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The Cathedral and the Well.

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Bedouin woman crossing the desert

(Act One)  The setting is a desert which, like all deserts, has to be crossed. In the middle of this desert is a well, fed by an underground spring of fresh, loud, rushing water. This particular well is fortunately located just at the point where thirsty pilgrims need refreshment if they are to survive and continue on their way. So in those days news got about that it was relatively safe to cross the desert as long as you listened for the sound of the spring and stopped to drink from the well. Generations of pilgrims were able to cross the desert and head into the wilderness — which is where God’s people were usually traveling.

(Act Two)  Many years later news spread of a building in the middle of the desert, a cathedral of great beauty. Throughout the years pilgrims, when they passed, had dropped stones (some fancier than others) to mark the location of the wellspring, an improvement which they hoped would show their respect for the well. Soon a cathedral stands in the middle of this desert, one stone buttressing another. Pilgrims stop, look up, and admire the cathedral from a distance. Yet most of them are close to death from thirst when they approach. They can neither hear the sounds of rushing water nor see the well, now covered by stones.

(Act Three)  Centuries later, in the same desert, one very thirsty pilgrim dares to approach the cathedral, now overgrown by weeds after years of neglect. She (most late medieval pilgrims were women) notices that a stone is loose. Pulling it out, so that she might replace it correctly, she hears the sound of rushing waters! She rediscovers the well and invites her companions to drink of its life-giving waters. Soon news spreads of the cathedral and of the well. The cathedral was imperfectly built, always standing in need of repair; the well, which stood in its midst, is free-flowing. Future generations of pilgrims, sighting the familiar landmark of the cathedral, draw close to the well, drink of its springs, and live to cross the desert.

If this parable of thirst, courage, and deconstruction speaks to you, here are some possible ways to interact with it.

1. Ponder where in your life the living water flowing from your Source into your soul has perhaps become blocked. Are you requiring certainty before you move? Are you taking literally what was meant metaphorically? Are you resisting the next step on your journey because you feel afraid? Are you trusting external authority at the expense of your own experience? Something else?

2. Use the story as your text for Lectio Divina.

3. Put yourself in the story. Be the thirsty pilgrim crossing the arid desert and approaching the cathedral. Be the thirsty pilgrim pulling aside the loose stone and hearing the sound of water. Hold the stone in your hands. Drink deeply of the cool, living water. What do you hear and feel?

4. If you’d like to chat about what this story may be saying to you, contact me for a free no-strings-attached Clarity Call.

PS. Please subscribe to my weekly letter for the latest on coaching openings, retreats, workshops, free community conversations, and more!

PPS. I’m indebted to Fredrica Harris Thompsett’s We Are Theologians for this beautiful parable.

If you’re a long-time reader and this parable seems familiar, you’re right! This post was originally published several years ago. I’m not sure exactly when. 🙂

Photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash, edited on Canva.

This is it!

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Edvard Munch's The Scream
Don’t let this be you!

Just a reminder to blog subscribers: today’s post is the last one you’ll get in your in-box. As you know if you’ve been reading to the bottom of these posts for the past few months, I’ve been in the process of building my weekly newsletter community. If you haven’t been reading to the bottom of my blog posts, I don’t want you to wonder where the heck I’ve gone.

My weekly letter is where I’m sharing fresh content every week, as well as news you can use — retreats, workshops, classes, coaching opportunities, and events like our monthly Community Conversation on Zoom. A newsletter is simply a more powerful way to serve you, my readers and friends.

I’d love to continue the conversation with you over there. Here’s a link to subscribe. And, of course, if you’re super disciplined and just don’t want another newsletter, you can check back here weekly for my latest holy, healing heresy. Posts will show up here, they just won’t be emailed to you.

Thank you, my friends, for being here. I feel privileged to be given space in your head and heart, and I hope very much to see you on my newsletter subscriber list!

~Barb

Image: Edvard Munch’s The Scream

There’s no such thing as heresy.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

There is no such thing as heresy. “Heresy” is just someone’s opinion. If your spiritual practice hurts your soul, please stop doing it. Let it go.

