If I Asked You To Name All the Things You Love...

Cory looks up, to the camera, hand on heart. The words “If I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself?” are in the top right of the image. Photo credit: Natosha Via

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've been thinking about the words in the image above for a few days now:

If I asked you to name all the things you love, how long would it take for you to name yourself? *

If you're like me, the answer is... I don't know how long it would take...depends on the day, hour, minute. I am practicing the art of self-love and self-compassion. It is, like so many things I write, talk, and teach about, a creative practice, an ongoing experiment.

A week ago I was in the third Zoom session of a class to learn a sequence of yoga moves. Before the class, I had had another Zoom meeting, then rushed out to run an errand, and rushed back home for the class. I was wearing jeans that were a little too tight, not ideal for a yoga class, but didn't have time to change if I wanted to arrive on time.

As we started the class with meditation, my mind was still rushing. I noticed my too tight pants. I was a little hungry. I hoped that my cats would come near me for a pet as I saw a few other people's cats do on the screen. I felt the cold air around me in my old and breezy house, as well as the heat of my nearby space heater that I couldn't get positioned quite right. You can probably guess that this was not my most focused meditation.

We finished the meditation and were invited to ask questions about the practice. This was when my bad student tape kicked in. I hadn't watched the previous week's recording and though I had practiced the sequence, I hadn't done so daily as we were encouraged to do. There was no way in hell I was going to admit these grave transgressions. If I didn't ask questions, no one would know just how bad of a student I was.

After a few people asked questions, there was new content teaching and then it was time to practice. I had made it through the first part without anyone finding me out!

Except that this week before doing the sequence we were going to start with the optional prostrations.

Oh, s**t. I had never done the prostrations. I could only guess that they'd been taught in the second class, so since I hadn't watched the recording yet, I hadn't learned them. Maybe I could figure them out by trying to watch while we were moving through them.

Other people's cameras were not positioned in a way that I could see the whole flow of the prostration. I was caught, fully visible on camera, being recorded in my fumbling! I tried to fake my way through and was relieved when we finished and were moving to the safe territory of the familiar sequence.

Then twice as we were going through each part of the sequence, someone helping the primary teacher offered a couple of posture corrections. The person made general statements, not directed at any one person, but I was certain she was talking to me. Caught again!

We finished the sequence and went into a closing meditation. Finally, in those last minutes of class I calmed down, sank into my body, and felt relieved that I had made it through my epic failure.

I write this story now with a smile on my face. On Wednesday I talked to my friend who teaches the class. She said that though she was trying to keep an eye on everyone (I think there are 12 of us), she hadn't noticed that I was struggling. I laughed as I told her that that meant I had done my fake-out well, because I hadn't wanted anyone to see I didn't know what I was doing!

Though that class experience wasn't my favorite, I am incredibly grateful to have had that hour of discomfort. It reminded me of the vulnerability of being a student, of learning something new, and opened my heart wider to the people I work with and how they (some of you) might feel sometimes because an old tape starts playing about the kind of student or person they (you?) are. It reminded me that the best place to start, the only place we can start, is right where we are. It reminded me that the best way to learn is not by pretending that we know something we don't, but by asking questions.

My friend's care when we spoke a couple of days after the class reminded me that I don't have to be the perfect student (whatever that even means) for someone to love me. I don't have to be the perfect anything for someone to love me or for me to love myself. I also know that I want to keep learning, keeping one foot on the ground of humility and placing the other in the sea of self-compassion.

With these things in mind I choose today to name myself, to put myself high on the list of what I love, who I love. My wish for you on this Valentine's Day is that you, too, name yourself as a beloved, placing yourself high on your love list.

