Courage and Tenderness

January 19th, 2022 | Click to Comment

It takes some courage to take on what’s new, to try something new, to live into what’s new. Right now it takes courage to keep going through the rumbling storms into the new year. Marion Gilbert observes that this new year will be what every new year is: a continuation. That’s helpful. Remembering that a new year doesn’t arrive fully formed makes meeting it feel less daunting.

At the same time, a continuation brings a lot of old baggage. The heavy realities we carry forward weigh on what’s to come. I think of Jacob Marley’s chain, forged link by link. Bracing ourselves to endure its weight requires one particular kind of courage; allowing ourselves to release what’s not needed is another.

The long endurance that the COVID era requires is a new place to be. We’re having to dig deep for the extended perseverance it takes. Our reservoir of everyday coping strategies ran dry long ago, and we need the kind of spiritual sustenance that cannot be generated by force of will. It’s a fresh challenge, or at least a deepening one, to find those wells of replenishment and to continue dealing with the crucible of our current time.

However we characterize it, this malaise is not just our individual experience. Talking to one another makes it clear that we’re experiencing this collectively. At the same time, when the positivity rate is at record levels in Kentucky and people still can’t be bothered to wear a mask, it’s easier to see the divisions than to feel like we’re in this together. But that’s exactly why it troubles me to see bare-faced shoppers: I know we really are in it together. I pray for anyone who needs a hospital bed anytime soon.

Because I tend to look toward the positive aspects of things, something in me wants to resist saying that we’re in a hard place. I’d rather focus on finding some good that comes from all of this. But as the challenges go on and on there is simply no avoiding how difficult these days are, even for those of us not suffering on the front lines of public contact and health care.

In a recent column, David Brooks points out that Americans are driving less but deaths from traffic accidents are up. Belligerent behavior in hospitals, schools, and in public is on the rise. Substance abuse and overdose deaths are increasing. We’re giving less to charity.

Perhaps healing begins with acknowledging the truth of this painful era. There’s a kind of surrender that comes with looking directly at how things are, showing compassion for ourselves and others as we make our way through it. This kind of surrender is not the same as giving up. It’s more a matter of being honest about the condition we’re in.

Naming what’s real honors the loss we’re all experiencing. Acknowledging the painful realities that we’re trying to cope with brings a tenderness to how I move through the world. The vulnerability and fragility that I sense in myself and others feels both sad and true. It slows me down, and makes me appreciate the genuine moments of beauty and hope.

The courage to abide with what’s true makes us more receptive to what our ego would otherwise dismiss. It helps us to pay attention, to see what we would otherwise overlook, to be truly present. The tenderness evoked by these times helps us appreciate the beauty of caring for one another, of connecting with one another. It shows us how we need each other. Bringing presence to one another makes things better.

Tenderness helps me notice and appreciate the moments of beauty and connection that permeate every single day. Beauty is spiritual sustenance, and even sweeter when shared. As we honor what is true, we can help heal this world by bringing our attention to what is beautiful, sharing it with others, and enjoying those moments together.

Susan Christerson Brown

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Why I Work with the Enneagram

May 14th, 2019 | Click to Comment

When I began studying the Enneagram, it was to understand more about myself and others. The Enneagram is great for making sense of why we do what we do. But figuring out our type is only the beginning of what is possible. I continue working with the Enneagram because it offers a path toward transformation.

Diagram of the Enneagram

To briefly explain, the Enneagram (from the Greek ennea, meaning “nine”) names nine basic types of people, with nine different essential gifts and inherent challenges. We have access to all of these human traits, but our Enneagram type colors how we process our experience. Our type is the lens through which we view the world.

Understanding our Enneagram type makes possible a new level of self-awareness. Appreciating the basic human longings that motivate the nine Enneagram types naturally cultivates greater compassion for ourselves and others.

But it’s important to remember that our essential self has no Enneagram type. Our type is the coping mechanism we formulated long before we were conscious of what we were doing. Our type is the way we found to make our world ok when our essential well-being felt threatened. 

