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Michael Longley, Irish poet, survivor of the Troubles, and soothsayer wrote this poem as the whiff of a ceasefire blew across Belfast in the 1990s.

I thought of it this morning as I woke to thoughts of our election day.

“All Of These People”

Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war

Is not so much peace as civilisation?

He knew

Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died

At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister,

And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem

Is the twenty-one flavors children have by heart.

Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher

Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey;

Our corner shop sells everything from bread to kindling.

Who can bring peace to people who are not civilized?

All of these people, alive or dead, are civilized.

 

Though we have never been a truly peaceful nation, I believe we are a civilized one. Civilization creates space for diverse opinions, and respectful dialogue. It is at the heart of every human interaction. It is the only way a society works.

Maybe tomorrow we can remember that and ask our elected officials to do the same. Enough with the obstructionism and party politics. Enough with the gridlock and corporate interests taking precedence over those of everyday people. Get to work creating a government that works for us instead of leading us into unworkable situations, at home and abroad.

 

I heard this poem recently while listening to an excellent interview with the poet Michael Longley on On Being. I highly recommend it!

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One of my favorite pictures of Halloween 2016. She’s joy incarnate!  

Like many of you perhaps, I relished going on to Facebook over the last two days and seeing dozens of pictures of adorable kids dressed up for Halloween. It was especially poignant for me, since my own kids are past the point of painted chubby cheeks and crazed sugar highs. But soon enough, my feed was populating again with news reports and commentaries about the many things that are going wrong in our country these days. Reading about Trump’s unethical business dealings and new email innuendos about Clinton, the struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, the latest political scandal, or refugee crisis, my heart grows heavy with anxiety and confusion. I find myself spinning. What do I do with all this (mis)information? The oppression and injustice? The violence and cruelty in our politics and on our prairies? What in the world can I do about all this suffering?

I don’t know.

I felt helpless the day before Halloween and I felt it creeping back up on me today. Like a sugar addict with her hand in her kid’s candy bowl for the twentieth time, I pass one sickening headline after another and feel myself getting nauseous from the over-indulgence. I want to stop, but I tell myself I can’t stop, because then I’m just burying my head in the sand, using my privilege to pretend like it doesn’t matter. I’m safe even if I don’t engage. I will be so grateful when the election is over and I hope (though I know it may be a false hope) that at least some of these issues will be resolved.

So when I sat down to pray this morning with a heavy heart, I didn’t know if I would find silence, or be able to still my busy mind. I didn’t know if my “prayer of quiet” would actually bring any, or if it would just be an exercise in futility. I was open to either outcome, since the latter is more frequent than the former. But I have been taught that success lies in the intention, more so than the execution and so I continued.

As is my habit, I opened up my copy of Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening before I began my sit. And this is what I read:

Thomas Merton wisely challenges us not to just slow down, but, at the heart of it, to accept our limitations. We are at best filled with the divine, but we have only two hands and one heart. In a deep and subtle way, the want to do it all is a want to be it all, and though it comes from a desire to do good, it often becomes frenzied because our egos seize our goodness as a way to be revered.

I have done this many times: not wanting to say no, not wanting to miss an opportunity, not wanting to be seen as less than totally compassionate. But whenever I cannot bring my entire being, I am not there. It is like offering to bring too many cups of coffee through a crowd. I always spill something hot on some innocent along the way.

 

My heart sank as I read his words. Whom have I burned?

I want to do my part to make the world a better place, more loving and thoughtful, and in times like these, when so much of the world is hurting and so much of it is right in front of my face, I start to lose focus. I start “liking” everything and I want to be here, there and everywhere with my words and prayers and money and presence, and when I can’t, I feel like I’m part of the problem, not the solution. Left unchecked, my desire to do the “right thing,” leaves me feeling helpless. I sat there this morning, convicted of the fact that over the last several weeks, I’ve scalded people on my political left and right, and probably even those who sit at my left and right around the dinner table.

It can be one of the hardest questions to ask ourselves: What is mine to do?

(Hint: It’s NOT everything!)

Deep down, we know what is ours to do. If we don’t, it’s because we haven’t slowed down enough to hear the answer. Or we’ve ignored it, because it’s asking something of us that we don’t want to give, or give into yet. But when we create space and silence, the answer comes – like it did for me this morning.

I know what is mine to do. I was born to Love – to find it, to make it, to spread it. I’m a smiler, a talker and a laugher, a hugger, a baker, a reader, and a teacher. What can I do with that?

I can do all sorts of things with that, but I have to be there! If I am vacant, preoccupied, or feeling badly about what’s left undone, then none of the things I do have the same impact. I’m just a body, going through the motions, not half the woman I was born to be.

As this election season winds to a close, how are you feeling? Are you clear about what is yours to do, especially on November 9th? How can you make the world a better place?

Because no matter who wins, we’re definitely going to need the help.

 

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his or her work for peace.”

Thomas Merton

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I don’t often get political in this forum, but I’m going to take a risk and go there today. As Election Day nears, it seems to me that barring any extreme revelations everyone has settled on whom they are going to vote for and why. We’ve come to terms with our decision and I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. I appreciate that during this painful election season, most of us have had to dig a little deeper than usual. Instead of simply pulling the lever along party lines, we’ve had to consider what is of ultimate importance to us, what we can live with and what we can’t live without. I think it’s healthy that my kids are being exposed to so many heated conversations at the dinner table, even though Tim and I consistently vote the same way.

But if you live in California there is an issue you may not have decided on yet: the two death penalty propositions.

Let me say right off the bat that I do not believe in the death penalty. From the research I’ve done, it fails to work as a serious deterrent to crime, as a cost-saving measure, or as an instrument of justice, but I do understand how significant it must feel when a perpetrator forfeits their life in payment for their crimes. I’m not saying it’s an easy decision to make, but if you are conflicted about which is the better option, I’m hoping you’ll read on.
For the last decades, the end-the-death-penalty movement has been growing across the nation and in each election cycle, Californians get closer and closer to making the decision to end the practice in our state. In fact, we got so close four years ago that Prop 66 was written simply to confuse the issue and keep the death penalty in place. The motto of Prop 66 is that they can “mend it not end it,” but I don’t believe that’s possible and certainly not according to their method, which is to hurry up executions by REDUCING the number of safeguards. The efficient answer isn’t the right one in this case, nor does it address any of the greatest moral and practical objections to this increasingly rare method of justice. You might be surprised to see the company we keep on a global scale by maintaining this practice. Check it out here. (Spoiler Alert: China, North Korea and Iran make the list.)