Thank you, dear readers, for your responses to my story of leaving church. You thanked me for my bravery, saying that now you feel more brave. You shared your own stories of leaving church. Turns out it’s a common story. And you wanted to know more about how to do this work of “deconstructing faith.”

First of all, let’s be very clear. You get to do this work. You have the right to do your own theology. You do not need permission from any external authority to deconstruct a faith that’s not working for you. If your religion is harmful to any part of you, you have permission to tear it down as needed. Not only do you have permission, we all benefit when you do this work.

You have a right and a responsibility, if only to yourself, to do this work – the work of creating a spiritual structure in which you can live in wholeness and integrity. With passion and joy. A faith that shelters and empowers all of you, including your pain and your messiness.  

And you know how to do this work. You just have to remember who you are at your core.

When I was a young girl, my parents took us every Sunday to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Prescott, Arizona. I liked going to church. So, one sunny morning when I was eight or so, I felt inspired to take a Book of Common Prayer to the forest behind our house and have church. This was before my parents divorced, when my still-intact family lived in the house my parents built on a piece of land covered with Ponderosa Pine, manzanita, and granite, bordered on one side by Aspen Creek and on the other by National Forest.

I dutifully set the prayer book on a lectern-shaped piece of lichen-covered granite sheltered by a stand of Gambel Oak, and began to read. Almost instantly the prayer book words became irrelevant, and all I could do was gaze at the sky. Sun and clouds and true blue dream of sky broke in and filled my awareness. No barrier between little girl me and God. Rather than having to be good to earn love, in that moment I knew I was loved because there was only me and Love. No separation.

This memory has never faded. It’s vivid still. But I forgot its meaning and tried valiantly for many years to make myself fit into the church box.

You have experiences like this buried in your memories, too.

You know how to do this work. Remember who you are underneath all the façades you’ve accumulated. Reclaim your original blessing. Recommit to living a life of integrity with your soul.

Here’s a step-by-step way to remember, reclaim, and recommit.

1. Bring to mind an early experience of deep knowing, peace, awe, holiness, oneness, the numinous. This might be a church experience.

2. Inhabit this experience fully. Be in your body as much as you can be. Be that kid again, bathed in joy, resting in peace and belonging.

3. Notice how your body feels. Choose three to five words to describe this feeling. (Mine are “awe, loved, peaceful.”) Put these words everywhere. They’re important.

4. This feeling is your soul’s voice. Listen to it. Follow it. Amplify it.

5. Single voices are beautiful. So are choirs. Share your voice in community, if you choose to, when you’re ready.

Know what you know. Feel what you feel. Say what you mean. Do what you want.

You will find your way. You will create a sanctuary for your soul, and we will all be stronger for the work you’ve done.

PS. I’m planning a series of Zoom conversations in June. More details will be forthcoming in my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here. Thanks!

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

Practice Resurrection: 3 poems

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Woman gardening
Practicing Resurrection

Resurrection is a discipline. We live in a Good Friday world – patriarchal, consumerist, capitalist, colonialist. This world needs our Easter selves – hopeful, irrational, bursting out of the tomb, aspiring to love and kindness. Here are three poems to support you in your practice of resurrection.

Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You’ve been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.

Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.

Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also, like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

Mary Oliver, from The Leaf and the Cloud

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn anything or anyone

who does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

David Whyte from The House of Belonging

Photo by Zoe Schaeffer on Unsplash

The Dip is coming. Are you ready?

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Pilgrims leaving St. Jean Pied de Port on the Camino de Santiago

These pilgrims are on the first day of their Camino. They think this is the hardest day. They think that if they can do this ridiculously grueling day, they’ll be in good shape. They’re almost certainly wrong.

The first day of the Camino de Santiago Francés is about 15 miles long, an average day on the Camino. That’s hard enough for new pilgrims. What makes it especially hard is the vertical gain followed by an equally steep downhill, over the Pyrenees from France into Spain.

My husband and I walked the Camino’s 500 miles across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in 37 days, averaging 13 miles daily. As many pilgrims do, we started our Camino in St. Jean Pied de Port at the foot of the French Pyrenees. We walked up and up and up and up, all day, to Col de Lepoeder, the top of the pass through the Pyrenees, a vertical gain of more than a mile, then down the other side.

