“For all that is past Thank You; For all that is to come, Yes."

The whole thing was concocted over a burrito and a beer. The word that brought us together was intentional. The idea was to gather other liked minded women.

The event was conceived as a springtime women’s retreat. Ten said, “Yes!” to participating. It seemed like a propitious beginning.

Fast forward to late April, the morning of the Intentional Women’s Retreat. Eighteen inches of fresh snow covered nearly a foot of the same from the previous week. Texts began to hit my IPhone at 6:00 a.m.

“Has your street been plowed?”

“No”

“Would we be able to get up the narrow road leading to the cabin?”

“Don’t know.”

“Is the retreat a go?”     

“YES, absolutely!” I responded.  “We intentionally live in the Northland. We intentionally set this time aside to come together. See you there!”

The gathering was a powerhouse of career choices that makes any community function well: business finance, housing, education, human services, the arts, etc. We were mothers, wives, partners, divorced, single, straight, gay, believers, and agnostics. An amalgam that included one solidifying element: Intention.

As spiritual director of the retreat, I strove for a foundation from which I could somehow speak to the wisdom and experience of those seated before me. Using the words of Dag Hammarskjold, I began:  ““For all that is past Thank You; For all that is to come, Yes.”

Intention requires saying YES to love—love of self, love of existence, love of purpose, love of life itself.  Saying YES is the beginning of intentional living.

Saying YES is responding to something greater than yourself that is calling you out, forward, and beyond any fears you have.

Saying YES to love creates the possibility of being wide open to whatever comes and becoming willing to be fully in cooperation with it.

Saying YES to love is intentionally opening yourself up to be hurt, to be criticized, to be accused of being a non-team player…and YES, even to have your heart broken…open. 

Being intentional in one’s life is not about changing one’s career, or moving to a far off land, or ending a relationship…though it might be. You might need to say NO loudly and intentionally in order to say YES with all your heart and soul and mind. Again Dag Hammarskjold:

“I don't know Who, or what, put the question, I don't know when it was put. I don't even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone, or Something, and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.” *

This intentional gathering of women included amazing loaves of fresh bread, homemade soup, music, and laughter and tears, snowshoe walks, fireside talks...all the ingredients beginner minds need to purposefully answer the question, “How do I want to live more intentionally in my first, second, or third act of life?”  

How do you?

Peacebeinall, Jane  

*Markings by Dag Hammarskjold

Second Secretary General - United Nations

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Posthumously 

Where Beauty Blooms in the Desert

After my eldest daughter hiked the Sonoran desert, she phoned and said, “Mom, everything in the desert wants to kill you…even the plants!” 

Since she was raised near the blue waters of a Great Lake and a deep green, northern forest, it certainly must have seemed so to her.  Her observation made sense to me.

Once, I was a child of the prairie. It was a fairly benevolent place where vistas of jade colored cornfields stretched for miles. My greatest danger dealt with a possible fall down the barn's hayloft hole or lodging thistle hairs in my hand while pulling weeds in the soybean field. With a little forethought, both of these were preventable dangers. 

My imagination, however, never let me perceive the desert terrain as anything but hostile. True, I heard southwest-dwellers wax poetic about the beauty/splendor/loveliness of their arid surrounding; yet whenever I hiked their desert trails, the only thoughts coming to my mind seemed to be desolation/danger/loneliness.
  
During the past few years, the physical geography of a desert experience seemed to closely match an inner desert experience occurring in my own life. Everywhere I navigated, there seemed to be jumping Chollas that latched onto me with the same veracity as the living species itself. Just like the deceptive teddy bear cacti’s microscopic spines, these life events—once embedded—seemed near impossible to dislodge. 

Recently, however, my hike through the Sonoran was a completely different experience. Late winter moisture had watered the desert. Though I had hiked the region before, this time verdant green undergrowth covered the formerly dry, brown landscape. Miniscule, comb burr plants with flowers only 2 – 3 millimeters in dimension carpeted the desert floor in green. 

To my color-starved, northern eyes this was a feast! Mexican poppies shouted, “YELLOW!” from a rocky outcrop. Ocotillo sticks waved their emerald arms daring one to notice they were no longer shriveled or appearing like the living dead. The chubby, barrel cacti looked plump and full of life. 

Moving along the path with my hiking companions, I suddenly was aware of something bubbling up inside me.  I stopped for a moment, focusing on what was filling my head and flowing toward my heart.  Darned if it wasn’t joy!  A full, cup-running-over feeling of unadulterated joy watering my inner desert.

I began to laugh, and then…I began to run. I raced down a wash and up the next hillside. Holding my walking stick horizontally like a balancing pole, I hopscotched across some chunky crushed rock in a dry creek bed. Soon, I was Forrest Gump-ing it through the most beautiful Sonoran desert of my life, and it felt great!  

