Month: January 2014

God at the Grammys

/ levelprayingfield
Kasey Musgraves performs "Follow Your Arrow" at the 2014 Grammy Awards Ceremony

Kasey Musgraves performs “Follow Your Arrow” at the 2014 Grammy Awards Ceremony

Once you see the cycle of spiritual growth and how it recurs through life, you start seeing the pattern everywhere. Which starts becoming comforting. Life stops seeming so random, its edges seem less cruel. Instead, there is a divine, perfect purpose being pursued, over and over again.

Take last night. My husband and I watched the Grammy Awards. Kasey Musgraves performed her hit country song, Follow Your Arrow. (I loved her outfit!!)

Aha! The song couldn’t be a truer expression of the challenges facing the individual in Stage 2 (“Stirrings”), approaching Stage 3 (“Declaration”). Read Kasey Musgraves’ lyrics. This is a song to any individual beginning to feel his or her true, authentic self peek out from beneath the expectations and “shoulds” of Stage 1’s GroupThink.

It doesn’t matter what you’re into, the song says. Just be true to yourself. Be who You Are. Follow your arrow.

No wonder it’s a controversial song. It’s got to be. There would be no struggle to declare “I Am” if there were no resistance. That’s how we become spiritually strong, by learning to meet that resistance; by learning to believe in ourselves first. It’s all part of the plan. (Until the plan changes in Stages 4, 5 and 6!)

It’s a great song. And Kasey delivered it with just the right combination of earnest heart and hilarity. But I suspect last night’s prestigious award came partly from the fact that the song expresses such core, human truth. Congratulations, Kasey Musgrave. And great dress.

The Steady, Underlying Beat

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Today I was having coffee with my husband and the dog – a weekend ritual – when my husband said, “Hey, look at this!” He handed over his iPhone and showed me the image of a beating heart:

Heartbeat

Source: Industry Tap

I looked over at it with curiosity. Then, with an inner double-take, I felt my eyes pop as my curiosity quickly gave way to amazement. Then my amazement gave way to gratitude and awe.

The deepening of my emotions accompanied the deepening of what I perceived in the picture. As I first encountered the image, I wondered, “What is this?” Instantly, vaguely, I recognized the shape of a heart.

Soon I was looking deeper. I saw electrical impulses charging the heart, muscles contracting, chambers filling, blood rushing, all flawlessly timed. All so generous. So perfect! And all occurring within me right now without my even having to think about it.

I looked up at my husband so comforted. I had been feeling a little blue today. Overwhelmed by having had a bad cold this week, by being concerned about the care and well-being of my 89-year-old mother, very far away; trying to keep up at work, and through it all being sad about having horribly neglected this website. I was feeling–well, frankly–a little sorry for myself that I just didn’t know how to keep up and stay true to the one thing in life – my lifelong love of God – that means the most to me. That relentless juggling act: how to keep your awareness trained dearly on the world of spirit and still keep both feet planted solidly on the ground?

But in one random, inquisitive gesture, my husband was reminding me, that underneath it all, my heartbeat was steady, generous, perfect, constant. I didn’t even have to think about it.

I know this is true, too, of the Divine. It is steady, generous, perfect, constant. It beats beneath and around and through everything we are, everything we do. It never fails us, even when we’re tired, sick, blue. We don’t even have to think about it, either–it will never fail us even though we can enter into long lapses of forgetfulness. But when we do remember… oh, what blessed comfort that is.

Can this type of violence be stopped by understanding?

/ levelprayingfield

NBCNightlyNews_010814

I saw a segment on NBC Nightly News tonight about what Brian Williams called “the most urgent crisis unfolding in our world” – sectarian violence in Central African Republic between Christians and Muslims that has become so severe that it is decimating the population, affecting mostly children. The video is heartbreaking.

This is exactly the kind of violence that this website is intended to prevent.

Meanwhile, upstairs in my computer, this website is about 2/3 done and not yet launched… I chip away at it after a long work day each day and the progress seems so slow… but I am pedaling as fast as I can…

The question remains to be answered: can simple understanding help bring about peace? When conflict is necessarily built into the system of human growth, and when arrogance and the need to control is built into human nature… is it realistic to expect a Bigger Picture to put a rest to these terrible religious-based feuds?

We shall see over time. Here’s my first blog. Off we go.