Category Archives: Women at Midlife

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.

Three more ways crappy theology causes suffering.

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Open gate leading to sun-filled meadow

Last week I wrote about three ways I see crappy theology cause suffering for my clients. These lies, taught to us by (usually) well-meaning people, are in there so deep we don’t recognize them as made-up ideas that just aren’t true.

We know they’re not true because they cause us to suffer.

In case you missed it, here are the first three lies.

Lie #1: Jesus died for your sins. On the contrary, God and Jesus aren’t concerned about how you in your wickedness are breaking their rules. What they are concerned about is how much you love yourself, each other, and the world. The only sin is failing to love.

Lie #2: God despises the world and “things of the flesh.” On the contrary, God IS the world. The world is made of God. As the bumper sticker puts it: The Earth is my church. My body is the altar.

Lie #3: God has a plan for your life, and your job is to figure it out and follow it. On the contrary, Creator God is always at work, and all She wants from you is to be the fullest version of yourself you can be, right now, at this moment.

Three more lies:

Lie #4: You need to be perfect, as God is perfect.  On the contrary, beloved, God wants you to be yourself in all your miraculous messiness. God loves your messiness.

The word translated as “perfect” in many versions of the Bible (Matthew 5:48) would be better translated as “whole.” (I like Eugene Peterson’s rendering in The Message: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”)

Being human is messy and unpredictable, and you’re making yourself crazy and miserable when you try to be perfect. As Anne Lamott says: “Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life ….” Be whole instead, beloved. Be whole.

Lie #5: Following your heart and your desires is evil, and being “selfish” is bad. On the contrary, beloved, your desires are holy and necessary. God wants you to want what you want.

When we believe that wanting something is bad, we fight against ourselves and our deepest longings. Instead of honoring our soul’s yearnings, we talk ourselves out of them and we lose ourselves in the process. This is an especially insidious one for women, who are expected to be the caretakers of the world while staffing bake sales, cleaning toilets, and never ever saying NO. (I am NOT saying to act out every desire you have. What I am saying is that every desire has wisdom for you. Honor that wisdom. Listen for it.)

It’s a cliché, I know, and it’s still true: Put on your own oxygen mask first. Only then will you be full enough to give when it’s your turn to give.

Lie #6: God is outside of you, “up there” somewhere, separate from this messy world and its pain. On the contrary, beloved, God is Mother, here with us.

God is not “the man upstairs” or the spirit in the sky. God is not our Father in Heaven. 

When we believe this lie, we make the disembodied sacred and the bodied profane. We make spirit good and flesh bad. We then look outside ourselves for guidance and answers, and we avoid our adult responsibility to listen for the Wisdom within. We’re incapable of giving our gifts freely, because we’ve forgotten who we are.

God your Mother inhabits your everyday moments. She is as common as dirt. And She loves your body like a mother.

Oh, my beloveds. These lies cause so much suffering. They leave us contorted and stuck and so self-critical we’re paralyzed with shame and self-loathing.

You can feel their destructive power when you hold them in your body. Try saying one lie and notice how your body feels. Now say the truth (use my “On the contrary … “ formulation or your own words) and notice how your body feels. Lies cause suffering. Can you feel how you stop suffering when you disbelieve the lies causing you to suffer?

Beloved, you are not called to suffer. Being human on Earth is full of pain. Being human on Earth is full of joy, too.

Please take your suffering seriously. Look underneath your suffering and find the crappy theology causing it. We can do that together if you want to.

Heal crappy theology and you heal yourself.

We need you whole, healthy, and healed. We need you telling the truth. We need you raising your voice in the wilderness so we can find each other.

PS. A deep bow of gratitude to you voices in the wilderness who joined our inaugural Community Conversation on June 17. We were witnesses for each other’s pain and joy, and we formed deep community almost from the first moment. I’m so grateful to meet you “face to face,” and look forward to our next gathering on Tuesday, July 13, at 2:00 pm Pacific. Newsletter subscribers will get the Zoom link the day before. Missed the first one? No worries. You can join anytime.

PPS. I’ll be sending emails only to my weekly letter list beginning on July 1st. Email subscribers will get new content, current offerings, and notifications of upcoming events delivered straight to their inbox. You can subscribe here, and thanks!

Photo by Nikola Knezevic on Unsplash

When your Yes becomes No

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Woman sitting on a rocky beach

Do you want to say No to people, situations, and commitments that used to be Yes? You’re not alone. This is a common theme with my clients, especially as we re-emerge from Covid.