Jed and I, being Oregonians and used to mountains, didn’t find the uphill particularly difficult. It was the downhill that got me. By the time we arrived at the Roncesvalles albergue (albergues are special hostels for pilgrims in Spain), my feet and ankles were in agony. I took off my boots to find bumps, bruises, and blisters that persisted for the entire 37 days we walked, and for months after.

Some pilgrims choose to skip this traditional hazing ritual, and start instead in Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. (Or in Pamplona, as the heroine of my novel does.)

I knew the first day would be hard. I knew what to expect. I thought that making it across the Pyrenees in one (admittedly bruised and battered) piece meant I had this thing licked and it was all smooth sailing from here. I was definitely wrong.

Why?

It’s a thing Seth Godin calls “the Dip” in his book of the same name. Teachers call it the “messy middle.” Wayfinder Life Coaches know it as “Square Three.”

The basic principle is this: anything worth doing becomes muddled and hard at some point. This is “the Dip.” There comes a point where the first blush of enthusiasm has worn off, the goal is still a very long way ahead, and the journey becomes a slog. This is when people quit.

Let me say that again: any important goal, anything worth doing—education, relationships, parenthood, your dream job, learning to play the guitar, walking 500 miles across Spain—gets hard at some point.

The first day of the Camino was ridiculous. The first week continued to be physically gruelling, but walking The Way of St. James was still fresh, new, and interesting. I still felt enthusiastic about this bananas thing we were doing.

But Day 10? Well. By then I was tired of suffering for no apparent purpose. Tired of sleeping in communal dorms and washing in communal showers and walking on bruised and blistered feet for miles every day. I had lost my enthusiasm.

Most pilgrims who quit the Camino don’t do it in the first week. No. They quit in the middle. They hit the Dip and they don’t have the resources to keep going. (This is why the Camino is a pilgrimage, not just a nice walk in the Spanish countryside. You meet yourself—who you really are and what you really want—on the Camino.)

The Dip is when you decide if this thing you committed to doing is really something you want to do. The Dip is when you choose, or not, to keep putting one foot in front of the other because the destination waiting for you at the other end is so amazing that it’s worth this suffering.

The Camino de Santiago Francés is 500 miles long. Most pilgrims take 30 to 40 days. That leaves a long time in the middle where it really is just putting one foot in front of the other, because Santiago is still hundreds of miles down a very dusty road.

The goal seems unreachable. What you’re doing seems loco. I mean, come on. Really? Walking somewhere when you could drive it in one really long day? What’s up with that? It’s crazy. You’re tired. You’re dirty. You’re sore. It’s just not a rational thing to do.

Many of the things we deeply want to do aren’t rational.

The Dip is real. Know it’s coming. Expect it. Prepare for it. Make a plan to navigate it. If you know you don’t have the resources to get through the Dip, don’t start.

This is the choice I had to make. Walking the Camino for Jed wasn’t going to cut it. I had to do it for me, or not do it at all. I had to walk my own walk, or not walk at all. I was going to end up hating my husband if I continued suffering for him. I had to choose the Dip. I had to commit to MY Camino. I had to say, “I’m doing this, for me.”

What got me through the Dip? My husband’s dogged determination. Companions on the Way. The hard-core mystical energy of a path that’s been trodden by prayerful, strong people for a thousand years. My coaching skills and practice working with my thoughts. Walking one day at a time and celebrating my progress, slow as it felt. Marking intermediate milestones: Pamplona, Burgos, León, El Cruz de Ferro, every mountain pass. Two experiences of the Holy that told me I was where I needed to be.

Is there something you want to do? Be ready for the Dip. Plan for it. Assess your resources and marshal your reserves. Ask for help navigating the Dip. If that help might be me, check out my new “Get Your Thing Done” coaching package here. I’d love to connect.  

PS. If you’ve read this far, you’re a dedicated blog-follower. I’d love it if you’d subscribe to my newsletter, which will soon replace this blog completely.

Photo credit: Jed Holdorph, 6 May 2014

Four healing shifts and a simple awareness practice.

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Sun shining through fingers

I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.” 

  1. More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations. 
  2. More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
  3. More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often. 
  4. More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.” 

Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.

Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.

Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.

My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable. 

Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.