But apart from practical reasons for abolishing the death penalty, I feel even more strongly about the moral ones. As most of you know, I have some personal experience with being “pro-life.” I was raised a Catholic Christian and part of my upbringing was to honor a “consistent ethic of life,” in the words of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, from “womb to tomb.” That ethic played a huge role in my decision to change the course of my life at 19 and become a birth mother. Abortions were safe, affordable, and readily available and many friends urged me to make that decision. It could have all been over within 24 hours of that positive pregnancy test, but I believed in the value of protecting a child’s life over preserving the privileged conditions of my own. I believed it on an intellectual and moral level, but I also believed it on an instinctual one. We are made in the “image of God” and I was not about to extinguish that Divine spark. Instead, my desire has always been to nurture that spark within myself and at the very least, claim and hold space for it, especially when others don’t see it in themselves, or their enemies.

But being “pro-life” was never a political litmus test for me, because having that ethic goes so far beyond simply outlawing abortion. Conception and birth are the first steps of life, but they are not the only ones that matter. I love this statement by Sr. Joan Chittister clarifying the terms for her audience.

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It’s easy to cherish those first few breaths of innocent life, but we are by no means allowed to forget the rest. I love how Richard Rohr puts it. When people insist that “God loves innocent life,” he responds, “Oh dear, I hope not!” for who among us is innocent? Beyond the implications of what “pro-life” means when it comes to social services, education, and our moral obligations, for me, being “pro-life” is also reflected in how I respond to end of life issues such as suicide, aging, euthanasia and mental health issues.

And if you aren’t “pro-life,” but are pro-justice, then please consider the fact that innocent people die through our use of this instrument and that is not justice. More and more DNA exonerations take place every year. Additionally, prisoners on death row are overwhelmingly people of color, of poverty, and of limited mental capacity and that is not justice. Their percentages are not commensurate with the rate at which they commit heinous crimes, but are rather a direct reflection of the life-saving privilege that money, color and connections can buy. If you believe that #alllivesmatter, then voting Yes on Prop 62 and No on Prop 66 is one way to stand up and show your support for the lives that many would rather forget. Prop 66 does nothing to address these (and other) deeply unjust patterns.

Grappling with this subject is difficult, especially if you were raised to believe that all people were equal in the eyes of the law and that justice would always be served when it simply isn’t true.

I don’t have the space here for the data and detailed statistics arguing why the death penalty doesn’t work. Other people have done it passionately and effectively, so I’m sharing a list of books and films that have shaped my thoughts on the subject. And there are a lot of thoughts to be shaped!

  • Bryan Stevenson: Just Mercy
  • Fr. Greg Boyle: Tattoos on the Heart
  • Sr. Helen Prejean: Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents
  • Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
  • Thirteenth, now of Netflix

And finally, I want to address one more issue. One of the biggest arguments for keeping the death penalty in place, and one of the hardest to refute, is that  so many of the victim’s families want it to remain. I cannot even pretend to know the depth of their pain, but in the case of many families, the execution of justice through the death penalty did not bring them the relief they sought. After having gone through the process, more and more family members are speaking out against the death penalty. Here is a small collection of their testimonies, as well as the example of Tamika Brown that I wrote about in early 2015.

The bottom line? I’m voting

Yes on 62 and No on 66.

For more information, you can check out Death Penalty Information Center, or Yeson62.com 

Finally, if you are Catholic and want to hear an extensive interview with Jennifer Bonakdar, Yes on Prop 62 leader, as well as Beth Webb, a sister of a murder victim, who is opposed to capital punishment, you can tune in HERE to the Immaculate Heart Radio replay.

 

 

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Graduation night with Richard Rohr, my teacher and hero

Disclaimer:

It’s been difficult for me to write after my last post about “The Conspiracy of the Universe,” about Sarah, adoption, and family. Those ideas are so big that writing about anything else feels small. My fear is that you’ll open this post thinking, “How’s she going to top that?”

The answer? I’m not.

I can’t top that story, but I can’t stop writing either, so I’m going to ask you to bear with me while I get this one, the one after the “good one,” out of the way.

 

“Being Sent”

 

Before the kids went back to school (8/24), before my 45th birthday (9/11), before the cosmically-engineered beach day (9/18), I celebrated another major milestone. On August 25, I was “sent” from The Living School for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM. While a graduation implies some kind of mastery over content, a “sending” is something else entirely. My “Sending Certificate” says it all:

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These words perfectly reflect the essence of my last two years of (in)formal education. As a cohort, we studied church history, the mystics, the ascetics, the prophets, cosmology, theology, spiral dynamics and non-dual consciousness. We read a lot; we wrote a little; we discussed much and I loved it all. I found friends and perhaps most importantly, I found a deeper, truer version of myself. It was liberating to know that I was going “all in” and that nothing else would be coming out. It freed me from the need to impress, or excel. I could just show up, do the work and trust that it would be enough.

But a lot of people have asked me why I did it, or what it was “for,” so I thought this might be a good place to try to explain.

From the time I was young, I had a sense that there was “something more” to faith than my religion teachers were telling me, more to it than the priests were letting on. I looked around at the people in the pews, just going through the motions, and I thought, “What’s the point if you don’t really mean it?” By the time I was a teenager, finding that “something more” and making it matter became a constant call in my life. I was always searching for meaning through books, at retreats and conferences, and in church communities. And each step of the way I found something deeper and truer about God and myself, so I just kept going.

One of my most transformative experiences was a retreat led by Paula D’Arcy, where she challenged me to get out of my head. As forty approached, she assured me, it was time to start working on transformation and integration, not just on the level of information. With her encouragement, I started my early morning walking meditations, body prayers and conversations with a spiritual director. I started sitting in silence, not always using my words to make sense of everything. (Believe it or not, I actually write far less now that I used to.)

When I applied to The Living School in 2013, I had other choices, including a traditional Catholic seminary, but my major criterion for deciding was this: I wanted to make it count. I was and continue to be a wife, mother, part-time teacher, volunteer and writer. The calling and curiosity were my own, but the resources I was going to be using were not. So whatever I did, I wanted it to work for all of us. Even if I was the only one overtly seeking “something more,” I wanted all of us to experience it.