These “used to be Yes” items run the gamut from the immense – a marriage, at least in its current form – to the seemingly small – dropping out of a small group or unsubscribing from an email list.     

Why is it so hard for women to honor their new No?

Here are two stuck spots my clients experience. A third, women and our discomfort with our power, is a subject for another newsletter!

1. You feel afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Fear of hurting someone’s feelings is actually just avoiding conflict. Underneath the avoidance of conflict is the belief that your own desires and priorities aren’t as important as the perceived desires and priorities of the person whose feelings you’re afraid of hurting. And this belief you have, that your desires and priorities aren’t as important as other people’s desires and priorities, is bullshit perpetrated on you and other women by the patriarchy. (See last week’s newsletter for more about trusting your desires.)

2. You feel afraid of the emptiness and openness created when, not knowing what might emerge to take its place, you honor your No. This fear of unknowing, of emptiness and openness, is actually the belief that you can’t trust yourself, your desires and your priorities. And your lack of trust in yourself is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s nature and your connection to It.

We’ve been trained to believe in a linear, patriarchal, masculine, capitalist model that we’re one and done. That the goal of life is to figure out what we’re supposed to do, go do it, and then maintain this state, kicking and screaming if necessary, until we die. That there’s one correct answer and our job is to figure it out. Get it right or die trying.

This false, toxic model underlies that question we ask kids: What do you want to be when you grow up?

This false, toxic model also underlies the questions we ask ourselves as adults: What’s my purpose? What’s my calling? Who did God create me to be?

Beloved, this is NOT how Creator works. The God who is constantly making all things new asks us very different questions: Who am I called to be right now? How can I respond most fully and joyfully to this moment?

The answers to those questions almost certainly aren’t what they were ten years ago, ten days ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Creation and the force continually creating it, aka God, is always birthing, dying, and being reborn. Always. As members of that matrix, inextricably entwined in this holy cycle, we are born, we die, and we are born again. Over and over and over.

No is as holy and as necessary as Yes, when your No is rooted in your soul. Listen to your No. Trust your knowing. Trust your desires. Trust God to be at work in you, continually creating you, continually making you new.

PS. I share news, dates for upcoming free Zoom conversations (our first one is June 17th!), and coaching opportunities through my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here.

Photo by The Humantra on Unsplash

Why don’t you trust your desires?

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I’m sharing a sister coach’s writing today. This is Karen “KJ Sassypants” Hawkwood, from 2018. KJ expresses beautifully and cogently the fourth healing shift I teach my clients: More Creator, Less Victim. I hope you enjoy KJ’s take on trusting our desires.

“I think we have created a crisis of agency. I could say a LOT about this (and probably will over time) because there are so many angles to it, but that’s what they add up to.

We. Do. Not. Trust. Our. Own. Desires. Much less our ability and right to ACT on those desires.

(If you were socialized as a female being, this is times eleventy-billion.)

Among one of these angles, I’ve become increasingly troubled by the spiritual approaches that essentially advocate for “total surrender” (to whatever/Whoever.)

The premise for this seems to be that anything we try to do for ourselves is “just ego” or “just selfishness,” etc., and therefore is to be 100% distrusted and dismissed.

Instead, we’re supposed to let “God(s)” or “the Universe” or “our guides” or [whatever] tell us what to do. How to live our lives. How to make our choices.

This bothers me because I’ve finally realized it’s the stance of a child. *We* can’t be trusted, *we* clearly don’t make good decisions, *we* are adrift and misguided, so someone/something else is going to have to take the wheel.

It’s also a reflection of the OBSESSION we have – especially in modern Westernized cultures – with NEVER MAKING MISTAKES. Never getting it wrong.

Whatever “mistake” or “wrong” actually means. But even when we don’t know what it means we fear it with sweaty, trembling, vomitous terror.

Believe me, I know what it feels like to make choices that have turned me pale green when I look back on them. I know what it feels like to choose from fear, from insecurity, from desperation, from the greed that layers like mold over all those things.

But to have that shatter our trust in ourselves, so that we have to shamefully hand over the reins of our lives to ANY other force that we believe somehow won’t do that?

I’m really not OK with that anymore.

Since surely someone will bring this up, I’m also obviously (I hope anyway) not advocating for the just-as-shitty mirror image – the patriarchal, white, capitalist, Western attitude that “I am the captain of my destiny and all before me is mine for the taking.”

