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Devotion instead of To-Do’s

Jan 21, 2022 | Spirituality

If you grew up in a world anything like mine. Devotion(s) were something you did – religiously – if you were religious! They were a practice that usually included reading scripture, praying, and reflecting; a discipline that ostensibly kept you connected to your beliefs; an outward demonstration designed to strengthen your inner commitment, your faith, your spiritual life.

All good, yes?

Well, not so much. (You knew this was coming, didn’t you?)

For me, devotions were a required or at least highly-recommended component of my religious life. And though they were, at times deeply meaningful, I would not often have described them with words like dedication, sacrifice, promise, love, or loyalty. A more consistent description would be duty. And because of such, they had a dark side: if I didn’t do them, if I wasn’t devoted, then I felt insufficient, less valuable, uncommitted, wobbly, not faith-full. In effect, devotion(s) were a to-do; not devotion itself.

Now, outside of any religious tradition, the word “devotion” still circles in my mind and heart. It’s like something I catch a glimpse of, just out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn to see it straight on and clearly, it’s disappeared or at least blurred.

What is clear and in undeniable focus is this: I do not want devotion that is dutiful. I want devotion that is desire-full. 

And this is what brings me to the distinction between devotion and to-do’s…

I do not claim to have any definitive answers, but I do wonder if perhaps the difference between devotion and to-do’s is its origin, the place from which it comes, what compels it. Duty or Desire? Responsibility or Grace? Expansive or Restrictive? Required or Chosen?

What I long for is an experience of devotion that is not something I “do,” but something I believe, trust, have faith in, hope for – all of which is profoundly sacred and spiritual.

Maybe, instead of pursuing spirituality or an experience of the sacred through discipline and to-do’s, it is devotion (unbidden and desired) that pursues us; that ushers in the spiritual and sacred itself. 

When I approach the sacred or spirituality from a perspective of attainment (as though I can somehow “arrive”), I am immediately aware of to-do’s. The practices, beliefs, and right ways of being. The rules, doctrine, and dogma – even in the very best of ways. Exactly what has been prescribed to help me get there, get that, be that.

But when I let the sacred approach me, when I trust that it is ever-present, omniscient really, and hold fast to my desire for such in the most tender and cherished of ways, devotion will *just* appear, stay, deepen, and reside. And as I named last week, none of this has to be is hard; instead, very, very easy…(which means no to-do’s are needed at all.)

“Devotion is a place where you do not exist; life just flows through you as a certain sweetness and beauty.”

These words my Jaggi Vasudev sound about a million times better than duty or responsibility. They sound infinitely closer to what it means to be connected to and impacted by the sacred. And they perfectly acknowledge that we are spiritual with nothing (not even to-do’s) required of us for this to be true.

What if devotion is like breathing? A natural and autonomic response to the sacred, to the spiritual, which is within us, around us, ever-present, and always in pursuit.

No effort required. No discipline needed. And certainly no to-do’s. Just desire. 

But…but…but…

  • What am I supposed to DO in order to experience devotion?
  • What kind of devotion is required in order to more deeply engage with the sacred?
  • How can I hope to strengthen my spiritual life through devotion if it’s something that pursues me?

These are the questions I begin asking at rapid speed in the face of uncertainty, to be sure! Inherent within them is my deeply-ingrained proclivity for to-do’s. They show how deeply committed I am to doing, mastering, taking the right actions, knowing exact ways to move forward, focusing all my energy on efforts that promise to help me grow and deepen.

To-do’s. They comfort me and plague me at the very same time.

But what I want, truly-deeply-madly is devotion. And that means that I need a different route, an undoing of what I’m familiar with, and yes, an allowing for uncertainty.

I know: deep breath.

At the start of this post I said this: we are far more clear about to-do’s, far less so about devotion. 

It seems to me that this is the point:

A devotion bound in certainty (and managed or attained through to-do’s) is not devotion at all. It’s the not-knowing, the mystery, the letting go, the wonder, the questions, and yes, the doubts that invite devotion (and the sacred) into our midst in the most intimate and personal and love-filled of ways.

May it be so.