So there was really only one place I could go and that was The Living School, because they promised not just an education, but transformation. According to their website, you should only apply if you “are willing to receive the lessons of darkness and suffering, and are open to profound transformation and change of consciousness.” And even better, despite your commitment, “formal degrees or certification are not offered. The reward is the experience itself—the learning and practices that will support your continued growth as a fully human, God-indwelled being.”

I was attracted and terrified by the prospect, which is a pretty compelling reason to move forward with just about anything in my mind. Of course, my ego screamed at me to head for the high holy ground of a traditional seminary, but my heart told me I was finally home – that I had found the place and the people who would offer me “the more” I had been looking for my whole life. The core faculty Fr. Richard Rohr,  James Finley and Cynthia Bourgeualt didn’t disappoint. They not only showed me “the more” in their teachings, but they showed me how to find “the more” for myself – in ancient texts, like Bonaventure, John of the Cross, and Meister Eckhart to name just a few, as well as in modern teachers, like Ilia Delio, Raimon Pannikar, Ken Wilbur, Thomas Merton and Teillhard de Chardin. They showed me how to access “something more” through personal practices, like centering prayer and chanting.

Most significantly, they showed me how to recognize the “something more” in my every day life. For me, that is where “the more” matters the most – in how I respond to the people I love, as well as the people I don’t.

I’ve always thought that what we do matters more than what we believe. But through the Living School, I have also come to see that what we do is not more important than who we are and how we show up in our lives. Our actions matter, but so does our energy. Our presence makes an impact, but so do our intentions, (something our Buddhist sisters and brothers have been trying to tell us all along).

To quote one of Richard Rohr’s favorite lines, “How you do anything is how you do everything,” and so for the past two years, I have been learning to do “everything” in a whole new way – from a contemplative stance – not led first and foremost by my own agenda, or my ego’s need to be right or successful, or even on the timetable I set for myself. Of course, this “(un)learning” was and continues to be a dismal failure much of the time, but the Living School accounted for that too.

Unlike the formal religious education I had previously received, the faculty affirmed that “It all belongs” –my life, my work, my family, my gifts and especially my failings. God is the Great Recycler and so nothing is wasted. Not one poor decision, mistake or over-reaction. Not a single moment of consciousness, of freedom, of forgiveness, or letting go. God uses all of it. Every conscious act of love is a participation in the Divine economy of the Trinity, a non-stop waterwheel of selfless, generative, creative and life-giving action on behalf of the world.¹

The Living School gave me the education to know and the experience to confirm that we are not separate from that Holy Love and relationship; we are an intimate and intrinsic part of it. Like Jesus the Christ, we are also God’s beloved, God’s chosen, God’s unique manifestation in the world. And while we cannot force that recognition, or make those experiences of divine union occur (We cannot be mystics on demand!), in the words of James Finley, we can “assume the inner stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by those moments of graced awareness.”

I believe that “knowing” our true identity is absolutely critical to the healing of the world. If you look at the lives of the mystics, the holiest of saints, the Mother Theresas, the Gandhis, the Martin Luther King Jr.s,  it was “knowing” their chosen status, as well as their confidence in the grace of God that changed everything for them and allowed them to change the world as we know it. It was “knowing” their place in the Divine flow of Love that allowed them to be the yeast that leavened the dough, the mustard seed that created a living sanctuary for others to flourish. If we don’t get that piece right, if we don’t know who we are, then everything else falls flat.

Now, if all this sounds a little cosmic, a little too touchy-feely for you, I will admit that a different student would talk about The Living School in an entirely different way. Everyone enters the program with their own agenda and finds their own outcome.

But when it comes right down to it, what I learned through almost three years of daily contemplative study and prayer, practice and community, in the midst of my beautiful and chaotic family life, is that Love is the engine of it all.

And unless I spend time every day doing the work of unmasking my ego, its illusions of power and control, separateness and superiority, I can grind that engine of Love to a halt, and for me that is the greatest failure. And yes, I fail, but in the words of Maya Angelou, “Still, I rise” and try again each and every day.

  1. The Divine Dance is Rohr’s new book about the Trinity that just came out. If you are at all interested in changing, improving, or even destroying the traditional Christian image of God as a bearded old man, sitting on a cloud in judgment, READ THIS BOOK!

 

 

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In the middle of last week, I felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to see my family. They all live 100 miles away or so and have busy lives, with jobs, kids and hectic social calendars. It had only been a month or so, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t send out an S.O.S., or even a guilt trip. I simply sent out an invitation via text message:

 I am missing my family something fierce these days. Is anyone free to come meet me in San Clemente this weekend? Saturday or Sunday?

They had early morning soccer games and late night concert tickets, home projects and volunteering commitments, but miraculously, they all said yes. Sunday morning they were willing to drive forty miles to see me and my family. The only ones missing would be Keara, away at college, and my parents, who are currently crossing the Atlantic on a Disney cruise. Since we were going to be near some of our best friends, I texted them the invitation as well. I immediately heard back:

We are around all day. We will join you wherever you guys end up. Just let me know! Yippee!

Well, that’s awesome, I thought and I went through the rest of my week with a smile on my face, knowing that Sunday would be a good day. But as the week went on, the thought of Sunday started to lag. Our family was out late Friday and Saturday nights; I was speaking at our church on Sunday evening and nightly school, work and social events are lined up for the next six days. I didn’t need an additional hundred-mile roundtrip, beach extravaganza to be happy.

What was I thinking? I asked myself as the alarm went off on Sunday morning. (Alarms should never go off on Sunday mornings!) But we loaded up the truck with surfboards, wetsuits, fins and frisbees and headed up the coast to meet our crew.

Of course, the day was fabulous and worth every ounce of effort. The sun never really came out, but as you can see, it didn’t slow us, or our fun down.

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My baby sister, Amy and I, always make our own fun!

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As we piled in the car to head home, I pulled out my phone to send a birthday text message to a very special person.

Twenty-five years ago yesterday on September 18, 1991, I gave birth to Sarah Moses, my first-born daughter and twenty-five years ago today, I gave her up for adoption. She had been on my mind all week as this milestone birthday approached. I had already sent off a birthday card and made plans to meet up with her mom, Dee. Sarah is finishing up grad school in Los Angeles, so getting to see her is always a challenging proposition!