Our type structure helped us when we needed it. As life unfolds, the consciousness and self-awareness that makes us human also gives rise to a sense of self-doubt and disconnection. As we grow up, there comes a time when we lose our natural connection to the joy and vitality of being alive. Or to put it more poetically, we inevitably experience being expelled from the garden.

When that happens we work to overcome what we perceive as our shortcomings, and we do this in the nine basic ways named by the Enneagram. We reach for our strongest gift, believing it’s up to us to create or earn a sense of connection, safety, or worth.

Understanding our Enneagram type helps in those moments when those deeply ingrained automatic patterns show up. We begin to notice when habitual impulses try to take over, and we learn to pause. In the space created by that pause we can be more perceptive. We can consciously choose what to do. This is the path toward transcending our type structure and becoming free.  

In this way, noticing our type structure in action comes to serve as a bell of mindfulness. When we realize we’re being driven by old patterns, we can learn to respond differently. Instead of automatically following our habitual escape patterns, we cultivate the ability to stay present. In doing this we lay down new neural pathways and begin developing responses that we consciously and freely choose.

Working with our type patterns helps us to wake up. We learn to see more clearly and act more effectively. We experience how the divine life force sustains us. We learn to differentiate between our true self and our conditioned responses. We become less susceptible to toxic influences, whether in the form of external situations or internal patterns. Instead of relying on unconscious coping mechanisms we learn to be present to ourselves and to the situation as it is, and to act from a place of higher wisdom.

I haven’t mastered all of this, of course, but I’m grateful to be on the path. Working with the Enneagram has placed me into the flow of life in a way that brings a new level of beauty, meaning, and connection.

I’d love to serve as your companion as you make your own Enneagram journey. Write to me at susan@mildlymystical.com with your questions or to schedule an Enneagram typing interview. I’m happy to meet you at my office in Lexington, Kentucky or online via Zoom.

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Dream Wisdom in Waking Life

January 19th, 2019 | Click to Comment

I’ve seen two oddly parallel news stories recently. With the power of those things you can’t un-see, they have lingered with me for days.

These stories weren’t about the major upheavals in the headlines, but I believe they demonstrate how the tone set at the top filters down to individual encounters. One happened at a nail salon involving two women. The other occurred at a gas station, involving two men. Both were recorded by the distant eye of surveillance cameras, preserved amidst the drone of everyday transactions in the public arena.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Gustav Dore
Image from Victorian Web Art

In both cases, someone tried to pay with a stolen credit card. Both transactions involved a charge of around thirty dollars. When the charge was declined, they attempted to drive away without paying.

In both cases, the proprietor followed them and stood in front of their car to prevent them from leaving. Both images show, as if it were any other encounter, how the driver accelerated toward the person in front of their vehicle.

The broadcasts I saw mercifully stopped the video just before showing a vulnerable human body being run over. But just as the mind fills in the micro-moment gaps in such sketchy recordings, I can’t help but imagine in dismay how both of these people were hit and killed.

I have wrestled with these images for days as I try to find some meaning or some opening in which the presence of God might be known.

As I tried writing about them, all I could do was lament the state of our nation. I wanted to find some wisdom, or to talk about the kind of presence that can calm powerful emotions and scary confrontations. But anything I wrote sounded trite.

Eventually I remembered that I could engage with these scenes as if I were working a dream. I could look at these people as if they were characters created by my unconscious, representing a part of me outside my conscious awareness. When an event from waking life hooks us like this, approaching it as we approach a dream can be fruitful.

I asked what part of myself might be like the driver of the car. Is there an aspect of me driven by fear, determined to avoid facing some other shadowy part of myself? Can I find some way to identify with the driver of the car?

And what about the proprietor who was killed? Is there a part of me trying to hold the line on fairness, on what I’m entitled to? A part insisting on acknowledgement yet being overrun in the process? Can I find some resonance with the person whose life was taken in my own life?

