest adjustment to your retirement?"  His answer was "accepting that my phone had stopped ringing."   This leader acknowledged that we can unconsciously build a career that makes the approval of others the mirror in which we see ourselves.    When that mirror leaves, loneliness is what enters. The special person suffering comes from the  separation and need for protection that it creates.  If we are what other people say we are; then what people think and say of us must be guarded.    Handing over control of your self understanding is a recipe for misery.

One challenging mediation I have been doing for a couple of weeks is called "I am."  It lasts fifteen minutes and involves you mentally repeating "I am" while not filling in the blank that follows the phrase.  As thoughts come and go, my  role is to gently return to the mantra without resisting any intrusive thoughts.   Its goal is to help you connect to your fundamental state of being.     In a cosmic sense, its like filing out a bio and listing occupation as "here" or "being."  This grounded look at existence takes a lot of work.   I can't help but think it would matter a great deal to those suffering from the endless and dependent feedback loop of special person.  After all,  the most special people I have known have three things in common:  comfort with self,  a relative awareness of their deepest needs, and a developed sense of inner refuge that grounds them.    

This week's practice is to meet the desire for validation with a repetition of "I am".   Finding our deeply (often ignored) sense of being is the connection to truly living in the present.   This sense of being is independent of our circumstances and I welcome it  as foundation to my inner refuge.

Last year, I took some steps to improve my professional life.   I was in the "caring business" and had built a nice body of working helping others and training staff to do the same.   The trouble was, I began to have panic attacks at work.  For the most part I was able to hide them well and keep working.    Then I stopped working and then they wouldn't hide any more.

I have had battles with panic since I was a kid.    When they visited last spring, a google search led me to Tara Brach and her work Radical Acceptance.   I read it, loved it, talked about it, but mostly misunderstood it - all because of decades of my personal experience.   From that panic ridden work chair, I couldn't have been more unprepared to embrace mindfulness and any form of acceptance.     This is no fault of the author or the book,  it was like playing Chopin to a six year old who has just opened a keyboard at Christmas.    We can hear the beauty but our stabs at imitation are murderous to the ears of everyone around us.

Eventually,  a treadmill taught me that I was truly stuck.  Rather, the treadmill on the gym that I joined in January where I had a notable, non-work panic attack.    Over the Martin Luther King, Jr.   weekend I browsed through Psychiatrist's listings on my cell phone.     I found a local therapist with specialties in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.   In our first meeting,   she kindly asked if I was interested in her help.   She wasn't done asking when I blurted out "Yes, I need your help."   So much starts with those four letters H.E.L.P.

Since then, I have started to take my therapist and a few trusted others on a  tour of my past,  re-read the works of Tara Brach, and embraced the message of Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn.    The concepts are flowing.  the intention for mindfulness is growing; however, the implementation needs practice.  This practice will take the rest of my life and I am okay with that.    There have been several moments where the limited skills I have developed in mindful presence have captured moments that I would have otherwise missed.    My gratitude for presence growing. 

For reasons that will be discussed further, I grew up in an emotionally chaotic environment and choose to ignore strong feelings, and learned to fear emotional outbursts.    I choose to believe that I could do the best for my sister, my parents, and later for my own family if I was the strong stable one.    This meant I should be impervious to my pain,  but strong and supportive of others.      It was never in my intention to hold my self in such low esteem.    By denying the real experience of tumultuous times in life, I was torturing myself.     This over driving sense of survival was killing my future but only after it murdered my awareness of the present moment.

Dear reader, I do not make claims to have originated any insight in this blog.  I am a mimic, a mime, and a thief.     Like Robin Hood,  I hope I can steal some wisdom from the emotionally rich and connect to the emotionally poor.   Others do this for me, and  while I may never meet all of them,  allowing them their place as allies in my life is the foundation for practice makes presence.

May the life you save be your own.