I could have called, but instead I wrote:

Happy Birthday darling girl! I can’t believe you are 25 today. I am thinking of you, love you and spent the morning with my brothers and sisters who all held you the day you were born and loved on you. My best friend Laura sends her love. She was there that day as well and she gave me a big hug for you. You are always in my heart Sarah Moses and I hope you feel my love over the miles.

I hit send and then I laughed.

What had I done? Somehow, unconsciously, without ever making the connection, I had gathered around me the very people who had been present to me on that beautiful and heartbreaking day, a quarter century ago.

On that day, I was physically and emotionally exhausted, in love with my newborn daughter and letting her go. I had told my mom in advance that I wanted my family to come meet her. Even though she wouldn’t be a part of our lives, I wanted us to celebrate her birth together. It was a school day, so my dad drove my 14 and 11-year-old siblings, Tim and Amy, a hundred miles through rush hour traffic to be there. Charlie, my older brother, was at school at USD just around the corner, and he brought his then-girlfriend, Laura, with him to lend support.

When we got home from the beach, I pulled out my photo album from the day of Sarah’s birth and found the family photo that included the baby girl who celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday yesterday.

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September 18, 1991

I sent it to her with the caption: Your birth family on your birth day!

I also discovered pictures of moments I had forgotten, showing the tenderness with which she and I were both held that day.

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In The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho writes: “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” Though I loved the book, I never really believed the message. There are too many examples from my own life and those of others that seem to refute it, but yesterday, my experience was undeniable.

The universe conspired to bring me something I wanted, even though I didn’t know why I wanted it. I put it out there, an invitation, and twenty-five years later to the very day, I was again surrounded and held with tenderness and love, in joy and celebration of being a family.

Last night, I looked through all the photos I took at the beach yesterday, of my siblings and Laura (yes, the then-girlfriend, but still dear friend), and their spouses and children, and I saw the Universe conspiring again.

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Some of my crazy beach crew kids from the Bush,Wilson, Gebhard and Kirkpatrick families

Before we packed up, I made some of the kids pause for a picture. They did and then they started to pose themselves. They were laughing and falling, clamoring for the shot before they dropped their friend or cousin or sibling on the ground. I stared in disbelief at the photos last night at what I didn’t see when I was taking them. They were holding one another, like babies in their mother’s arms, like each of their parents had held Sarah on the day she was born.

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Top: Molly holds Maddie B. while Finn photobombs Bottom: Maddie B. holds Sia G. and Nick holds his cousin Cole (who also just happened by!)
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Molly and Wyatt Wilson take turns, while Nathan holds the love of his life, my sister Amy and Nick shows off his feats of strength by taking on Finn.

Last night as I lay in bed with Tim, I almost wept in surprised gratitude for the way it all came together, the way life unfolded and encircled upon itself, all in one day and in one fell swoop. I am so glad the Universe responded, even though I was blessedly unaware of the reason for my call.

I think that’s how the Universe conspires. It doesn’t necessarily bring us what we want to be happy, but it brings us what we need to be whole. It doesn’t respond to the dreams we broadcast out loud, but listens instead to the whispered longings of our soul. And when it shows up, whatever “it” is, we have to be open to it. We have to let go of what we think we need to be happy, so we can be present to the healing that’s possible in that moment, through the seemingly random confluence of people and places, songs and situations that filter through our days. Call it synchronicity, or quantum entanglement. Call it Love, or call it God, but no matter what, call It to you and then look for it to come.

 

P.S.

As complete and beautiful as yesterday was, I wish Keara Moses, the daughter named in honor of, but NOT as a replacement for, her older sister, could have been there with us. I also wish my mom and dad could have been present. To see all of us together brings them such joy. Pam Kantrud, is another significant person from my life at that time. She was the mother of the family I lived with while I was pregnant, and she was there on Sarah’s birth day too, counting my breaths, rubbing my back, and cooing over the beauty of my newborn baby girl.

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My mom and Pam, my fearless “midwives” who guided me through Sarah’s birth

And Sarah? Do I wish she was there too? Of course I do, but that’s a story for another time. In all things related to her, I work to find the delicate balance between loving her as my daughter and knowing she is someone else’s pride and joy, of calling her family, but respecting that she has her own. My own family, large and small, has all been able to spend time with her and I hope there will be ever more opportunities for that.

And finally, Tim. As I’ve mentioned before, he was there that day and every day since, holding my life in a tender embrace.

Tim Kirkpatrick

 

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I know this is a kind of strange and unpleasant image. It wasn’t exactly where I thought I’d start this post, but it’s kind of fitting.

I woke up this morning, feeling under fire, kind of like you do on a Monday morning, when the weekend has sucked up every last ounce of your time and energy. I set my alarm, said my prayers, and started making lunch for my kids. There was only a heel of bread, enough turkey for one kid, expired mayonnaise and an apple that looked good on the outside, but was turning dark in the middle. But don’t worry! After fifteen years of making lunches, these things are not a problem. It’s a simple matter of sleight of hand and a confident presentation.

But twenty minutes later, as I was cleaning up the kitchen, a lesson caught up with me. As I poured expired milk down the drain, I saw the brown center of the apple, peeking out from under the dishes. Oops! That was a #signoflove, but who’s got the time? I dumped out the cold coffee pot. It didn’t move. I turned on the water and hit the garbage disposal button, but still Love didn’t budge.

Okay. I get it.

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If Love remains in the compost pile of a dirty kitchen sink, then Love remains in the compost pile of our lives. Apparently, this was a message I needed to hear.

Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 45. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t love what I saw, so I looked around and I liked that a lot better.

I saw a husband, who is also my best friend. He’s the provider of stability and sound advice, but also the purveyor of all things creative and silly.

I saw three kids, each unique in their gifts and their challenges, but unified in their love for me and each other.

I saw countless friends and family who remembered me with texts, messages, phone calls and cards.

I looked around this morning and saw that I didn’t have a birthday “day.”

I have a birthday life.

Everyday, I can wake up and celebrate.

In the predawn darkness, I have a warm body lying next to me, a heart keeping time with mine.

In the silence and stillness of the morning, I sit with God and remember I am Loved.

In the busyness of my days, I have work to do and a healthy body and mind to do it.

In the fall of the evening, I have the privileges of my life to be grateful for and the hope of getting to do it all over again tomorrow.