*I only noticed my typo (D missing in “would”) after publishing this. I decided to leave it, a choice to love myself even when I misspell a word.)
~~~

If you are a woman, one way you might put yourself high on your love list is by joining Reimagining ME:Mindful Explorations, which starts a week from tomorrow- Tuesday 2/22/22! At its core the program encourages us to practice connecting with ourselves, both with humility and the deepest of self-compassion, to re-member who we are - unique, beautiful, irreplaceable beings in a web of Interbeing with one another. This program brings together practices of Compassionate Communication, creativity, and body awareness. I was going to close the registration today, but am keeping it open. If you're not quite sure and want to try a session before committing, you can register for the first session a la carte.

Moving Toward Wholeness

A couple of weeks ago I started telling a story, How I Got My Wings. I later posted Part 2 and Part 3. This story, which begins when I found a dead cardinal in November 2020, isn't finished yet, but the part I felt most hesitant to share beyond a select group of people is out in the world now. A friend who has encouraged me to share the story has also been lovingly teasing me, "Now when people see dead birds, they're going to think of you" or "Now when people think of you, they're going to think, 'Oh, yeah, that's the dead bird lady!'" Both thoughts make me giggle.

Since I put the story out there, two people have told me their dead bird stories, and one of those also talked about putting a dead bird in the freezer. She told me that revealing that in a particular group of people led to multiple other backyard-bird-in-the-freezer stories.

I am reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass and one of the many things I appreciate is how she weaves together the stories that come from her Potawatomi Nation heritage and the stories that come from her scientific training. Some might say these ways of knowing are in conflict with each other because the first way is made up of “stories” and the second of “facts,” not to be confused with one another. Kimmerer shows how each perspective, as well her perspectives as a mother and professor, can support one another, how an embodied and connected relationship with Creation balances the "neutral" or "objective" disconnected lens that science aims for (even though none of us can actually be neutral or objective).

As I write, I am wondering if we can recognize that science is simply a form of story-telling told from a particular worldview and that its facts are not necessarily the full, or even actual, picture of reality. I am not denying its value, but questioning the strong dominant cultural bias toward it (though in recent years, that's been less true). I wonder how much valuing scientific story-telling and disregarding or devaluing other interpretations, other stories of our interbeing, has limited for too long the potential of our understanding.

Like Kimmerer moves between indigenous and scientific understandings, over the last several years I've been wading into waters that some may believe are in conflict with one another. I am active in a Catholic church community (which I joyfully share with some of you who are reading). I have worked in Catholic schools and with Christian organizations. I hope to continue to do so.

I am also certified in and practice Reiki. I have been learning about and using intuitive gifts that I discovered because of Reiki; that's how Heart Portraits were born. More recently I have been studying shamanic practices. For me these practices outside of the Christian realm expand, deepen, and enrich my understanding of and beyond my mother tradition of Catholicism. They help me to imagine with greater creativity and imagination what loving God and loving neighbor mean, and who the word "neighbor" includes.

Studying the mystics, Christian and otherwise, bring a similar sense of wonder, expansion, and creativity. All of these explorations open me to the Mystery that lives in our interconnection. All of these explorations help me discover pieces of myself, bringing me closer to wholeness, bringing our world closer to wholeness because I am a part of the world.

Telling the story of how I got my wings is one step in claiming who I am, both as an individual and as a thread woven into the tapestry of interconnection. As I weave closer to other threads of Creation, we tighten the weave. We strengthen the tapestry. We move toward wholeness.

I suspect there will be people who read my dead cardinal story who will form negative judgments. I recently told a friend the story and she listened with furrowed brows and squinting eyes. It was uncomfortable. But if I am to honor who I am now and allow myself to continue becoming, I must be willing to face discomfort, my own and others', even when it means facing the skepticism or lack of understanding from a loved one. Being in the discomfort is a practice.

Self-acceptance is a practice. The more embodied the practice, the easier it is to practice accepting others. Moving toward wholeness is a practice. Will you join me?

If you'd like to explore these themes further, I invite you into these questions:

Have you ever been afraid to reveal a part of yourself to another? Did you choose to hide or to reveal? How was it to do so?

Do you feel like there are parts of you that feel aligned and in harmony that others might think are in contradiction?

How have you or would you like to move toward a greater sense of wholeness?

I'd love to know your answers, to offer witness to who you are. Please feel free to share.

How I Got My Wings, Part 3: Ceremony

Read How I Got My Wings, Part 1: Dead Cardinal here.

Read How I Got My Wings, Part 2: Second Encounter here.

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On January 29, 2021, I took the dead cardinal wrapped in the dishtowel and plastic bag out of my freezer. It was afternoon and the impulse to do something with the body came suddenly and strongly.

I gently unwrapped it and began the work. Standing at my kitchen counter, I started plucking out breast feathers, feeling both certain and uncertain at once. Thankfully, Knowing helped me to overcome all the messages that have kept me in unknowing for so long. There is still so much unknowing to shed.

Soon after I started the process, I stopped. What I was doing was sacred work and deserved to be treated as such. This was ceremony.

Robin Wall Kimmerer wrote, “Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.”

I lit sage and palo santo, blessed the body, blessed myself, and allowed myself to feel the heaviness of what I was doing. I shed tears, perhaps as much to commemorate the life no longer in this body as to commemorate the beauty of the moment of reverence I was living in.

After the blessing I resumed the work. I pulled as many soft, downy breast and back feathers out as would come easily and paused. What now?

I broke the wings off, tears still rolling.

I broke off a leg.

The unknowing asked as it had the previous week, “What are you doing?!?”

Knowing answered, “What needs to be done.”

After removing these parts, it was clear that I was finished with this part of the ceremony. I placed the feathers and leg in a bag, the wings carefully on top. I still didn’t know what to do with them, only that I was to keep them.

I asked Spirit/God/the Universe (these feel like different names for the same Oneness of which we are a part) what I should do with the body. It didn’t feel right to simply throw it away. The answer was to put it in my yard, not buried, but simply placed on the snowy ground, trusting that Nature would finish the ceremony in my absence.

The next day I went back out and something had begun to eat the body. By the third day there was no sign of it.

Life circling death circling life.