By Debra Basham, on April 28, 2012
Perhaps it is simply a result of my not having been a Catholic in this lifetime (rather than an indication of any ignorance), but I confess that Saint Rita of Cascia had totally escaped my awareness until this past week. I eagerly read these words about her, “She is known as the Saint of the Impossible. Those who bear heavy burdens, especially women, worship her as the patron saint of desperate causes.”
Now, a patron saint of desperate causes seems like something we would want others to know about. Especially at this time in our world. I am sharing the information with you all now.
She had repeatedly begged her parents to allow her to become a nun, but at a mere twelve years of age, she was forced to marry. After having given birth to two sons, she lived with an abusive husband until he was violently murdered some eighteen years later.
After the death of her husband, she still wanted desperately to enter the monastery, but she was refused entry because of the violence around his death. She finally entered the monastery of Saint Mary Madalene at Cascia, Italy, when she was 36 years old!
The story of her entry is considered a miracle. One night, while all the doors to the monastery were locked, she was “transported” into the convent by her patron Saints. When the nuns discovered how she got in, she was allowed to stay, and she remained there until her death.
The symbol most often associated with St. Rita is the rose. Lying in the monastery, near death, she directed a friend to the garden of her childhood home to pick a rose and bring it to her. Although it was January, the rose was blooming right where she said it would be!
Another remarkable story is how she would (against her husband’s orders) often make and take food to the poor. One day, as she was sneaking out of the house with a loaf of bread tucked within the folds of her dress, her husband ordered her to show him what she was hiding. When she obediently pulled back the fabric, she revealed a bouquet of roses!
 |
| Nathan Jonas, doing his morning meditation. |
From now on, I will remember that the Catholics believe you can say a prayer to Saint Rita, and you can expect she will be able to assist you with the seemingly impossible. Perhaps when dealing with desperate causes, her devotion works miracles. And perhaps we, too, were born hard-wired for this devotion to the divine. Looking at this photo of Nathan doing his morning meditation, everything inside me says you can know that is true.
By Debra Basham, on April 22, 2012
I was in a Holiday Inn at five in the morning after twenty-four hours of vomiting every twenty minutes. I was slumped on the floor, holding the space of a rib that had been removed there three weeks earlier.
And my wife—in anger, in panic, in desperation—called out,
“Where is God?”
And from some unknown place in me, through my pale slouched form,
I uttered, “Here….Right here.”
The Book of Awakening:
Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have
by Mark Nepo (April 22, 2012)
It has been that sort of week. A friend wrote asking for prayers following the senseless act that left her brother-in-law dead and her sister and nephew fighting for their lives. This was no random act of violence. The bat-wielding intruder was their son. A few days later, my friend had a post on her Facebook page questioning a quotation about the unconditional loving nature of God, and asking how God’s love could be true in this case. My heart has held these questions this week: for her, for me, and for all humans trying to make sense of senseless acts.
Perhaps that is the key. Perhaps we cannot make sense of senseless acts because they are senseless. We are left with the tender, open, wrenching, emotions that cannot be soothed by thinking. These moments leave us with the choice to be with them or to try to escape. In some twisted way, that desperate desire to escape inner pain may have been behind the drug use that snuffed out the light of clear thinking in the young man now in jail for murdering his father.
With grace, our own actions of escape will never be that extreme, but our ability to sit in the fire of our deepest pain without wounding others is something it can take a lifetime to cultivate.
I have invited others to join me in praying for my friend and for her family. When confronted with the senseless, sometimes we respond asking “Where is God?” but, with grace, from some unknown place in us, may we each utter simply, “Here….Right here.”
By Debra Basham, on April 15, 2012
So what to do with people like this? Let them rant. When they take a breath, repeat back what they said in your own words. Any counselor will tell you that repetitively explaining anger dispels it. You don’t have to fix anything. You don’t have to make any promises you don’t intend to keep.
The important thing is the angry person thinks,
“Finally, I found someone who will listen.” It isn’t easy.
How to Deal With Angry People by David HaynesApril 12, 2012
A few days ago, I was instant messaging with my daughter, Stacey, and I mentioned that I have started reading Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist who now lives in France where he was in exile for many years. Stacey expressed some curiosity about the book, and shared that recently she had been involved with some discussion with the youth group at her church about whether Jesus is the only way to experience salvation. She said her response was that is what the church teaches.