Amidst all those daily routines, I also have access to hot coffee and cold beer, not to mention clean water and fresh food. There are sunny skies and good people in my life who bring me laughter and conversation and full-bodied hugs, any time I need them. The Pacific Ocean is only ten minutes away and I have a car with gas in it!

Who gets to live this life?

I do!

That’s what I remembered this morning.

This life is a gift. It’s mine; it’s the only one I’ll ever get and I want to celebrate it – all of it – even the stuff I didn’t ask for.

No one gets everything they want, or keeps everything they have. I may prefer to smile, but tears have something to teach me as well, as do hard conversations and unpleasant truths. While I tend to shove those packages to the back of the pile, sometimes they’re the greatest gifts of all, because they give me the opportunity to rediscover who I am and who I want to be.

At 45, I just want to be grateful, but I’m not always.

I just want to be here, but I often fantasize about being somewhere else.

I just want to Love, but instead, I close up shop when I’m feeling lazy.

At 45, I have a birthday life, but I don’t appreciate it as much as I should.

So, that #signoflove in the dirty sink?

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Yeah, thanks for that Universe, as well as everyone else who reminded me of my birthday life and helps me live it. You’re the gift that just keeps on giving and for that, I’m grateful.

 

 

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We are finally at the end of this linguistic journey through some of the central themes of creativity. Thanks for going with me. We make so little time to explore subjects that make us uncomfortable; we’d much rather tread on familiar ground. But pushing ourselves to write these letters, (instead of just thinking about writing them) is one way to check out the terrain and see where new roads might lead. We can decide later if we want to take those roads, but if we never get a bird’s eye view of the area, we’re not likely to set out on the adventure.

And so, DIVINITY.

Liz Gilbert was really intentional about choosing this word. She didn’t want to use God, because it carries so much baggage and can also be limiting. In any given audience of real life bodies, or readers, there may be atheists, agnostics, Christians, former Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and others. We all have a different word for the Ultimate Source of Life and Love, and each word carries a different nuance. The Divine has as many manifestations as there are people on earth, birds in the sky, flowers in the field, or stars in the universe. While a mystery is something “ultimately unknowable,” the Divine Mystery might be better described as “endlessly knowable.”1 We’ve been describing it for millennia and it’s pretty clear we’re not losing steam.

Now, a mystic has a very important job. A mystic is someone who has had an intimate experience of the Divine, and it is their sacred duty to share what they learned from that experience. Some do it well and publically, while others do it quietly in their everyday lives, but no matter what time period a mystic lived in and no matter what faith tradition they came out of, virtually every one of them shares the same message. If we believed what the mystics have been saying for thousands of years, it would change everything! While I might have shot for more poetic language, Liz Gilbert nailed it.

We’re all fine! It’s going to be okay. Don’t be afraid.

Let me repeat that mystical message for the 98% of us who didn’t get it.

We’re all fine! It’s going to be okay. Don’t be afraid.

That, my friends, is the “fall out” from a Divine experience. You know you are safe; you are secure; you no longer sweat the small stuff.

As you can imagine, this makes mystics difficult to live with. They come back fearless, taking on their culture and traditions, theologians and authority figures. They don’t want to destroy those things; they just know those things are beside the point! Religious leaders believe it will all be okay too, at least for some of us, at some point, but they believe the only way to get there is through rule-keeping and discipline. Mystics just jump ahead to the finish line. They want to share the gospel, the good news, that it’s all going to be okay and since it’s going to be okay, IT’S ALL OKAY RIGHT NOW!

See what I mean about changing everything?

What would you do? How would you behave? What risks would you take if you knew that the story ends with you in Love, existing happily ever after?

Despite what you might be thinking, this isn’t pie in the sky, airy-fairy stuff! Knowing that it’s all going to be okay doesn’t let us off the hook from trying to change things in this world. Rather, it inspires the mystics to work harder to make what is Ultimately True more true in the here and now. If I believe the mystics and I see my sister struggling, I can’t just say “Chin up; it’s going to be okay!” Rather, I have to engage in her life in such a way that it actually becomes more okay. If my brother is oppressed, I want to get down under that pressure with him and help lift his burden. When it is all said and done, the mystics inspire us to act in ways that make our current reality a greater reflection of the Divine Reality, (which they experienced as the Ultimate Reality during their mystical experience).

So in the final moments of this really special day, LG asked us to consider:

What would you do if you knew it was all going to be okay?

Holy Crap! That’s a big question!

While it might be nice, most of us will never have a mystical experience. We probably won’t levitate, have visions, or experience “union with all that is.” But that’s okay! The mystics can be TRUSTED, Rob and Liz insist, because they never change their story! We are all going to be okay!

If we were willing to go with that idea, then we were ready to write our final letter to our FEAR from the DIVINE. The first letter we wrote in this series was from our FEAR, telling us all the reasons we shouldn’t live and respond from our hearts, whether it was in art, work, or life. This final letter was an antidote to that narrative.

Yes, FEAR is right. We might fail; we might screw up and get our ass kicked, but you know what?

We’re fine! It’s going to be okay. Don’t be afraid.

We might lose a job, get our heart broken, be disappointed, but you know what?

We’re fine! It’s going to be okay. Don’t be afraid.

I like that message. I like how it made me feel. My heart simultaneously swelled with hope and shrank with dread, but that’s a paradox I can live with. That is the kind of creative tension that leads to evolution, to change and growth, inspiration and COURAGE.

And so, finally, from the DIVINE:

Dear FEAR,

I see you. I hear you. I feel your pain and I know you are doing your best to protect Ali. But let me tell you, it’s going to be okay. FEAR, dear one, I’ve got her and I’ve got you too. There is no place she can go that is separate from Me, outside my care, or Love. What Ali does best is Love people and when you are in charge, she stops Loving others and starts trying to protect herself. That’s not good for her, or anyone else for that matter. So FEAR, please remember, Ali wasn’t an ugly duckling. That’s what you called her. She was a swan all along; she just didn’t know it and she doesn’t need your Chicken Little shtick amplifying the drama. The sky isn’t falling! Let her remember what she knows deep down anyway:

We’re fine. It’s all going to be okay. Don’t be afraid.

DIVINE.