I don’t think I have to say more about why that’s a problem.

But we’ve gone too far in the other direction. And that’s becoming just as much of a problem, in my eyes.

My teacher’s work has influenced me strongly on this, and he talks about moving through life as an “active participant” – and further, approaching life as a process of “call and response.”

I find this stance, this footing, to be FAR more alive, more generative, more effective, and just more *real* than this “leaf on a stream” thing.

I think most of us are scared absolutely shitless of what would happen if we actually OWNED what we WANT and set about bringing it forth, all the while paying careful and wise attention to the conversation with All That Is. We’re so terrified of our own strength, our own clarity, our own potency that it’s easier to just skip all that and believe we can’t trust ourselves.

Our job is to call, and then listen for the response, and *decide for ourselves* what we want to do in turn. But we need to CALL, not whisper, not whimper or beg or tentatively see if it might be OK if. And then we need to stay standing up straight to hear the answer, even if we don’t at all like what we hear, and then call again. And we need to not take that response as a Command From On High or Infallible Guidance From Somewhere That Knows Better Than Us.

And we need to understand the interlocking truths that: 1) this does NOT mean we will not faceplant, sometimes horrifically, and 2) those faceplants do not mean we cannot trust ourselves or give us an excuse to abdicate our own sovereignty.

What would it look like to move through Life as an EQUAL to it?”

PS. I’m shifting my coaching updates and news to my newsletter. Subscribe here for current writing, events, and offerings.

Photo by Amauri Mejía on Unsplash

Deconstruction 101

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Open hands holding a yellow daisy

What exactly is this thing we’re calling “deconstruction”? And, if you choose to deconstruct your faith, how exactly do you do it? These are the questions I’m asking right now, mainly because you’ve been asking them of me.

“Deconstruction” implies that the thing we’re taking apart was constructed at some time by some one. The thing we’re deconstructing wasn’t delivered whole and entire in one piece from on high. Someone made it up. Someone built it.

We usually think of deconstruction as demolishing. That when we’ve taken something apart, all we’ll be left with is a pile of rubble. If we’re feeling anger toward the thing, that demolition might feel really good. But what many of us are feeling when we think about deconstructing our faith, along with a little or a lot of anger, are grief and fear. If I take this thing apart, what will I be left with to shelter me? And what about the parts of it I love and that do nurture me? If I blow the thing up, those pieces are smashed to smithereens.

Deconstruction can be thoughtful and nonviolent, if we choose to do it that way. Deconstruction can honor your history, your tender heart, and your anger.

Why take our faith apart? To get to the deep structure. The Ground of Being. The unconditional. The treasure beneath all the religious trappings.

Here’s how I’m currently deconstructing my faith:

1. Let the structure fall down. Let it go. Stop spending valuable energy propping up what needs to be allowed to fall. You have more important work to do. Make the decision to tear it down.

2. Collect the pieces in a pile. Cover them with a tarp and walk away for awhile. Wander into the closest wildflower meadow, maybe. Lie back and watch the clouds. Put your feet in the nearest creek.

3. When you’re ready, sift through the pieces for usable and beautiful remnants. Hold each piece in your hands and feel your body’s truth. Keep only what makes you feel open and free.

Jesus is a keeper, for me. His essence, his stories, his life and his death – these are all life-giving for me. I’m keeping the mystics – Hildegard, Julian, Margery, Claire and Francis, Meister Eckhart. I’ll keep Harriet Tubman and Oscar Romero. I’ll keep the Beguines, abolitionists, and Catholic Workers. I’m keeping all the preschools, soup kitchens, and twelve-step groups in church basements. I’ll keep English cathedral organs and choirs. I’m keeping cloisters, too.

But “sin” I’m letting go. The masculine god “up there,” separate from Earth? I’m letting Him go, too. The rules about who’s in and who’s out? Nope.

This isn’t a rational process. It’s more like the KonMari method for deciding what to keep and what to let go of: “Does this spark joy?” If not, out it goes.

4. Take your time rebuilding. You have time. Let this emptiness be a gift. It’s okay to be unsheltered for a while. Receive the “gift of the goo,” as one client put it recently. This is where finding your community can be incredibly helpful. Feeling unsheltered is scary. It helps to have friends out here in this empty place.