1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet.
2. Scan your body for sensations.
3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are.
4. Sit with yourself for two minutes. 

Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.

That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive. 

Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.

You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.

All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.

I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback. 

I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you! 

PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!

Photo credit: Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

This could change your life. I’m not kidding.

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In every situation you encounter, you choose to behave as either a victim or a creator. Which orientation you’re operating out of makes all the difference in how your life feels and looks, and the impact you have on the world around you. Once you see this difference, you can consciously choose to act from a place of empowerment. This is the basic idea of David Emerald’s TED: The Empowerment Dynamic, a cheesy yet profound book. I’m finding this concept mind-blowing and incredibly helpful.

Like many of you, I’ve known about the Drama Triangle—composed of victim, persecutor, and rescuer—for decades. But the antidote to it, the “Empowerment Triangle,” is a new idea for me.

I feel like I’ve discovered the secret of life, the Rosetta Stone, the key to personal and organizational growth and health.

Most of us, most of the time, are living as victims. This is completely understandable. Our culture is a victim culture. We’re taught victimhood from our cradles. We’re steeped in it. We swim in it like water. We’re mostly unaware that we’re approaching our life and our choices as victims. This Drama Triangle feels completely natural.

An alternative triangle, what Emerald calls the “Empowerment Dynamic,” is composed of a creator, a challenger, and a coach. To grow up is to become aware of where we’re living as victims and to choose to take on the creator role. To grow up is to see that we’re always making a choice. This is scary as hell, sure, but it’s also why we’re here.

When we behave as victims, we approach our life as a series of problems to be solved. Viewing life as a problem creates anxiety, which causes us to act in ways that reduce the anxiety but almost certainly don’t solve the problem. And the cycle starts all over again. Not much changes.

Creators, on the other hand, develop clarity on what they want to see happen in a particular area of concern. Clarity leads to passion and motivation, which creators then harness to move toward their desired outcome or vision. Creators change themselves and thereby the world, if they choose to.

When you’re feeling frustrated, stuck, and powerless, you’re in victim mode. When you blame others for your feelings and criticize yourself and them, you’re in victim mode. When nothing changes and you really wish it would, you’re in victim mode. When other people aren’t doing what they should and you’re sick and tired of it, you’re in victim mode.

Conversely, when you’re energized, focused, and open to surprise, when you’re making choices that move you toward what you want to see happen, when your boundaries are firm and you’re in charge of your time, you’re acting as a creator.

How do you make the shift from victim to creator? Realize that you’re always, always, always making a choice. Even if you’re truly a prisoner and you can’t actually make decisions about your actions, you’re still in charge of your thoughts, and thereby your feelings.

If Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl can be responsible for his attitude while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, we can learn to be responsible for ours. Frankl famously said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

If you’re curious about how this shift feels, you could choose to try this exercise:

  • Bring to mind an area of your life where you feel stuck, frustrated, and powerless to change the situation. This might be your marriage, your job, your aging body, COVID, or political polarization in the US. (Many of my clients feel the most frustration with their marriage.)
  • What do you see as the problem? (For many of my clients, their perceived problem is that they crave growth and change, and their husbands or wives seem to want to stay the same. This disparity causes my clients to feel afraid that if they choose to change and grow, their marriage will end.)
  • In this scenario, who’s the victim? Who’s the persecutor? Who do you expect to rescue you? Do these roles seem to change?
  • Now, ask yourself what you want to happen. What’s your vision for this area of your life? What’s the outcome you desire? Take time to get as clear as you can. Your clarity will be your motivation.
  • What’s one tiny step you can take in the direction of your desired outcome or vision? If it’s doable right now, go do it. I’ll wait. If it’s truly not, make a plan to take that step.
  • Check in with your body. How do you feel now? Do you still feel stuck and frustrated? Or do you feel more energized, compassionate, and empowered?
  • If you’re feeling more open and enthusiastic, pat yourself on the back! You’re making the shift from victim to creator.
  • If not, please know that’s okay. This work may be simple, but it’s often not easy. Celebrate your new awareness and give yourself compassion. There are many reasons, some of them very good reasons, why we choose not to change.

Questions? Want to go deeper? Contact me to schedule a free no-obligation conversation. I’d love to talk!

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons