Heart Energy

Invitation to Healing

“Two techniques have received attention: (a) directed methods, in which one seeks to achieve a specific outcome, and (b) non-directed methods, in which one asks for ‘the best thing to happen’ or ‘may thy will be done.’ In experiments with microorganisms, germinating seeds, and human tissue, both methods work, compared to controls who do not receive such intentions.”

                          Larry Dossey, M.D. (Reinventing Medicine)

         We all know someone who is going through a challenging time in their life. Most of us know more than one person. I have a friend who’s just begun chemotherapy, one whose home has tornado damage, one who is going through a battery of diagnostic tests, and one who is waiting for word of whether she’ll be accepted into a long-desired training program in Europe. I have no way of helping any of them beyond support, but maybe support is exactly what each of them needs.

         When we consider the fact that we are all connected by universal energy, that there really is no ‘empty’ space between us, it makes sense that our healing intentions and prayers could touch and affect persons at a distance. Quite a bit of research has been done with low levels of directed energy—plants germinate and grow faster, broken bones heal more quickly, post-surgical recovery is faster and requires less pain medication, etc. There is a saying in the body-work field; ‘energy follows intention.’ In other words, when you have your hands on someone, be sure that your intention is positive and in the best interests of the person you are touching. Giving a massage when you are distracted, angry, or disgusted is a very different experience for the person on the table than one in which you carry the intention to sooth and heal.

         Prayer and positive intentions are pure forms of energy. Whether you use directed prayer, in which you ask for a specific outcome, or non-directed, in which you ask for whatever is best for the person, is mainly of function of whether you are an introvert or extrovert. Extroverts are by nature more directive, and introverts are more likely to be non-directive. One is not better than another, and both are effective. So, if someone is on you heart today, send some positive energy their way. Wish them well, ask for what is in their greatest good. Each time they come into your mind, send out the intention for healing. Your heart-energy makes a difference.

                                  In the spirit,

                                  Jane

What does dress say about us?

Dressing for the Part

“The first purpose of clothes…was not warmth, but ornament. Among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to clothes.”

                                  Thomas Carlyle

         I woke from a dream this morning—a dream about a dress I had designed being fitted on a woman. The dress was a melon-colored shift with four ornamental buttons on the front, zipper in the back and no belt. I really liked its color and its simple elegance. Clothes have been called, “the furniture of the mind,” and, it’s true, you can tell a lot about a person by how they dress. I rarely shop, and when I do, it’s usually at a thrift store; but I like to take something ordinary and dress it up a little with a scarf or a simple piece of jewelry.

         Ornamentation is as old as the human race. Modern tattooing is still about spirituality and belonging, as it has always been. Gang tats say, ‘I belong to this group,’ and butterflies, roses, hearts and lotus blossoms are spiritual symbols, as are snakes and eagles. Just having a tattoo of any kind, in fact, says ‘I belong’. We humans want to declare that we’re part of something bigger, something identifying and powerful, and belonging is harder than it used to be because of our mobility. Just a couple of generations ago, western people stayed where they were born, and family name was how they identified themselves. Now, we are all over the map, literally.

         Dress is sometimes highly individual, and sometimes conforms to expected norms. What has made Lady Gaga such a sensation is that you never know what she’s going to wear, but you know it will be outrageous. The clothing ‘the beautiful people’ wear on the red carpet is supposed show just how glamorous they are. You will never see a dowdy get-up at the Oscars. Professional men still wear suits and ties to identify their relative importance compared to their staff.

         Nuns wear habits, Muslim women wear head coverings, monks wear robes, Arabs wear the turbans of their tribe, Scots wear the plaid of their clan, and so on. Our clothing is an external manifestation of an internal reality. It represents a dimension of our psyche laid bare. Pay attention to your dress today. What does it say about you?

                                  In the spirit,

                                  Jane

                                 

Good morning, Beloved!

The Shadow of the Beloved

“In truth everything and everyone

is a shadow of the Beloved,

and our seeking is His seeking,

and our words are His words…

We search for Him here and there,

while looking right at Him.

Sitting by His side, we ask:

‘O Beloved, where is the Beloved?’”

                          Rumi

         Rumi is the best known poet in the Western world, yet he was born in Persia in 1207. His poetry, more than any other I have read, speaks with the profound clarity of a child, and the wisdom of a sage. When I read the short piece above, while I would change the pronoun Him to God, or Your, I feel the depths of his love. His words exactly mirror the words of Jesus when he said, “The kingdom is within you and all around you and you do not see it.”

         I wonder why it is so difficult for us to see God in our world—in the beauty of nature, in the eyes of a child, in the voice of a man or woman. Is it because we want to believe in a supernatural God that lives above the sky and is utterly removed from us, or is it simply that putting God out there in the stratosphere keeps us safe—out of God’s sight, so to speak. That is reminiscent of the children of Israel who begged Moses to ask scary old God not to come among them in all that fire, lest they die. We don’t want to look into the face of our neighbor and see the face of the almighty, because that would mean that we too wore God’s countenance. How terrifying is that? Can you imagine looking in the mirror every morning and saying, ‘Good morning, Beloved; hope you slept well’!

         Yet, there it is again, God is us—our seeking is God’s seeking—our words are God’s words. We are not separate and God is not a supernatural being out in space. God is here, within and without; God is in the bonds that connect us and in the chains that bind us and in the freedom that makes us sing. God is all that there is, and when we are able to see that, even for a nano-second, our hearts open and our spirits soar.

                          Have a good day, Beloved,

                          Jane

Keep Hope Alive!

Sowing Hope

“Hope is the dream of a soul awake.”   French Proverb

         Every time a tornado flattens a community around Birmingham, there are nightly TV images of devastation, and interviews with worn-out people picking through the ruble of what used to be their home. One particular township, Oak Grove, has been leveled at least three times in the 30 years I’ve been living here. People there seem to fall into two categories; those intrepid stalwarts who say, ‘we’ve seen worse, we’ll rebuild,’ and those who just can’t take it anymore, and say, ‘we’re going to find somewhere else to live.’ I surely can’t blame them for giving up hope.

         When a person loses hope, a door somewhere in their soul slams shut, and that door is hard to reopen. Perhaps that is why, in the aftermath of a natural disaster, people come together and work to assist those whose lives have been impacted. We instinctively know that lending a hand is the way to keep hope alive. Almost always, those who have been helped express surprise and profound gratitude for the graciousness of total strangers.

         We humans can survive almost anything—physical hardship, hunger, privation—but we don’t endure for long without the wellspring of hope. What a gift we give when we say to someone in trouble, ‘you don’t have to do this alone, I will help you.’ Regardless of the challenge, and regardless of your own physical capacity to be of assistance, you can listen and encourage. Sometimes all you have to do is be present.

         Sow the seeds of hope today. Encourage someone; lift them up. “Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” (George Iles) Someday, when you need it most, someone will reach out to you, too.

                                  Shalom,

                                  Jane

Staying Power

Determination

“Don’t ever give up on something or someone that you can’t go a full day without thinking about.”

                                  Anonymous

         Do you remember your mother telling you, “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”? I do. I also remember all the half-finished quilts I discovered in her house after her death. She made beautiful, hand-stitched quilt-tops with ten-thousand tiny, carefully cut pieces, and then packed them away in a box and stuck them at the back of a closet. I found one crazy quilt made of velour and heavily embroidered, in the old style, with flowers, birds, fountains, trees. I’m sure she spent years sewing that one quilt alone, but there it was, on the top shelf of a closet, unfinished. If you ever want to get truly motivated to finish what you start, just spend a couple of years cleaning out your parents’ home.

         I am holding myself to a different standard—determined to finish projects before starting new ones. That’s terribly hard for an ‘idea’ person—tons of ideas, but quickly bored when the work becomes tedious. My mother was a perfectionist. If she decided one of her quilts was imperfect, she allowed frustration to rule the day. Think what our world would be like now if, say, Eli Whitney had thrown down his wrench before finishing the cotton gin, or Steve Jobs had given up in frustration at the imperfections in the first Apple computer!

         Giving up will never get the job done. Determination is a not only a virtue, but also a necessary skill in today’s world. Our young people will likely not live the American dream unless they develop the grit and fortitude to go the full distance. No one can do it for them, and they’ll appreciate life more if they have to work hard to achieve their personal vision. Encouragement is the gift that we can give them.

         If you have a dream, even if it seems like a pipe dream, break it down into achievable steps and work toward it. Achieving your dream may take time, but if you think about it every day, if it lives in your heart, don’t give up. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well!”

                                  Channeling my mother,

                                  Jane

Whatever the weather...

Questionable Weather

“Whether the weather be fine,

Whether the weather be not,

Whether the weather be cold,

Whether the weather be hot,

We’ll weather the weather,

Whatever the whether,

Whether we like it or not!”           Mamarocks

         Oscar Wilde once said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” I’ve no doubt he was right, but I have to tell you, whatever is going on with the weather is just not right. Yesterday, on January 24^th, I had to put the air conditioning on in my car. The tulip trees, forsythia and japonica are in full bloom. Jonquils are opening. While beautiful, having spring flowers in January is not good, y’all. Even in the Deep South.

         People around here say, ‘Oh, just enjoy it’, and truly, that’s all we can do. I remember Alaska just a few weeks ago with more than ten feet of snow and heating fuel running out. I’m thankful not to be there, even though I would have loved seeing the Northern Lights at their glowing best this week. We, however, had eight tornadoes through Alabama earlier in the week and more severe weather is forecast for today. It does not bode well for the actual spring foul-weather season.

         There is nothing that puts me in touch with my frail humanity quite as quickly as watching a funnel cloud bearing down on my city. No matter how smart, or feisty, or well prepared I may be, it is only the luck of the draw that spares me and takes my equally good-hearted neighbor. Nothing I have done, nor ever will do, determines my fate. In the end, nature is an impersonal force, and not the will of a supernatural deity. God does not cause it, and cannot stop it, and no amount of human summoning will turn it one way or the other. That’s why it chafes when I hear people say, “Well, the good Lord spared me today,” when there are children and old people dead in the debris, and lives and livelihoods destroyed all around them. We need to think how insensitive that statement is before we blurt it. It is enough to say, simply, “I’m thankful to still be here.” I guess I’ve ‘gone to preachin’ but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is. I hope wherever you are today, the weather is fine and seasonally appropriate.

                                  In the spirit,

                                  Jane

Reaching down...

True Grit

“Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.”

                                  Mohammad Ali

         My friends, Ron and Fern, were in the path of the tornado Monday night. They made it out alive, but seven trees came down on their property, their home was damaged and an outbuilding was picked up and tossed on top of their cars. It’s one of those ‘can’t win for losing’ scenarios. Fern was supposed to have her chemo port taken out on Tuesday. She’s made it through that god-awful treatment and has a clean bill of health from her cancer, but now her house has been trashed by the randomness of nature. Some people would give up. Fortunately, Ron and Fern are made of sterner stuff.

          My grandmother, Mama, used to say, “What don’t kill you will make you stronger, gal.” There’s some comfort in that, I guess, but it sounds like a 50-50 sort of deal. We’d all like to live on easy street; few of us do. Certainly, Fern doesn’t. She’s the kind of person who just puts her head down and butts her way through whatever life throws at her. She and Ron foster-parented more than a dozen children, and adopted three. I remember Fern coming to church with little babies of all hues, and loving each and every one like it was her own. She hasn’t lived her life on the safe side, so when cancer struck, she took it in stride—just one more hurdle to jump. She doesn’t take time to lament the height of the hurdle; she just leaps and leaves the rest to God.

         I think Mama and Ali were correct; when you’ve reached down into your own soul and found the grit to face defeat, you know you have it in you to win. It helps to have a few models of success along the way—not the Mitt Romney type of success so much as the Fern type. It will be an honor to go out to Trussville and help her butt her way through that tornado damage.

                                  In the spirit,

                                  Jane