Holding both characters at once, with each perhaps symbolizing part of my own psyche, is there some aspect of myself running over another part of me?

In addition, as these are stories from the national news viewed by people throughout the country, how might they represent something about our collective experience? In what way might I be part of a group that operates like the driver? How might I belong to a group being run over?

Just like working a dream, these questions don’t yield an immediate or simple answer. They are, rather, an invitation to enter deeply into my experience and my true identity. These questions challenge me to consider myself with honesty and humility, knowing that I am part of the story unfolding in the world. They invite me to look at what I’d rather not see in myself, and wrestle with it much as Jacob wrestled with the angel.

So what did I learn from this experience?

Seeing the broadcasts of these angry and fearful encounters evoked those emotions in me as well. I remained caught in the anger and fear that created such terrible events until I looked within.

The release I found from being trapped in these emotions began as I paid attention to what was going on inside, and held my dismay with kindness toward myself. This made it possible to see from a different perspective. Looking within, as if looking at a dream, showed me the need for compassion—for myself and for all of humanity. It allowed me to consider the great suffering that exists in every life.

That perspective cultivates openness toward others, even those who seem very different from me. It doesn’t mean allowing someone else to run over me, but I can hold my boundaries with a clearer mind and heart.

Compassion is worth cultivating. It yields curiosity and kindness. It helps us treat ourselves and others more gently.

Compassion helps transcend the simplistic categories of me vs. not-me. I believe it changes our experience in the world. At the very least, it makes difficulties we already experience less painful.

Compassion allows our heart to break for the world without us falling apart. It breaks us open to love, and perhaps even to heal what is hurting in ourselves and others.

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Honestly Facing the Darkness

July 11th, 2016 | Click to Comment

During the Festival of Faiths a few weeks ago in Louisville, Kentucky, Pastor Mike McBride posed a question that remains with me. He asked: Where is it that we have gone wrong as a culture in our theological formation of people?

Three Streams


It’s an essential question, asking religion to take a long look at its own shadow. The church has come to be seen as condoning questionable ethical, spiritual, and moral conduct. And for those who reject religion because of the darkness in it, the question remains for other cultural institutions and for the individual: What dark part of ourselves are we being invited to bring into the light for healing?

At the heart of this life, our soul’s journey is supported by a deep foundation of compassion. At the base of everything that is, is love. Love gives us the courage to look into the darkness and compassion gives us the strength to bring it into the light. That’s how we find healing and wholeness.

I’m looking within, asking whether I have been part of feeding the darkness. I’m holding in mind what is required of me: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly in the presence of the divine source of all life. Asking about my part in the institutions of our culture is more difficult, as is finding my role in bringing about change. But if we currently have the system we have asked for, then let me be clear. I’m asking for change.

Let us keep before us the ideal of a culture where justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (standing), Panel Moderator (?), Jim Wallis, Rev. Michael McBride

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (standing), Panel Moderator (?), Jim Wallis, Rev. Michael McBride

 

 

 

 

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Compassion, Hospitality, and Beauty

September 26th, 2015 | 2 Comments

At the Spiritual Directors International conference in Louisville this year, Krista Tippett spoke of beauty as a core moral value. She noted the connection of beauty and vitality, and described God as being present in beauty. She mentioned mathematicians who say that if an equation is not elegant and beautiful, it is likely not to be true.

 

UCC Washington, DC - Fountain

 

Influenced by the late John O’Donohue, she spoke of his distinction between beauty and glamour. O’Donohue taught that Beauty is that in the presence of which we feel more alive.

As a seminary student I came to love Vermeer’s “Woman Weighing Gold” aka “Woman Holding a Balance” because the print hung outside the office door of one of my professors. During my years in school, as I stood in the hallway waiting to talk with him I was given that rich image to contemplate.

Waiting brings particular attention to our surroundings. The places where we are required to wait speak clearly about the respite beauty can offer, or the grimness of its absence. The intentional creation of welcoming space is a sign of true hospitality. A thoughtfully chosen object or image can infuse a time of waiting with beauty and grace.