*****

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Why I’ve Given Up on Prayer

Dec 17, 2021 | Mothers and Daughters, Spirituality, Women's Wisdom

*****

A number of years ago, when my daughters were still teenagers, my youngest stepped into a season of struggle (to put it mildly) that stretched me beyond capacity, hope, or reason. There were moments in which I couldn’t decide if I should call 911, her therapist, my therapist, or just hide under the covers and let her do the same. At its worst, I wrestled with what felt like the real possibility of losing her altogether. I won’t keep you in suspense: today she is an amazing young woman — aware, wise, hardly naive, clear about what it means to struggle, able to offer levels of empathy and compassion to others ; she continues to astound me. But before this “ending,” there was the beginning night of awareness of just how bad things were. No sleep. Only tears. And a memory that feels like it was yesterday:

I sat on the edge of my bed and sobbed, more deeply aware than ever before, just how alone I was as a single mom, more afraid than I’d ever felt, and more-than completely unequipped for what was happening in the mind and heart of my precious girl. Through tears and snot and not nearly enough Kleenex,  It would offer a panacea I no longer had at my disposal. How convenient and pleasant: to hand all this off somehow, to feel like in surrendering, in turning it over to God, that surely all things would work together for good.

Not believing this anymore left me feeling even more alone and more afraid. I wanted to pray, but knew that to do so would be little other than my desperate wish and a frantic grasping at anything that might ease my pain but do nothing to lessen hers. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t.

In the more than 10 years that have passed since that night, I have thought back on it many times. I have sussed out my cynicism, my anger, and certainly my angst. But still, my resistance to prayer has remained. It was a crossroads, to be sure: deeply longing for solace, but with seemingly nowhere to turn except within; to blow on some barely-lit fire inside me that somehow-but-barely enabled me to get up in the morning, fix her breakfast, send her to school, and hope and hope and hope.

I realize that all of this sounds dark and dreary. And at the time, it was. Now I remember it with endless gratitude. Yes, because she made it through that particular season of crisis. But also because I did: not broken or desolate, but more aware than ever before of what it meant to walk through “the valley of the shadow of death,” completely present to everything I felt.

Not some whimsical temptation or luring sin. Not that kind of desire: tepid, temporary, lite. No.

This desire was blazing, intense, undaunted, and undying. It was (and is) a full and unrestrained expression of everything within me. And a far cry from anything I’d ever known in prayer.

The Upanishads capture this, at least in part:

“You are what your deepest desire is. As your desire is, so is your intention. As your intention is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

Desire takes courage. And faith. There is no promise of an outcome we long for. No guarantee. Just sheer determination, firm belief, and an endless acknowledgement of what thrums within us in the deepest and most persistent of ways. It persists. It perseveres. It burns.

There are days and times when I feel a lingering ache for prayer’s comfort and solace. But less and less. I don’t need to be soothed, but enflamed. I don’t need to surrender, but rise up. I don’t need to find answers, but to take action. And my desire is what compels all of this and then some. Endlessly burning… one might even say without ceasing.

Belief: Then & Now

Jul 2, 2021 | Hope & Encouragement, Spirituality

There was a time in which any question about what I believed merited a simple, obvious, and expected answer. After all, I grew up in the church, went to Christian summer camps and later, a Christian college, was a missionary (!!), married a pastor, led Bible studies for women, even went to Seminary and got my Master of Divinity degree. I had a definitive understanding of who God was – and wasn’t. Until I didn’t. 

In the midst of all this, I divorced the pastor and left the church. I stopped teaching bible studies (though I do still tell its not-honored-enough-stories of women). And hardly definitive, I have an ever-shifting understanding/perception of the Divine. Which is exactly the way I like it! 

Distance from past beliefs, even from religion itself, does not mean disconnection from belief.

I still need and want to believe. NOT because I’m ailing or unmoored without such. NOT because I need something or Someone to rely on. But because what I believe in, how I believe, belief in-and-of-itself is what compels and shapes my story, my life, my world.

What has changed, of course, is the what and who – subject and object. 

Now, what and who I believe in is me. 

In many ways, the world in which I was raised taught me just the opposite. I learned to place my full reliance in the God that dwelled outside of me (at best, in my heart). I learned that I couldn’t trust myself or my desires. I learned that my body/feelings/thoughts were unreliable. I learned that I needed to be forgiven in order to be worthy of God’s saving. Until I un-learned all of these things. 

There is no need to choose between belief in the Divine and belief in self. 

Here is what I believe today: 

  • I believe in the Divine that dwells within me. 
  • I believe in (and trust) my desires. 
  • I believe in the wisdom, knowledge, and intuition present in my body, my feelings, my thoughts.
  • I believe I am worthy; I don’t need saving. 

None of these are at the expense of belief in the Divine, in the Sacred, in every-and-all things spiritual. These beliefs, when in place and practiced, are the Divine, the Sacred, the most spiritual presence and expression possible. Said another way, this: 

We see, know, and experience the Divine, the Sacred, every-and-all-things spiritual when we are truly and fully ourselves. 