Around the next bend, I averted my steps away from the ever-grasping Chollas. "Ha," I thought,"You'll have to look for a new victim to vex!" 

There is much in this world that may lead individuals into their own, personal desert experience.  Each of us seems to have a tailor-made drought or two that threatens to squeeze the very life out of our souls. 

Many of the great religions of the world use this time of year to mark and remind us that desert experiences happen to all: Jews await Passover, Christians perdure through Lent, and every human being in our northern hemisphere awaits the return of more light at the Spring Vernal equinox.

How we come out of our desert seems to be not so much learning as much as it is unlearning our attitudes toward it. It is letting go of shoulds, musts, and ought-tos and refusing to judge others, or ourselves...especially ourselves...harshly. And, mostly, it is learning to look and see the possibility of beauty wherever or however it may show itself.

Of this I am certain: the rain will come; the spring will arrive. The desert will bloom again. Even if all around appears desiccated and void of life, it...joy...will come.

Peacebeinall, Jane

My Facebook page

Warrior Spirit

Looking through the window of my daughter’s home, the Pacific Northwest creeps into the morning light. The snowy mountains emerge, differentiating themselves from the flat surface of the slate grey, Lake Whatcom in the foreground. So far from home I am this morning.

So close to my heart.

My present “read,” is Margaret Wheatley’s new book*, “So Far From Home – Lost and Found in Our Brave New World.” She is a writer, teacher and speaker with a global perspective and wisdom that guides one to act locally.

Wheatley’s writing has inspired me for years and her latest continues that movement. The book’s dedication is: “For all of us who aspire to be warriors for the human spirit, and for those whose needs and suffering summon us to be brave.”

It takes a lot of bravery to be a warrior for the human spirit.

Last week, back in my own home, I checked in with a friend on Facebook. Two minutes prior she posted an alarm that while walking her dog before bed, she stumbled across some individuals who just completed shoveling an enormous swastika on our neighborhood pond…the hate symbol was more than 100 feet in diameter!  She called the police.

Stunned, I posted back the following: “This is our hood. We will not stand down for hate and will stand up for peace. Tomorrow morning, I’ll bring my shovel and my granddaughter and we’ll get rid of it.” 

Almost immediately, another neighbor posted an offer to help. I was elated and then I became scared.  Really scared.  Through the power of the Net, I had not only spoken out about my unwillingness to let this bald offense exist in my neighborhood, I had informed the culprits that I would be out there shoveling in the morning. Gulp! Sleep did not come easily that night.

Daylight helps courage awaken. So does the energy of a feisty two-year old.  I bundled up my granddaughter, grabbed my shovel, and headed to the pond with her in tow on the sled. 

The pond was deserted except for the hate symbol slowing dissolving through the ice. (The police had sprinkled a de-icer on it.) 

The Facebook neighbor had other plans for the day. The hate mongers of the previous night were probably sleeping it off.  We were alone. I was relieved.

Shoveling began. My granddaughter thought it a game, chasing behind me in the circle while I slowly broke the crusty snow into a Peace symbol.  This was going to take some time!

With one eye on my young charge and the other on the emerging pattern, I reflected upon how much energy gets wasted and how hard those who spread hate have to work to scare others.

I think it is in direct correlation to how hard peacemakers throughout the globe have to work to create a world that reveals justice and compassion and an unwillingness to bend to intimidation whether its verbal, emotional, visual, or physical. 

As Wheatley says, it takes a warrior spirit to stand up for the human spirit. This is not to be mistaken for a gun in hand, rocket launcher on the shoulder warrior. It is the heart warrior; one who is armed with nothing more than heart knowledge that working for peace in our homes, our neighborhoods and our world takes courage.

And, sometimes a shovel.

 Peacebeinall,  Jane

*Find this book, and more, at Berrett-Koehler Publishers - A community dedicated to creating a world that works for all. Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Suffering Sucks ~ Transformation, Not So Much

A few weeks ago, I found myself kneeling and praying on a Sunday morning, but it was not in a church.

The previous evening at a neighborhood BBQ, I met a woman suffering from debilitating migraines . She is a beautiful, brilliant woman, yet she cannot work. Often times, she cannot parent her children or love her husband in the ways she desires due to the incessant pain. Despite all treatments and therapies, nothing works to alleviate it. 

While conversing with her, it came to my mind that I should do something to help. “But, what,” I thought? “I’m no doctor; I don’t have any secret cures.”

All I could think to do to lighten her misery was to offer her a hand and foot massage. Even though I had no clue if such an action could help her, I knew that I could offer it

She came to my house early the next morning treading so lightly as not to make her pain worse through the pressure of her own footsteps. Gentle, soothing music played on my IHome. She sat, and I poured out lavender oil on her forearms and wrapped each hand and foot in a soft, moist towel.