Individuals and organizations who understand hospitality find ways to offer nourishment for the soul in the arrangement of their physical space. In this quiet way, they make the world better. In his book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue says:

[beauty] calls us to feel, think, and act beautifully in the world:

to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful.

The places where we wait are often filled with stress. We wait to be seen by the doctor, the government official, the interviewer. As we take in the space around us, we feel the presence of compassion. Or its absence. Unfortunately our culture has come to accept television screens as a way of offering hospitality in waiting areas. What a different environment we could create if those funds were spent on works by local artists. Yet far more spaces are arranged without any thought beyond offering a chair.

Where people have a choice about entering, spaces are generally more welcoming. Where people are required to show up, the setting is more likely to be utterly utilitarian, holding neither warmth nor tranquility. If, as John O’Donohue describes, we feel more alive in the presence of Beauty, then the palatable sense of beauty’s absence creates a space in which we die a little.

Buildings, and the spaces within them, are expensive. They require work and attention just to maintain. Given the investment already made in the physical facilities, why not use them well? Particularly when people are required to wait in a particular space, why not cultivate a peaceful environment that might carry through the entire workplace? Why not offer something beautiful to experience, granting a moment of tranquility in the midst of the day?

The UCC (United Church of Christ) in Washington, D.C. is an example of an intentionally hospitable space, not only for those who enter but for everyone who walks by. In the midst of a busy city, the walls of the church are made of glass so that passersby can see a small fountain inside. Simply to observe the flow of water across the stone disk and into the pool below is to feel a space opening in one’s psyche. What a gift, as well as an indication that this may be a rare place for the soul to thrive.

 

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Knowing the River

August 26th, 2015 | 3 Comments

Every day, I fill a pitcher with water from the tap. I appreciate being able to drink when I’m thirsty, and sometimes remember to be grateful for the rain that fills the river. Water sustains my life. It becomes part of me; I am intimately connected to its source. But sipping from my glass does not allow me to claim the river.

 

Red River Gorge

 

Going to the river is an entirely different experience. In Kentucky there are hundreds, thousands, of places where I might walk along the banks or step among the stones above the water’s surface. Where the water flows clear I can look through to pebbles lining the riverbed and fish darting among them. Where stones are slick with algae there’s always a chance of falling in. I can wade in the shallows or perhaps swim in a few places. The deeper, swifter water requires a vessel and some companions. A guide is helpful where the river churns white.

A close-up look at water’s edge is unlike the changing perspective from a boat, or the wider scene from atop the palisades. Even with a view from the air I can see only part of the whole river. Its long path is too much to take in at once, and yields infinite variations according to time, weather, and season. A blue line labeled on a map is easily found, but tracing the map is not the same as knowing the river.

It’s terrible that many rivers are so polluted we can’t swim or fish in them. Individually and collectively, our hubris has sullied what we need to survive. Yet even these tainted waters remain essential. We filter out the toxins the best we can, reclaiming the water we must have to live.

I can’t simply fill a glass with water as a way to know the river, much less hold the river in my hand. Neither can I quote the Bible and expect a scriptural sound bite to convey its teachings. Discernment is an important aspect of grappling with scripture; it’s not as simple as fishing out a pertinent chapter and verse.

The Bible is not a code of law or a constitution from which we draw off rules as we would draw water from the tap. Scripture is a conversation, an exploration that began thousands of years ago. It contradicts itself. It speaks in different contexts. Scripture is rich and varied, and to engage with it is to create an opening for wisdom.

To wield the Bible as a debate tool is to miss being part of its life-giving flow. Scripture can be experienced in a thousand ways throughout a lifetime, but to use it against others is to waste it. It would be absurd to throw a glass of water in someone’s face and declare that I’m acting on behalf of the river.