And that? You and me living truly, boldly, out loud, full of desire and fully ourselves? Well, that might be enough to start a revival…or at least encourage a couple conversions!

May it be so. 

A late-night text

Mar 24, 2021 | My sort-of Sermons, Spirituality, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

I’ve been thinking about the wisdom that has shaped much of my life. I’m grateful for some of it, to be sure. There’s been a lot more that I’ve had to intentionally dismantle and deconstruct.

I was raised in the church. Both consciously and subconsciously it inferred, offered, and proclaimed Wisdom – as an institution, within its sacred text, because of its God. And not just a  wisdom, the wisdom. It was the only wisdom that I was to rely on, turn to, and build my life upon. I was dutiful. I was obedient. I was disciplined. And to be fair, it was this wisdom to which I turned, on which I relied, in which I took solace. The darker side was also true: when I didn’t turn to it, rely on it, or took solace anywhere else, I felt vast shame and guilt.

But it wasn’t just the church, religion, or God as wisdom source – it was men. (White) men were seen as the experts, the holders of authority, the ones I could and should trust. In completely transparency, for a very long time, I rarely-if-ever thought to consider anything else! They had the answers. And because that was so obvious, it was just as obvious that I did not have answers – or wisdom; that my thoughts could not be trusted, that I could not, should not trust myself.

Then there was academia. It would have never crossed my mind to question why all of the things I was learning were from (more) white men. Yes, I had a few women teachers along the way, but they were instructing me from textbooks written by white men. Even in college, as a Business and Communications major, everything I learned was from a man’s perspective, man-as-wisdom. I didn’t question a bit of it. I appreciated what I was learning. I took it in as gospel.

By the time I got to my Masters Degree (with a nearly-20-year break in the middle) very little had changed. The professors and authors were still almost exclusively white men – in my studies of both theology and therapy (especially theology). But it was also during this time that things began to shift. I took a class called Feminist Critique (taught by a visiting professor who was a woman and only assigned texts written by women) that opened me up to a wisdom that made me really, really angry.  She systematically revealed the white/male lens everywhere, influencing everything. And that lens was not mine.

At about the same time, probably not at all coincidentally, I began to experiment with the interpretation of women’s ancient, sacred stories through a non-male lens, through a woman’s lens, through a feminist lens, through my lens in order to pull forth something different, anything different. And it was this effort that became a practice that became my everything that enabled me to find, hear, and actually trust my own wisdom. For the first time.

A few weeks back, I woke up in the middle of the night and typed a text to myself – just so I wouldn’t forget the thought that was keeping me from sleep:

We need sources of wisdom that are distinctly feminine. Only they can mirror our experience in ways that allow the wisdom to actually land, to be relevant, to support and strengthen us.

I was pretty happy to see that text waiting for me the next morning.

I’m not opposed to the wisdom of men (well, maybe a little). What I want, though, is the wisdom of women – not in opposition, but as obvious choice.

Without such, it’s no wonder we walk through our lives doubting ourselves, not trusting our intuition, flailing in relationships, putting others ahead of ourselves, tamping down our desires, and wallowing in (often) self-inflicted shame. Everything we learn is not who WE are. Everything we compare ourselves to is not who WE are. This is the patriarchy, of course; the water we swim in, the air we breath, its insipid presence in everything we do, think, and feel.

But…

If we had feminine sources of wisdom – and saw them as reliable, trustworthy, honorable, valuable – we would have a template through which to understand ourselves that syncs with who we most closely are, who we most closely resemble, how we most often act, think, and feel.

Imagine it for a moment.

If I had grown up in a goddess-worshipping coven, it would have been normal for me to trust my body, to eschew anything that smacked of self-contempt, to always look within for answers, comfort, and strength. Even if I don’t take it to that lovely extreme, let’s say I grew up in a Christian home, attending church, going to Bible studies, but everything was focused on women. At church I would have heard stories that were not about a woman’s sin or shame; rather, their magnificence and strength and power. I would have never heard a single message – spoken, assumed, written, or preached – that told me I should be more submissive or more humble or more obedient; rather, I would have been extolled and encouraged to trust my voice, my heart, and yes, my wisdom. I would have grown up reading books written by women, novels about women (written by women), and even if my teachers and professors had remained mostly white men, that input would have been consistently “countered” by the reminder that at the end of the day, what I thought mattered. When I watched TV or read Seventeen magazine, I would not have been inundated by women’s objectification; instead, I would have known and understood that women’s bodies are our own, that they matter, that they are beautiful and perfect  – in every way, shape, and form. And I would have been very clear that attracting me was the end-all, be-all – not attracting a boy, a man, or a prince. Can you even imagine?

