Allowing Space for Heaviness and Lightness

Even on days heavy with grief, there are reminders that there is more than grief…

Today I went walking.

Six feathers met me at different points on the path of my meandering.

One sweet, small, delicate feather floated from the sky into my hand.

Seven total.

Bright flowers presented their beauty.

Bees did what bees do, ensuring that the flowers will bloom again, that sweetness will continue to exist in our world.

Seven collected feathers felt like too many to carry away.

What if someone else needed their light reminders of divine presence? We are not alone.

What if someone else needed to remember that freedom and joy are possible? Rising in lightness is within reach, if not in this moment, in another.

I left four feathers in simple formation.

I carried three away.

I suspect that these three will pass from my hands to someone else’s when it is time.

~~~

Feeling the grief is important. Allowing ourselves support to do so- from humans, Spirit, any light-filled source- is also important.

However you are moving through this day and this day is moving through you, I hope that your needs are met in expansive and beautiful ways. I hope you feel the love that surrounds you and the love that lives within you.

Women Claiming Our Wisdom: Reimagining Ourselves

I've been reading Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser and participating in a book study through Spirit of Sophia.

Throughout the book, Lesser invites us to examine stories, particularly the stories about women: the stories we're told and the stories that go untold, or get buried, denied, disparaged. She discusses how the women's stories we know often come to us filtered through a male lens, rather than through women themselves. She notes that in dominant culture "masculine" qualities and expressions of power are valued more than "feminine" qualities and expressions of power (or empowerment, since for some of us the word "power" is so linked to its ugly expressions that we don't want to claim it).

She encourages us to tell a multiplicity of stories from a multiplicity of viewpoints, to honor a multiplicity of expressions and contributions, rather than favoring what is considered masculine over what is considered feminine. She encourages us to think more expansively, to reimagine how we think about and participate in our families, our workplaces, our communities, our world. She notes that denying, ignoring, and skewing women's stories (and the full expression of men's stories, too, to be honest) has not served us well. None of us are whole until all of us are whole in this interconnected world. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Earlier this month I participated in a weeklong art class at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. The class focused on drawing and collage and stretched me artistically and personally. During the class, I became aware of ways I've limited my artistic practices and I was so grateful to the teacher who encouraged us to practice and to experiment and experiment and experiment as she gave us ideas of things to try. She reminded us of a mantra I've delivered to others many times: Never a failure, always a lesson. The things that go "wrong" are opportunities to learn from. I was also grateful for my classmates as we shared affirmations, ideas, and questions with each other in a beautifully collaborative way.

In my compassionate communication work, I so often tell people "It's all practice. It's all experiment. Curiosity is our primary tool." Before taking the art class I thought I was practicing what I preached well. The truth is that in some areas of life I am practicing well. In other areas I still need the reminders our teacher gave.

Learning often isn't across-the-board or linear. In one context I may practice my compassionate communication skills the way I aspire to and in another struggle to do so. I may have integrated some learning well in communicating, but not in art-making. The deep learning happens spirals. We cycle through lessons over and over, going deeper and integrating more fully as we encounter (not-always-welcome) opportunities to learn anew.

Approach with curiosity.

Practice.

Experiment.

Recognize the learning, sometimes with celebration, sometimes with mourning.

Repeat.

And do it all with other people if you can.

Though some of our work is solo work, it is more easily done with others. It's helpful to have co-journeyers who can offer affirmations, ideas, and questions, and simply to remind us that we’re not alone. Together we can witness wisdom, experience, and truth in and through ourselves and one another. Together we can shed limiting stories and ways, so that together we can imagine in expansive ways what is possible within us, among us, and around us.

This is why I created my 12-week program Reimagining ME: Mindful Explorations and offered it for the first time in early 2021. This is why I am so excited to offer it a second time. This is why, if you are a woman, I hope you'll join me as we dive or gently step (you get to decide which!) into ourselves in order to rediscover forgotten, lost and cut-off parts and reclaim our wisdom.

Our stories are needed.

Our voices are needs.

Our joy is needed.