Recognizing that AIM might not be the best platform for the topic, I also admitted to feeling some stress in the exchange, as though she might not really want to know what I thought (or what Thich Nhat Hanh thought). As I reflect on that conversation now, I regret that I was not able to just listen to her with my whole heart. The fact that I was triggered by the exchange, even slightly, probably comes from my own wrestling with the demons of what the church teaches and how that differs from what my heart feels.
It has been sixteen years since I was formally part of the Christian church. It has seemed like a lifetime for me to get even a whiff of peace around that. Thankfully, like the song bird outside my window who feels the dawn and begins to sing while it is yet dark, peace is finding me.
 |
| Photo of Jesus taken at Unity of Fort Myers, Florida. March 2012. |
While I was staying on Pine Island, I had a couple of very significant encounters with the Living Christ. Perhaps the sharing of those will find their way into another post. A few days later, as I was waking up one morning, I had the clarity of Jesus as Teacher. What is appropriate relationship to/with a teacher? Love a teacher? Yes! Follow a teacher? Yes! Respect a teacher? Yes? Worship a teacher? No! I remembered my dad saying, “There is only one God Almighty.” I remembered the scripture telling of the importance of worshiping no other gods.
Surely it is by grace that this book is speaking to my heart and mind and soul. “For dialogue to be fruitful, we need to live deeply our own tradition, and, at the same time, listen deeply to others. Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others’ tradition.” (p. 6)
It is no wonder that I am very much enjoying Living Buddha, Living Christ. I have discovered that in my heart I am Buddhist! Some of you know of my trip to Thailand and my time at Veranda High Resort in Chiang Mai, in Northern Thailand. My sister, Janis, told me she could sense life returning to my dry bones while I was there. Hearing the monks chanting, smelling the incense, and being in a culture for whom meditation is natural were each new life to me.
 |
| Photo of Buddha taken at temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand. September 2010. |
|
Forgive me, Stacey. I love you and I love Jesus. I also love Buddha! For now, even though my altar is not in France, I will let these words of Thich Nhat Hanh speak what is true for me:
On the altar in my hermitage in France are
images of Buddha and Jesus,
and every time I light incense,
I touch both of them as my spiritual ancestors.
By Debra Basham, on April 8, 2012
Mark Twain is thought to have said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” The statement honors how easily we all can be influenced by what another says or thinks about us. That is probably why it feels so good to be with others who share similar values to our own. That happened for me with the International College of Integrative Medicine. That professional group is made up of folks I would call physician/healers. Their passion, dedication, commitment to lifelong learning, and their dream of positive changes in the philosophy and practice of medicine is palpable.
I am still processing my experience at the conference in Lexington, Kentucky, last week, and I expect I will continue to treasure the connections with those I spent time with the same way you savor a fine meal. What makes the most sense to me is that something personal has taught them to be truly present with their patients. The presence they bring is also packed with skill.
 |
| Joel Bowman shown here with Aline Fournier, D.O., in Lexington, Kentucky, as she finishes his session after the end of the workshop on Mesotherapy. Joel was the demonstration subject. |
In My Grandfather’s Blessing: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen writes of having (years ago) cared for a “desperately sick” two-year-old boy. As he lay in the hospital bed, day after day, his mother would be there with him, her hand under his blanket, holding his small foot. When asked, the mother shared that she would “just close her eyes and dream her dreams for him.” Over and over again.
That tender, unswerving, mother’s love made me think of an idea called THE THREE C’s in Twelve Step circles: “I didn’t cause it; I can’t control it; and I can’t cure it.” What a relief to remember these when invited into the sacred circle with another.
If medicine, meaning drugs and surgery, was the cause and healing was the effect, then think for a moment about why it works some times and not others, and become aware now of why some people heal without medicine, drugs, or surgery.
Think about something really physical like a hip replacement, and notice how nothing the surgeon does – nothing the nurses do – actually “makes” that hip heal. If healing results, not from what is done to the individual by others, then what is it that actually causes or allows healing to occur?
In Love & Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Healing, Dr. Dean Ornish reminds readers that even when drugs and surgery are necessary, they are just the beginning. The physical body – the heart, is more than just a mechanical pump. Ornish says you also have an emotional heart, a psychological heart, and a spiritual heart.
“Curing is when the physical disease gets measurably better. Healing is a process of becoming whole. Even the words heal and whole and holy come from the same root. Returning healing to medicine is like returning justice to law.” (p.15)
Healing is the most natural of processes. Remember a time when you cut a finger or skinned a knee. Something inside you allowed healing to occur. That something inside you is your innate healing capacity. Your greatest goal, as facilitators of healing, is to support the individual discovering the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors which turn on this innate healing capacity to its maximum.