We need sources of wisdom that are distinctly feminine. Only they can mirror our experience in ways that allow the wisdom to actually land, to be relevant, to support and strengthen us.

This wisdom allows us to see ourselves in the mirror, to listen to the voice within that not only makes sense, but is 100% true and right. This wisdom teaches us to trust ourselves – which leads to agency and power – which leads to doing the unexpected thing, to rising up, to speaking out, to resisting anyone who tells us anything different – which leads to a disallowing of violence because of race or sexuality or difference of any kind, sickening entitlement because of gender or power, and ignorance based not in wisdom, but foolishness! 

 

So find that wisdom. Be that wisdom. Be that wise. It’s all within you. It always has been – for generations and generations, from the beginning of time. And it’s all yours to offer us. Imagine the world you’ll change, create, and birth along the way.

On the Phone vs. In a Pew

Nov 6, 2016 | Spirituality

I had a conversation yesterday with a friend. She’s married. I’m not anymore. She lives in the South. I definitely do not. She has a fulltime job outside her home. Mine keeps me here, in yoga pants most days and perched at my desk in my dining room. She attends church. I do not.

Despite our differences, it’s this last point that is our greatest place of connection. I, for all intents and purposes, left the church when I left my marriage to the pastor. She still attends, but wishes either that she didn’t have to or that she could find some resonance and affinity within. And for reasons that I completely understand, she still attends, she stays, she tolerates, and often – silently and in isolation – she rages. I listen. I nod. I get it.

I wonder if her situation is unique. But before the question even completely forms in my mind, I already know the answer. She is not. She is just like me. I was her – in a pew every Sunday; longing to hear something, anything different and knowing that I wouldn’t; caught between my desire for community, a safe and nurturing space for my daughters, the lack-of tension my absence would create in my marriage and my ambivalence, oft’ disdain, and endless frustration over what I witnessed, what I heard, what I felt – or didn’t.

There’s no one solution to this bind for her or for me, no all-inclusive answer that mitigates loss on the one hand and offers respite on the other.

There was a day when people attended church and (mostly) agreed with what they heard. They nodded in affirmation. They spoke or interned an “amen” when the message or the music resonated. They embraced friends – aware that they were among their own. And they left the confines of that sacred space feeling stronger, uplifted, encouraged – shoulders squared to the week ahead and grateful for a place and time in which they felt at home.

I suppose I am somewhat jaded, but I no longer believe that church is where I will experience this. Not because the people within are incapable of such, but because the system of beliefs to which I must accede in order to fit in is too incongruous for my soul to survive.

…church has become a spiritual, even a theological struggle for me. I have found it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a hierarchical heavenly realm, to recite creeds that feel disconnected from life, to pray liturgies that emphasize salvation through blood, to listen to sermons that preach an exclusive way to God, to participate in sacraments that exclude others, and to find myself confined to a hard pew in a building with no windows to the world outside. ~ Diana Butler Bass, Grounded

And yet, miraculously and gratefully, my soul does survive – and thrive – completely outside of this system (something I disbelieved while still within). I am supported and strengthened by relationship with people who are nothing like me, who do not know the stories of which I speak, who wonder who I am talking about (and why) when I mention the Syrophoenician or the Shunnamite, and who love me still.

Then every once in a while, like this morning, I have a conversation with a woman who gets my every story (including the Syrophoenician and the Shunnamite); we are separated by miles and even similarity, but no less desirous of friendship, kinship, and talk of sacred stuff.

I hang up and my soul breathes in a whispered “amen;” I utter an unspoken prayer of gratitude and give a wink-and-a-nod to something that feels akin to grace…maybe even God.

It is heartbreaking to be alone in one’s beliefs or lack thereof, even more so to be surrounded by people who believe (or don’t) far differently than oneself and feel unseen, unheard, unnoticed, unappreciated, un-understood. I am so profoundly aware-and-thankful that this is not my story today. And I hold such a place of tenderness and affinity for those who remain – for a myriad of legitimate reasons – in a story that is even remotely less-than the one they long for. Religious. Relational. In any form.

May we be ones who honestly name heartbreak – first and foremost our own; then on behalf of others. May we be holders and creators of safety and the sacred (even if “only” on the phone). May we be ones who bravely leave spaces that are not safe, do not heal, do not encourage and uplift. If we cannot, at least not yet or not now, may we be ones who boldly bear and bridge the gap, the ravine, the in-between. And may all of us – no matter our location, our circumstances, our beliefs, or the state of our souls, be ones who both receive and offer what is hungered for most, needed most, all that really matters: love and love and love.