Our imagination is needed.

Our conscious mending of interconnection is needed in our fractured world.

This 12-week program starts on September 13. Early bird rates are available through August 31.

To learn more about the program, a partial description is below. For the full description, visit the webpage. If you have questions, please reach out to me at cory@corylockhart.com or schedule a phone call.

Whether this program is or isn't for you, if you know of others who would benefit, please share this information with them! Thank you so much.

Blessings,
Cory

Spiders in the Shower

I originally wrote this piece in late July or early August of 2014 (I don’t know the exact date) . The blog where I posted it then no longer exists. Given the current goings-on in Israel-Palestine, it feels important to share these words again.

I keep thinking about the spiders in the shower. The first morning I was at Cedars of Peace in my hermitage cabin set back in the woods, I opened the shower curtain to see a daddy long legs who had inhabited a  low corner of the shower stall. The next morning three spiders had taken up residence. One was hanging with the first spider on the wall opposite the shower head. The other had spun a web in the corner below the shower head.

I chose not to deliberately disturb them (perhaps due to a recent spider massacre via vacuum cleaner I'd carried out in my home), nor did I protect them. One of the new long-leggers was positioned in the line of fire of the water. The other received blows from the water dripping down. Each was pelted beyond their defenses. Each died.

Those spiders have been on my mind all week. I think of them as I hear the rising death toll from Gaza (among other places, but Gaza is closest to my heart) and see pictures of bodies, some living, some lifeless, all brutalized.

I think of my occupation of what had been spider territory. Despite my infringement, I suffered no harm. I'm not sure if I did any harm to the one spider who lived. Did I destroy his home? Perhaps. I couldn't actually see the web. Did I block him from leaving the shower? No. Did I control his access to food? No. This makes me a gentler occupier than Israel (at least until the killing). This year Israel has destroyed 329 Palestinian structures and has demolition orders for many more. I don't believe that number includes the mass destruction going on in Gaza right now. Israel controls what goes in and out of Gaza and the West Bank. That includes food, supplies, and Palestinians. Israel has power over the coming and going of other folks, too, but their control is strongest over Palestinians, who cannot leave Gaza or the West Bank without a permit from Israel and even with the permit, they may be denied at the checkpoint. Many times I've heard the words "open-air prison" used to describe Palestine, and especially to describe Gaza. I've been hearing that in the last 12 days, Israel sometimes gives a warning to Gazans to evacuate an area before they begin bombing or shooting. Gaza is 139 square miles. There aren't too many places to go to escape the violence. Leaving Gaza is not an option.

I think of the power I have solely because I, compared to a daddy long legs, am pretty massive and forceful. I could have easily smashed a spider between my fingers, though I consider myself too civilized to do so. Thanks in part to the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. gives each year, Israel is a mighty power, far, far mightier than any Hamas militants and certainly more powerfully violent than the women and children who are trying to live but instead are dying at the hands of Israeli soldiers. Israel is obliterating any Gazan it chooses.

I think of my easy dissociation from the death of these other creatures of God - it wasn't deliberate, after all - and wonder if it is so easy for Israeli soldiers and Hamas fighters. Was it so easy earlier today for Israeli soldiers to kill a man who, accompanied by international human rights workers, was looking for his family in a bombed out area? They shot him four times, while the others looked on, because otherwise they, too, might be killed. What about the four children on the beach a few days ago?  Or the other 300+ Gazans, many of whom were civilians? Collateral damage, that's all those people are, right? What about the few Israeli soldiers and 2 civilians who have been killed? How easy is it to kill someone, and someone else, and maybe more? How easy is it to recognize a common humanity among all people after doing so? How easy is it to feel one's own humanity after killing a person?

My heart is sick.  It is sick for those who have died. It is sick for those who have fallen into beliefs that make them want to kill or hurt. It is sick for my Palestinian friends who are grieving. One of my former students wrote to me today, "Even the weather was sad."

And so I pray. And so I stand on a street corner in protest and on another in vigil as the names of the deceased Gazans are read...age 6 months, age 75, age 17, age 22, age unknown... And I remember the spiders and the power I have to destroy the life and dignity of God's creation and the power I have to defend it. God help me to choose life, especially human life, and to defend it, even with my own. Always.