Tag: transformation

How the Universe Talks to Me

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

It’s usually through a series of otherwise unconnected but often chronologically proximal events that the Divine chooses to send me messages.  A theme emerges.  A thread becomes spiritually visible.  A connection is made.  And the message is undeniable.

Item 1:  A few years ago, I was part of developing a new theme at the Unity church where I attend and am involved in leadership.  The theme was “authentic transformation.”  It was what I felt I was undergoing and what I believed to be core to the spiritual journey.  Every Sunday morning in my roll as “platform person” at Unity of Music City in Old Hickory, TN, I say something to the effect of “Welcome to Unity Music City, a place of authentic transformation.  It’s who we are.  It’s what we do.”

Item 2:  A year or so ago, I had the privilege of meeting Michael McRay when he was speaking at Unity of MC about his reconciliation work in Israel and Palestine.  I saw him again at a workshop for Narrative4, a story-telling reconciliation practice he facilitates.  I saw him a third time just a couple of weeks ago when he conducted a Narrative4 workshop at the college where I teach.  What strikes me every time I hear Michael is that he is a very young man (28? 29?) who is able to clearly communicate his purpose.  Michael will state in no uncertain terms “This is my purpose, and these are the ways I express it in the world.”

Item 3:  During a recent Wednesday night class at Unity of MC, the idea of purpose entered the discussion.  My dear friend and minister, Denise Yeargin, said, “I know my friend, Deb, is a teacher, and a darn fine one, but I also know that is not her purpose.  Am I right?”  And she looked right at me.  I said, “You’re right.”  It was as if the Universe was saying, “You’ve danced around this for a while now; it’s time to turn it into a declarative statement.”  I hesitated for just a moment, and then I said, intuitively, “My purpose is enthusiasm.  My purpose is to help others find enthusiasm in life.”

Item 4:  I went home that night and looked up “enthusiasm” once again.  I had looked it up before, and I knew that it meant something akin to “God within.”  But when I looked this time, I found a more definitive translation from the original Greek that I don’t remember ever seeing before.  It was “possessed by the essence of God.”  Oh, brother.  That about brought me to my knees.

Item 5:  I posted something on Facebook about a successful teacher moment.  For me, a successful teacher moment is when a student expresses some newfound enthusiasm for their journey because of something that happens in my classroom.  In the comments on the post, one of my former students, from way back in my second or third year of teaching, said this, “You’re a transformational educator . . . always have been.  Thank you for your heart, mind, and spirit!  You are one of the best to ever do it! #thankGodforTSU #freshmanhonorsenglish #myfave #abetterwriterforit”  Okay, so that totally rocked my world, but what really stood out to me was that word “transformational.”

The last meeting with Michael McRay, the Wednesday night class, and the former student’s comment happened within 10 days of each other.

And it all brings me here:

My purpose in life is to teach the transformational power of enthusiasm.  My purpose is to show how transformational it is to be possessed by the essence of God.  I do this through teaching, through singing, through my work at Unity of Music City, through my work in the classroom, through my one-on-one encounters with students, through my work as a chaplain in the pastoral care ministry at Unity, and through every conversation or thought I have.

I do this by living a transformed life with enthusiasm.

And so it is.

Stripped Down to Nothing

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

When I was a child, I had a recurring nightmare about being sent to prison.  I thought that would be the worst thing that could ever happen to a person.  I would wake in a start, sheets damp from my sweat, and feel the most intense sense of relief as I realized that the bars had been a dream.

I was reminded of the dream recently as I read a memoir by Neil White titled In The Sanctuary of Outcasts.  White is a typical southern business man with shirts pressed into cracker-crisp submission, the requisite stories of his time in the frat house at Ole’ Miss, and the dual social safety nets of family ties and southern white privilege to catch him when he falls.  Until he finally falls too hard.

Neil White was convicted of check kiting in the early 90s and sentenced to 18 months in a minimum-security prison.  He was incarcerated in Carville, LA, in a facility that, oddly enough, also housed one of the last remaining “leper colonies” in the country.  As he meets and befriends both patients and prisoners, and more importantly, as he privately ponders all he has lost and what he might ever have again, White undergoes a transformation, the transformation we must all undergo to become fully human.  It is behind the bars of a prison — removed from his family, removed from his social status, removed from his lifelong need for approval and recognition — that Neil White begins to taste freedom for the first time.

I have recently undergone a “stripped-down-to-nothing” experience.  Much like Neil White, I can’t say I enjoyed the early stages of this process.  The shock of having my life changed so completely was not an easy swallow.  Those days contained pain and sorrow and sadness and self-pity.  I was numb, but nowhere near numb enough.

And then, things started to change.  Just a little at first.  The change was soft and slow and subtle.  And so incredibly profound.

Any material losses became as a speck of sand to the great ocean of self-discovery into which I now daily dive.  Releasing the material, in fact, was key to my transformative process.  I have a fourth of what I used to have, and I’m still thinking there are some items I could give away.

Two years ago, I again dreamed I was in prison.  I had the dream three times that summer.  I believe I now understand the personal reasons why.  I won’t delve into the specifics of that here, but suffice it to say that the bars in my dream did not represent a person or situation.  They weren’t symbolic of my job, my relationship, or my financial situation.  They didn’t stand for some trauma in childhood or sense of inadequacy.

The bars were the disconnect between the me who moves through time and space and the me who is actually living this life.  They were the great mysterious veil between my projected self and my true nature.  They were the barrier I erected between knowledge and understanding.

It is only when everything else is stripped away, when there is nothing left but you and the bars, that you can see them for what they are.  And then you can remember . . . the bars are only a dream; it is the freedom that is real.

Gaia’s Got Her Blinker On

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

One of the reasons I like measuring my days by the milestones of the ancients (also known as the milestones provided by the universe) is that they are both simple and complex.  The solstice itself is a rather simple event.  The word is often used to refer to the entire day on which it happens, but the actual solstice takes place in an instant.  This year, that instant will take place at 12:16 p.m. (CST), on June 21.

At one specific blip sometime during that minute, the sun will beam directly on the Tropic of Cancer and strike the northern hemisphere of the earth with its most direct rays.  In that nanosecond, summer will begin.  On the top half of the globe, the sun will shine longer than it will any other day of the year.

Piece of cake.  Long day.  Summer begins.  Tropic of Cancer.  We learned all of that in eighth grade biology.  But what we didn’t learn in eighth grade is usually so much more profound than what we did.  As I’ve watched the solstice pass each year (don’t blink! you’ll miss it!), I’ve incorporated new shades of the meaning it has to offer.  The mystical earth and the magical heavens can be our teachers if we let them.

The ancients devised ways to capture this blip of time that passes only once every 365 days.  They built monuments to it.  They conducted ceremonies for it.  Most likely, they built bonfires and danced naked in acknowledgement of this great mystery they might not have fully understood but fully accepted.  They might not have been able to launch a space shuttle, but they knew that from this moment each day would shorten just  a smidgeon.

I looked up the word “solstice” in the dictionary tonight not expecting to find anything new.  Whenever I do that, I always find something new.  The second definition read, “a furthest or culminating point; a turning point.”

The solstice isn’t really about the instant of the solstice at all.  It’s about the turn.  It’s about a shift in direction.  It’s about endings and beginnings.  It’s about celebrating transformation.

It’s that simple.  And it only took me a decade or so to see it.