You may find that you use very little from your former shelter. You may find that you need to move completely and start over from bare Earth. You may find that you’re mostly good where you are, and that just a few tweaks are necessary. I know and love many Christians who are perfectly content living in the shelter of the traditional church.

I’m also hearing from more and more people who are simply no longer willing to tolerate the church’s refusal to listen and change. Your stories of leaving church are heart-breaking, and your courageous walks into the empty spaces in search of a nurturing, whole faith are inspiring.

By doing this process, you’ll be able to identify what’s healthy and healing for you because it sparks joy, and what makes your body feel awful and you won’t tolerate it anymore.

Why deconstruct? To return to the Source, the Living Water.

PS. I’m sharing current happenings and coaching opportunities in my newsletter, including upcoming free Zoom conversations. You can subscribe here. Thanks!

Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash

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

It’s scary to make changes others don’t like.

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Breaching whale

“The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.”

Last week I got a little more real about what living from soul rather than façade is looking like for me, boots on the ground. I told you that I’ve quit church, and how my brain is afraid that some of my Episcopal priest husband’s parishioners will be angry with me.

It’s scary to make changes that others don’t like.

So how do we do this hard thing? How do we resist the “change back attacks,” as Martha Beck calls them, that will inevitably follow when we make real change? Change that threatens the status quo. Change that rocks the family boat. Change that makes other people feel judged and defensive.***

Here are some suggestions, most inspired by Martha’s new book, The Way of Integrity.  

1. Remember that your body, being wordless, cannot lie. Imagine staying with the status quo, capitulating to the change back attack. Now imagine living your truth. Which feels better in your body?

2. If living from your soul, living your life based on your truth, feels better, ask yourself: “Why would I make choices that feel bad to me?” Then really listen to your brain’s responses. Question the truth of the thoughts causing you to suffer.

3. Know your values. When the going gets rough, when the grief hits, when loved ones and even strangers tell you to stop it already, know why you’re doing this hard thing. Write those values and put them where you’ll see them often. Make them part of your morning ritual. Do what you need to do to ground yourself in your values.

4. Create a mission statement to remind you of your intention and your values. Short is best. Strive for two or three words.

5. Make 1% shifts toward soul. Small shifts add up over time.

6. You can always choose to maintain the outward status quo. This is a perfectly valid choice. If you choose this course of action, you must always tell yourself the truth. You don’t have to make any outward changes at all, as long as you stop lying to yourself, and you intentionally choose incongruency between inner truth and outer life. Be warned, though. This is a costly choice to make. Incongruence will inevitably drain your energy and affect your wellbeing.  

7. Find your community. Despite your brain’s message that if you make changes others don’t like you’ll die alone on the savannah, your community exists. You find your community when you speak authentically.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks to this phenomenon in Women Who Run With the Wolves when she quotes poet Charles Simic (pronouns changed): “She who cannot howl, will not find her pack.”

And from Sue Monk Kidd, in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her memoir exploring her spiritual journey from evangelical Christianity (façade) to the sacred feminine (soul):

“The reason I went ahead and wrote this book is difficult to express, so I will try to explain it this way. While I was writing it, a nature show came on television, a special about whales. I watched them on the screen as they flung themselves out of the sea, arced into the air, then fell back into the water. The behavior, the narrator said, is called breaching. He also said it may be the whales’ way of communicating when the seas get high and wild. He speculated it was a tracking system for rough weather, some kind of urgent and powerful ballet that allowed the whales to follow one another’s vibrations and not get lost. With each lunge, the whales marked their course, letting the others know where they were.

I thought to myself that women must have the whale’s instinct. When we set out on a woman’s journey, we are often swimming a high and unruly sea, and we seem to know that the important thing is to swim together—to send out our vibrations, our stories, so no one gets lost. I realized that writing my book was an act of breaching. I hoped my story might help you find or keep your bearings or encourage you to send out your own vibrations.”  

May we swim together, my sisters. May we show each other the way. May we be courage and inspiration and support for each other as we navigate this wild ocean of soul-based living and loving.

***Your actions, of course, don’t make others feel anything. It’s their thoughts about your actions that cause their feelings. You are not in charge of other people’s feelings. Just so we’re clear.

PS. Have you subscribed to my weekly newsletter? That’s where I’m sharing more about what I’m up to with coaching, writing, and workshops. It’s also where I’m inviting you to tell me what you’d like to hear more about. Come on over!

Photo by Todd Cravens on Unsplash