 

  1. Richard Rohr spoke about this nuance recently at a Living School Symposia and I found the distinction really helpful.

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I can’t believe that what took only one day for Liz Gilbert and Rob Bell to unpack at a creativity conference has taken me two months to write about. Call it laziness; call it summer vacation; call it what you will, but we are in the home stretch!

First we had COURAGE; then there was ENCHANTMENT. We were tasked with PERSISTENCE, before we received PERMISSION.

And the fifth word is TRUST.

TRUST is hard to come by these days. The world doesn’t seem like a trustworthy place. Presidential politics and police brutality, terrorism and terrible news dominate our airwaves. If you’re paying attention to the outside world, it seems there is little we can place our TRUST in.

But according to LG and RB, there is one thing you can TRUST, today and always. You can “TRUST that your life is always talking to you,” but not in that masochistic, “Everything-happens-for-a-reason” kind of way. Absolutely not, but what they would argue is that everything that happens is saying something to you.

That something might be really loud and clear, or it might be a whisper you have to listen closely for. It might not even be obvious right off the bat. It might take ten days, or even ten years before you smack yourself on the head like someone in the V-8 commercial and finally get the message.

But you know what? If you look back over the last ten, twenty, or forty years of your life, it has probably been giving you the same message all along. I know that’s true for me. Throughout our lives, we keep asking the same questions and our lives keep giving us the same answers, albeit in different ways. The problem is that we aren’t listening; we don’t TRUST our lives, as much as we TRUST the louder voices – those of media and culture and the ads on TV.

Let’s be clear though, even if we TRUST that the Universe is talking to us, we cannot expect that nothing bad will ever happen, because it will! We will fail; the people we love will get sick; we might lose everything. The Universe is not a particularly safe place, but what I do TRUST is that my life means something and that humanity is going somewhere. We may have evolved physically from primates, but we are evolving consciously, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually from that place too! It is a slow and painful process, but it is “in process.” On this day, Rob Bell claimed, and I have to agree, that the Christ mystery affirms that there is an animating force that holds the universe together and is always evolving towards greater wholeness. If we TRUST in that, the rest of the pieces fall into place more easily.

The question, then for Liz Gilbert becomes: “Are you TRUSTWORTHY?”

Can your life TRUST you to listen, or are you like a grumpy old man, turning up the TV set to tune out his wife of fifty years?

Can your hands be ENTRUSTED with your life’s work?

Can your ENCHANTMENT TRUST you? (If you forgot what ENCHANTMENT is, that’s my bad for taking so long. You can review the definition here.)

That’s the crux of the matter and the topic of the next letter LG asked us to write. Our ENCHANTMENT may have shut up, or shut down, because it was tired of being ignored. Who keeps talking when no one is listening? (That’s a rhetorical question by the way. We all know someone!) So, LG asked us to write a letter to our ENCHANTMENT, promising that it could TRUST us.

While the previous letters were written from different parts of our psyches to us, this letter was our opportunity to respond to our ENCHANTMENT. This letter was written to say that if it piped up, we would honor what it had to say. We would work to be worthy of its time and the gifts it had to offer. Here’s my letter:

Dear Ali’s ENCHANTMENT:

You can TRUST me. I read the letter you wrote to me and you’re right! We do our best work together and I promise to do my best to not let FEAR come between us, even FEAR disguised as “good decision-making.” The people in my life, the ones I Love and trust the most, affirm me when I am open to and working with you. You, ENCHANTMENT, Mystery, Holy Spirit, bring me to life, make me whole and give me all I have to offer the world. “Enchanted Ali,” we have some hard work ahead of us to do, but I will try to make sure I am doing it with you. I will let the chips fall where they may. If I am rejected or fail, I will get still and silent. I will return to you, that which brings me Love, energy and joy, the greatest gifts I have to offer the world. Though I may fail and fall, you can TRUST me to try again.

Ali

P.S. I will keep pushing my kids towards their ENCHANTMENT too!

After we completed our letter and some people shared their responses, LG wanted to give us a final pep talk about what a creative life, partnering with out ENCHANTMENT might cost us and why we should do it any way.

This was one of her key points. So many of us, women especially, struggle to TRUST ourselves and keep looking to outside and often untrustworthy sources for affirmation and advice. Thanks patriarchy! I know I’ve spent way too long looking for male approval for my actions, often from my father, but also from too many men in clerical collars who purported to speak for the mythical Big Man himself! (That is not to say that God is a myth, but that our hyper-masculinization of God certainly is!)

Living creatively and curiously – for both men and women – means we look first and foremost to ourselves and the lessons from our own life for guidance. It isn’t about rejecting outside wisdom; it’s about not rejecting our own. How much could we learn from our mistakes and the moments when we got it right? What would our instincts tell us if we actually learned their secret language – the one of sinking guts, tingling palms, and fluttering hearts – instead of pretending we didn’t understand? That’s the kind of TRUST we need to live more boldly and authentically.

As I wrote this post, I found myself thinking that it sounded good in theory, but was it actually true? Could my ENCHANTMENT TRUST me to do what I promised in that letter? I started thinking about the times in my life when I have listened to my ENCHANTMENT and we were able to foil the voices of the priests, and principals, and even the loving parents who so frequently dominated my inner dialogue.

I think the critical lesson came when I was 19 and found myself pregnant, accidentally of course. I wasn’t in the habit of sleeping around, but it wasn’t with someone I loved either. Culture called for abortion. Catholicism called for adoption. I chose the latter and at first put on the requisite sackcloth of guilt and shame that accompanied my status. “I am a sinner,” I thought, “used goods. The loss of my child is penance for my profligacy with my body.” While I was pregnant, I planned to hide inside, read books, and develop a love for cats (because clearly I was going to be an old spinster with a dozen of them.) I even moved to a “secret location” to avoid pregnancy detection, but here’s the funny thing. Once I was ensconced in a place where no one knew who I was, or how I was supposed to feel, ENCHANTMENT started to work its magic. I forgot to be ashamed of myself. I made friends; I laughed; I went to the beach in a bikini and I met a bunch of guys who worked at a local surf shop. In fact, I FELL IN LOVE with one of them. I was EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT and I had a new boyfriend! How do you explain that besides MAGIC?!?!

To be clear, I wasn’t having the time of my life, but my life took this time to tell me something.

Everything was going to be okay – not perfect, not what I had planned –  but maybe even better if I TRUSTED my instincts, not my FEAR.