A line of scripture can offer hope or inspiration. It can be a reminder of the richness to be found in the entirety of the Bible. But separated from its context the passage eventually becomes a stagnant pool. Water separated from the flow of the river grows foul and breeds pestilence.

I am grateful for a glass of water. I am humbled and in awe of the river from which it flows.

 

 

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Positive Energy and Prayer

May 15th, 2015 | 2 Comments

Some of the important people in my life ask for prayer when things are difficult. Others ask for positive energy or healing thoughts when they are in need of support. Both are asking for spiritual support, but in different ways.

Bumblebee in Flight with Redbud Tree

There are good reasons for not using each other’s terms. Religious language may be associated with a world view so painful or constricting that a person rejects the language, the church it came from, and even what it refers to. Yet someone who rejects “prayer” may respond with warmth and love when the request is to “send good thoughts.” The value of the spiritual connection remains, it just needs to be seen in a different context, with a new way of being expressed.

On the other hand, shared language is part of what forms the bonds of a community. Within a community for whom prayer is a positive and meaningful shared experience, to ask for prayer is to make reference to what is held in common. To use another term would be to place oneself outside that shared experience and strain against the community’s identity.

So the language we use says something important about who we are. The difference in language reflects a difference in where we find meaning and belonging. But despite our differences, we share a need for the spiritual support of others. Regardless of how we express it, we know that we are connected in a spiritual way and that our connection matters.

I don’t know how prayer works. But I trust that we are connected to a level of reality beyond the physical world. Even the physicists tell us that beneath the appearance of things the world is made of energy. Some of that energy manifests as material objects, but matter is not the solid reality that we think of it as being.

Physics is offering us new ways of understanding creation and new metaphors. We are energy, we are connected to the energy around us, and connected to others through this energy. Our actions, our thoughts, and our love have an effect on the web of reality, the field of energy, beyond us. When we pray for others we are connected to them. Prayer directs our thoughts, our actions, and our love toward where they are needed, and puts more than we can know into motion.

There may be additional things we can do for the people we pray for. Thoughts, actions, and love can be directed in many practical ways. But prayer is an important means of putting energy into motion, of being connected. Many things can be prayer, or can be done prayerfully. Packing a box of supplies for people who need them as we direct our compassion toward them can be prayer. Bringing love and concern and hope for those who are suffering as we prepare food, or visit a hospital room, or write a note, can be prayer.

Whether we call it positive energy or prayer, this way of sharing love and strength is an important part of caring for one another. It helps to know what kind of language is meaningful to the person we’re talking to. But whether we say, “You’re in my prayers” or “I’m sending positive energy your way,” we’re talking about a spiritual effort. Making that commitment means we care, we want to help, and we will add our energy to the spiritual network that sustains them. Its workings are a mystery, but the spiritual help we offer matters.

You might be interested in an earlier post, “What It Means to Say ‘You’re in My Prayers,” or in “How to Pray for Another.”

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Prayer for a Grieving Friend

December 16th, 2010 | 4 Comments

In recent weeks, several friends have experienced a profound loss of one kind or another. In the midst of a celebration of light, their worlds hold a great portion of darkness. The contrast can make this a difficult season. This post is a prayer for those who grieve, especially during this season, and for the friends and loved ones who long to comfort them.

Through this dark valley I would ease your way,
reassure you of the goodness of life,
even of your life.
But I have not traveled this path you tread,
nor learned the reach of these shadows.
All I can do is walk with you,
both of us stumbling,
certain only that we will be sustained
by powers beyond our imagining—
by life and love, light and hope.

May the Spirit of Life lend its strength,
enfold and uplift us with warm embrace.
May the Spirit of Love tend wounded hearts,
that healing and tenderness may abide.
May the Spirit of Light show us the way—
one step at a time is enough.
And may the Spirit of Hope sow its seeds,
to open in the mysterious dark
and emerge as new life
in the spring that will surely come.