Soon, I was kneeling on my floor at the feet of this lovely, anguished woman. As I cradled her feet and massaged her toes with fragrant oil, I found myself thinking of the Christian scripture story found in John 12: 1-8. There is a scene where a woman gently caresses the feet of Jesus who would, in turn, wash the feet of his disciples a few days later.

I thought of this Jesus who, while knowing of his imminent arrest and probable death, patiently knelt at the feet of his disciples. I thought of how those same companions would, in turn, be the next to suffer.

I prayed that the oil and my touch and the desires of my heart could be joined in such a way to help this woman before me know how deeply she was loved in all ways, by The Creator of All.

Did my action help reduce the pain of the woman before me for very long? I do not know, and I do not believe that matters. She left my house and returned to her home. Maybe I will or maybe I will not see her again. This also does not matter.

What matters is this: Because I have been emboldened by the support of others when I have suffered, I could fearlessly offer compassion to another in hers. My Spiritual Director has said that awareness of one's own suffering creates the possibility of joining it with the suffering throughout the world. If anything has happened in my life these past years, it is the "joining". It is transforming.

For instance, when I go shopping for groceries on a Friday night, the loneliness on some of the faces I see is palpable. There are the lonely ones, the frightened ones, and the elder ones who pass their carts by mine in the aisle. They have no rings on fingers. There are no companions by their side, nether men or women.

Collectively, I know most of we Friday night shoppers are not there because we have loved ones waiting for us at home. And so, I often say a little blessing for the one idling over the choice of canned peaches…or pears. Suffering for the sake of suffering is pointless.

Transformation of suffering comes upon our own inner awareness of its unifying ability to make us all one in our humanity. Suffering changes us—if we allow it—into softer beings capable of compassionate actions towards others.

This I believe: because you are human, it is possible that your compassionate acts begot of suffering allow you to beget compassion in others.

Maybe you didn’t pray at a mosque, temple or church this weekend. Rather, you possibly were a “living prayer” while sipping a cup of java with friends and listening to the story of their mother’s Alzheimer’s.  Or, maybe you celebrated the magnificence of The Creator by cooking eggs over a campfire and feeding your hungry family. Or, maybe you sat at a Blues Fest and joined others in music that lifts spirits and creates joy.

It is by the “joining” of others that we begin the “transforming” of ourselves. This is how peace is fanned into a flame. Keep it burning. And may….

Peacebeinall, Jane

Jane Haubrich Casperson, MA, is a Certified Spiritual Director and can be reached by contacting her at Peacebeinall@gmail.com

Are You Where You Are?

In a matter of 30 minutes, I bought a new lawnmower this weekend. Coming to the actual decision to purchase the mower has taken me since the snow melted, months ago. 

True, the old mower’s missing pieces were making it a bit dangerous, and it took two people to start it. No hyperbole! But, the actual purchase of a new mower wasn’t really about grass cutting or keeping a tidy yard – though both of those things can be important in being a neighborly neighbor. 

No, my conundrum was about making a new commitment when recent life events have clearly demonstrated that commitment means very different things to different people. For me, purchasing a mower with a three-year, “guaranteed to start” warranty meant I was committing to a way of life, a way of living, and I was going to continue showing up in my little community.

My investment, which the mower most certainly was monetarily, was one of saying, "YES" to a sense of place. It was my declaration of inter-dependence.  “I’m here to stay!” roared the shiny red, 2-stroke engine as it came to life on the first pull. “I am where I am!”

And this is a good place to be.  Neighbors to the west of my home provide wise grand parenting to my 17-year old daughter. For me, they sometimes provide after work, adult conversation and a relaxing glass of wine on their deck.

Those to the east of my yard exude youth, possibilities, and the occasional pit fire at night…a wonderful spot for philosophical and political explorations. A half block away, my precious granddaughter runs down the sidewalk saying, “Go Nana’s house, Nana’s house!"

The temporality of life demonstrates that despite changes, if you can learn to be where you are, it does not matter where you are. You can commit at any time to any place and declare your own inter-dependence. From there, comes joy...and in a world that sorely lacks for joy at times, this is a very good thing. This I know.  

So, where are you? 

                                                    Peacebeinall, Jane 

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~ 

Credit for this blog's title goes to a gifted local musician, Arlene Anderson. It is from a song on her CD,  Point of Departure.  The chorus goes like this:

Are you where you are?

Are you not where you are?

Go to where you are.

Life waits for you there.

Words of the chorus were adapted from a poem inlaid on the floor of the Oslo, Norway airport.  To order Arlene's CD contact:  aandersonus@yahoo.com.