I chose Sarah’s parents, people who had careers and a life I had never imagined for myself. But I was drawn by their open-hearted smiles and their obvious Love for each other and to this day our relationship is marked by patience, openness and gratitude.

Though it seemed like foolishness to many, I married that boy I fell in love with as a pregnant teenager and we’ve raised three more children together. Out of the 9,000+ days we’ve spent side by side, I’ve maybe only regretted it for five of them (and not even whole days at that).

Tierrasanta, the “secret location” I went to run away from my problems, became my hometown. I thought it was a temporary stop, but somehow it became the place I put down roots and raised my family.

When I look back at that time of my life, it feels like it was ENCHANTED, like everything that could happen for my good did happen. And all of it came about because I failed, not because I did it right! I was drunk and careless and I could have died – either of alcohol poisoning or AIDS (early nineties folks!) – but I got lucky and then I didn’t  follow other people’s rules. Instead, I got quiet and I let my soul speak and this is what it asked me:

“What would Love do?”

Love would have the baby.

Love would give her up to parents who already Loved and wanted her, before she even existed.

Love would fall in Love despite the circumstances.

Love would keep on Loving, through the ups and downs, the good times and bad, the richer and poorer, the sickness and health.

Love would fall in Love over and over and over again.

Love would honor each person for the best of who they are and forgive them for all they are not – or not yet.

Love would never end.

That’s how I know when it’s my ENCHANTMENT asking the questions and giving me the answers. It always, only, ever wants to Love and then Love some more.

FEAR never tells us to Love, though some people get confused. They stay when they should go; they cling when they should release; they suffer in misery and degradation and call that love. That kind of “love” is really just FEAR in the drag of romance and codependency.

I earned my soul’s TRUST at that time in my life. I heard the whisper of a Love song and turned it into a full-bodied dance, but I haven’t always done it so well. I turn 45 next month and over the course of the last two decades, I have forgotten many times to listen to that Love song. Days and weeks and months go by where I am out of step and off-key, using a lot of jazz hands and pirouettes to cover up my confusion. Eventually, I’m so exhausted by the hustle I have no choice, but to settle down and listen to my heart, which reminds me to Love and let go of the rest. Suddenly, I breathe easier. My moves become more graceful; my smile isn’t forced. Shoulders back, head up, heart open in gratitude, I make a mental note:

Dear ENCHANTMENT,

I think I’m getting the hang of it.

TRUST me.

A-

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Many of my friends and readers have children leaving for their first year of college in the next week, or two.  My heart is with them. Just last fall, we sent Keara, our oldest daughter, off to school. It may have been only 120 miles away, but it was far enough to create a distance and level of vulnerability that was difficult for us to accept.

One of the ways we managed to honor our emotions, but empower her was to “bless” her on her way. It was a really moving experience for all of us, including her younger brother and sister, who felt her absence as keenly as we did. It’s a tradition we will continue this year as she packs her bags at the end of this week and again heads north.

If you are looking for a way to “let go” in Love, here’s the blessing we used, but I want to affirm that what is in your heart and mind, what is authentic to your family’s language and experience, will always work best. Too often, we are afraid to articulate the Love and the deep truths that reside in our hearts. We hold back out of fear that we will stumble, sound silly, or maudlin.

What if we cry ? Maybe we will!

Will our emotions make us look weak, or scare our kids? Maybe they will!

Who knows? Who cares?

They can handle it! Showing our vulnerability is actually a sign of great strength.  If you don’t believe me, check out the brilliant  research of Dr. Brené Brown. 

From “A Meditation on Leaving for College”

I love to ritualize moments in my family’s life,  and so we often do blessings and prayers as people hit certain milestones, but last night, I decided to try something different. I didn’t want “god-language” to get in the way of Keara’s hearing what we had to say.

I played a short guided Metta meditation by the Buddhist teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, with her husky voice and New York accent. It is a gentle introduction to the Buddhist practice of blessing, which involves the simple repetition of these four lines, beginning with yourself and radiating out to others.

May you feel safe. May you feel content. May you feel strong. May you live your life at ease.

That’s it and yet, it says almost everything. In safety, we do not act out of fear and all the negative consequences it brings. In contentedness, we are not greedy, grasping, envious, or backstabbing. When we are strong, we protect the weak, not just ourselves. To live at ease does not mean we live without suffering, but rather, that the end of the story is already assured.

We sat through the guided meditation as a family, each of us in silence, and in our own space and then we gathered around our daughter and sister, the one who is leaving our shared space, and we blessed her with the following words:

May you feel safe.

May you feel content.

May you feel strong.

May you live your life at ease.

And in those moments when you cannot feel safe, content, strong and at ease, then may you take a deep breath, center yourself and draw on the resources you’ve been given.

Remember your gifts, your talents, your deepest desires and what you are working towards.

Remember your history, what you have accomplished and the obstacles you’ve overcome.

Remember your family and friends whose Love will never waver and whose support you can always count on.

Remember that Love is your birthright, the place you came from and the place you will find your home.

For it is there that you will find the freedom to become most fully yourself, and committed to your future,

Where you will find the courage to embrace hard work, to overcome setbacks, to process your confusion and disappointments and learn from them.

May you always come home – to yourself and who you truly are – gloriously Keara Moses Kirkpatrick, a creative, passionate, determined soul, who is a gift we call our own.

Amen.

Amen, Keara. That is our wish and our blessing for you as you move into your own space in the world, physically, spiritually, and professionally. You know where to find us whenever you want to come home.

Good luck friends as you send your children on their way towards greater freedom and responsibility. The risks are greater, but so too is the reward.

 

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The fourth word at our creativity conference with Elizabeth Gilbert and Rob Bell was PERMISSION.

(If you are just getting started, you can go review the first three words: COURAGE, ENCHANTMENT,or  PERSISTENCE by clicking on the word.)

Every place has a set of rules, a code of conduct and expectations. We find them in our schools, churches, families, and culture. No matter where we are, we know what’s okay and what’s not, what will get us affirmation, or draw condemnation. And if we don’t know, we figure it out pronto.

This was certainly true in my house growing up. We were “good kids” and “good Catholics” and those simple descriptors came with a whole list of “dos and don’ts.” They covered everything from our physical appearance to religious practices, academic expectations to moral obligations, but I’m not complaining. In my childhood home, I learned about hard work, critical thinking, the importance of family and the steadfastness of the Spirit. In fact, I’m trying to pass those traditions on to my own kids as well.