Susan Christerson Brown

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The Spiritual Practice of Changing the Filter

September 17th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Today I’m drinking a glass of water that tastes much better than the one I had yesterday. Not that I noticed anything wrong with yesterday’s water, but I did notice that it was time to change the filter I use. The difference is dramatic, the taste softer on the tongue—something like cashmere vs. leather.

The water filter works beautifully when it’s fresh. It removes minerals and chemicals, yielding the clear, sweet essence of water. It accomplishes this by absorbing the unwanted elements, but after a time it simply cannot take in any more. The filter’s loss of function is subtle, incremental, and at first it’s hardly noticeable. But eventually the filter stops working, and will actually introduce impurities into the water if it isn’t changed. The water tastes bad.

All of which has me thinking about the psyche’s filters.

Messages, images, and information are everywhere, more than we can ever process. The needs, demands, requests, and unthinking effects of other people’s actions continually challenge our ability to respond. We cannot let everything in; there’s too much. But determining how to filter our experience requires effort.

When the air is thick with frustration and anger, callousness and mindlessness, that’s what we most easily absorb. Without a conscious effort to resist them, negative mindsets permeate our way of being. It’s important to see the world around us as clearly as possible, but to live compassionately requires being careful of what we allow to become part of us.

Yet even when we are mindful about the ways we sort and learn from our experience, eventually the filter becomes too saturated to do its work. The anxiety we encounter begins to color our own emotional life. Thoughts become infused with the taint of fear or resentment in the air around us. It’s time to change the filter.

The upper portion of my Brita pitcher is designed to hold the cylindrical filter securely and allow it to be changed easily. I just lift the lid and drop the new one in. Sometimes I wish I could do that with my mind, but our filters are more complex. It’s through spiritual practice that they become clean again.

The hardest part about cleaning or changing a water filter is remembering to do it. That may be the case with our psyche’s filters as well. The means of restoring spiritual strength and resiliency are as different as people are varied. But we all need our spiritual health to live fully and well. We need the ability to cleanse our thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and motivations. We need a way to experience the pure, sweet essence of life that will nurture and sustain us.

Cleaning the filter might happen through prayer or meditation. It might mean a walk in the woods, yoga, or an exercise routine. It can occur in the experience of music or poetry. It could result from our own means of artistic expression. It may grow out of our relationships or from doing our best work.

Spiritual practice restores us and enhances our ability to take in what we need for health and wholeness. In whatever way we find effective, it’s important to keep up with those practices that cleanse the filter. It changes our way of being in the world, and that changes the world.

What helps you to cleanse the filter?

If you’d like to read more, I’ve posted a reflection on the recent talk by Diane Ackerman as part of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference over at the KaBooM Writers Notebook. It’s called Paying Attention, and offers a look at one way of changing filters by closely observing the natural world.

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What it Means to Say “You’re in My Prayers”

January 26th, 2010 | 11 Comments

Sometimes life comes at a person I care about in ways that challenge anyone’s ability to cope. When my actions, or theirs, have no power to change those circumstances, all I can offer is presence and concern. And prayer.

But when I tell someone, “My thoughts and prayers are with you,” or “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” what does that really mean? And what does that person want when they ask me to remember them in my prayers?

We all have different hopes and expectations, as we have differing experiences of prayer. But I see at least seven things conveyed when I offer to pray for you:

1)      It acknowledges the crisis and pain in your life

2)      It says that I am concerned about you, I am with you in your suffering, and I won’t forget about you when we part

3)      It recognizes that our lives are subject to things we cannot control, and that we share that position of vulnerability

4)      It reminds us both that we have access to spiritual strength that helps see us through the difficulties that life brings

5)      It holds faith in the possibility of strength and healing, in some form, through means we cannot predict or understand

6)      It points to an interconnected web of life strong enough to contain suffering and still hold beauty, meaning, and love

7)      It promises that you are not alone

A promise to pray is itself a kind of prayer, but I don’t think the promise is fulfilled simply in making it. In my next post, I’ll talk about how we might pray for someone.

You might also be interested in a more recent post, “Positive Energy and Prayer.”

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