But I’m also trying to leave a couple things behind, like shame about my body, sexuality and femininity, as well as my fear of speaking up to authority. I don’t believe those were values my parents’ consciously chose to give me. For the most part, they were just transmitted from their own cultural and religious upbringing right on down to us.

But what I have learned while making my own home and my own rules is that we will never move forward, or evolve if we don’t transgress the rules and expectations of those around us. Those norms exist to stabilize the social order, not to aid the flourishing of human consciousness. If we want to grow up, become adults in the truest sense of the word, we have to challenge what we are told. We have to decide what works for us and what doesn’t and for that, apparently, we need PERMISSION.

Unfortunately, too many of us think PERMISSION comes from an outside source. We spend years, sometimes even decades, waiting for an authority figure to tell us that we can challenge what we were taught, but it’s not true. We are the adults and we have the inner authority to make those decisions! We are the ones who sign the permission slip, not the ones who have to work up the courage to ask if we can go on the field trip!

In the decade since she published Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert said the single thing people seek from her most often is PERMISSION. She gave herself PERMISSION to shake up her life, and they want her to give them PERMISSION as well.

  • Can I leave my unhappy marriage?
  • Can I not have kids?
  • Can I travel alone?
  • Can I go back to school and pursue my dream?
  • Can I be spiritual, but not religious?
  • Can I listen to my heart and soul and NOT just the people around me?

Obviously, LG says, YOU CAN, but should you? That’s the real question.

But you’ll never ask the real question if you don’t think you have PERMISSION to do so.

Let me just say, along with Elizabeth Gilbert and Rob Bell, you have PERMISSION!

You have PERMISSION to take every belief, value, assumption and stereotype out of your mental closet. You can hold them; turn them over; find out where they came from. Do they still deserve pride of place in your mind and heart? Does the ideal you’re clinging to still align with what you know to be true of yourself and the world around you? Is that belief/value/assumption still serving you? How about those around you? How would your life look differently if you let it go?

LG and RB have both rearranged their mental, emotional and spiritual furniture many times over the last decade and I have never seen two people who live so joyfully and compassionately in such spacious houses. I’m still working on my remodeling job, but it’s getting roomier all the time.

I’ve gotten rid of a fair amount of rigid Catholic doctrine and more than a few pieces of false Christianity – all of which served to keep some people in and put some people out – outside of Love, connection and worthiness, which is totally unacceptable to me today, but totally normal to me in my younger years. I keep pulling out ideas I have about what it means to be a good parent and to raise successful kids. (In both cases, perfection has transformed into intention, effort and execution.) As I reach middle age, I find myself again questioning what it means to be happy, healthy and put-together. (Again perfection has given way to grateful, present efforting) and I keep re-evaluating my relationship to FEAR and how it informs my decisions. (A daily reminder: FEAR is there for risk assessment, not project management!)

Each time I put one of my beliefs back on the shelf, it’s been adjusted. It’s less rigid, more flexible and ultimately stronger. It’s been through a refining process, getting rid of what was unnecessary, or did not resonate with my hard-earned knowledge and experience of the world and the God who made it.

But there’s a caveat if you are going to start a remodeling process of your own! “Waking up,” becoming more conscious, whatever you want to call it – is likely to generate some negative feelings. If you step out of your familial, or cultural norms, you are going to meet  resistance – even if  you are moving towards something that is intrinsically good for you and the world. Think about the first kids to question segregation in the South – not a popular change of view with their parents! Galileo was arrested; Darwin was denounced; Jesus was crucified! Institutions, corporations, and the people you love might condemn you, but you have PERMISSION to break the rules in order to live a fuller, more authentic life. And the bottom line is that you can spend time explaining your process to those around you, or not.

For the people I Love and whom I know Love me, I take the time. My mother and I have had many heartfelt conversations about the teachings of the traditional Catholic Church, especially those I no longer agree with, like their stance on homosexuality, female ordination, and the legitimacy of patriarchy. My father and I talk quite frequently about the US educational system, white privilege and politics. Tim and I battled for years over how to parent out kids and we still debate our family finances, marital expectations, and professional goals. Over and over again, we take out our positions and try to identify what needs to stay, because it is of ULTIMATE IMPORTANCE to both of us, and what needs to go, because it is simply a carry-over from our family of origin, or cultural expectations. These aren’t always easy conversations, but I can’t imagine not having them. When we make a decision, it has both of our signatures on the bottom line.

Elizabeth Gilbert made it clear that she is happy to keep handing out PERMISSION slips to people who ask for them, but what she would truly love is for people to find the inner authority to write their own PERMISSION slip. Each and every one of us can set ourselves free from the messages, beliefs, and narratives that limit us and keep us from living authentically.

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To that end, the fourth letter LG asked us to write was from the Boss, the greatest authority figure in our lives. It could be our father, mother, priest, rabbi, pastor, or elementary school principal. When we do something that we know “they” won’t approve of, who is the “they?” That’s the voice we’re channeling here. There is no greater, or higher authority than the person who is writing this letter and this person is giving you a PERMISSION slip to ask questions, to be who you are, to keep growing up so you can live the fullest life possible.

This is how the letter begins:

Dear _______________:

I am your Principal and you have PERMISSION to:

While I hate to disappoint, I cannot transcribe my original letter here in full. I have finally reached my threshold for vulnerability and embarrassment. A few lines are all I can offer.

Dear Ali:

I am your Principal and you have PERMISSION to:

Be yourself and Love yourself. …

You are free to NOT listen to all the voices in your head about what is worthy to do.…

You are free to be thin-skinned and not muscle through. ….

You can move at your own pace….

Everything does not have to be “just right” for everything to be okay…

Sincerely,

ALK,  The Boss of You

At first I didn’t think I needed another PERMISSION slip. I signed my first one long ago, when I was nineteen, single and pregnant. I had transgressed all the rules about what it meant to be a good, Catholic girl, so I started making up my own and guess what? They all began with Love and still do to this day. (You can catch up on part of my adoption story here.) But I have to admit, writing this letter was helpful anyway. Anything we can do to step into greater freedom and away from fear is a win in my book. And I hope you will write yourself a PERMISSION slip and see what you get to do next!