While mere focus on cure might see death as failure, look at life as the process of living, as more than flesh and bones, and you gain a greater sense of the sacred art of healing.
“Illness and the opportunity it presents people to engage consciously and actively in a journey toward wholeness can be one of the most transformative experiences that life offers. It provides you with space for self-reflection, for caring for yourself and your needs in a way that may not have been possible in your busy everyday life. It can give you time for learning about who you are, your purpose, your potential; a time for reassessing your priorities and the value of your relationships, work, and possessions. Illness (or disease) can be the beginning of a deep, spiritual quest.” Rituals of Healing :Using Guided Imagery for Health and Wellness, by Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D., Barbara Dossey, M.S., FAAN, and Leslie Kolmeier, R.N., MEd., (p. 12).
The things that promote a sense of meaning in our lives, our connection to others and to what is sacred, can heal our lives even when medicine is not able to cure  our bodies.
By Debra Basham, on March 25, 2012
I have been thinking a lot about the difference between illness and wellness, and how some people are able to maintain a sense of wellness in the midst of illness. I heard Dr. Dean Ornish say the difference between illness and wellness is the contrast between “I” and “We.” For sure, science has shown a correlation to feeling isolated or knowing you are connected as a component to your healing.
I often mention Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, because what he writes about really seems to fit what is on my heart and mind at the time. I made a note from yesterday: “To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken.” For sure, it helps to see your own wholeness, even if, at the moment, you have symptoms or even a diagnosis.
When you think about nature, what is it that allows you to know the sun is still in the sky and still shining even on a cloudy day, or in the dark of night? You are not confused by what your senses might indicate, because your perspective is broader and you know what is true regardless of appearances!
I have sometimes seen a squirrel on the outside of the window—tail flapping, alert, nose almost pressed against the glass—while one or both of Joel’s cats is on the inside thinking, “Let me at ’em…. Just let me at ’em!” Something stands between the risk and the safety, in this instance, it is a piece of glass.
 |
| This photo is of Henry, in his home in Yellowstone country. Henry is the grandson of Pamela Chappell,who provides the background music for our Welcome Baby! audio. I just saw the photo on her Facebook page and knew it was perfect for this blog.You can sample her music by going to http://www.scs-matters.com/products_download.shtml. |
When a person has symptoms or a diagnosis or even when an individual is obviously preparing to leave this earthly body (something every one of us does), all that stands between the risk of fear, worry, or anxiety, and the safety of remembering our eternal nature, is your ability to know you are still whole (and holy) every step of the way.
Nepo (March 24) continues: “Feel the sun even in the dark. To not lose the truth of things when they go out of view. To grow just the same. To know there is still water, even when you are thirsty. To know there is still love, even when we are lonely. To know there is still peace, even when we are suffering. None of this invalidates our pain, but only strengthens our way back into the light.”
By Debra Basham, on March 18, 2012
I was already working on today’s blog, pondering the question of whether life has taught you to be more curious or more afraid, when I came across this Chinese Proverb in a thought for the week from a friend of mine, Byron Stock, who works with emotional intelligence.
“That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.”
I have been reading Pema Chödrön’s Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living. This morning’s reading was about a man who had lived in the wild, the last of his tribe, before coming into civilization. He shared that they had seen railroad trains and thought they ate people because people would get on the train and the train would move out of sight. When he was brought to the train in San Francisco, he was able to get on. Later, when asked how he was able to do that, he responded, “Well, my life has taught me to be more curious than afraid.”
I am working with all of that right now. How many tornado watches have I gone through compared to how many tornados have I endured? How much of what we worry about never comes to be? I am coming to recognize that I can embrace the unknown with curiosity rather than with fear.
I remember a joke about a man who was training to be a truck driver, hauling loads of logs down out of the mountains. The time came for a quiz, to know if he was ready to go out on the road with his heavy load. The first question was what he would do if he was coming down the hill and the brakes failed. He answered correctly that he would downshift into the lower gears to slow the truck’s engine. Then what would he do? He would put on the emergency brake. What if that failed, too? He said with total calm, “If the emergency brake failed, too, I would wake up my partner who was sleeping.” Asked why he would do that, the response was an enthusiastic, “Because he won’t want to miss the wreck we are going to have!”
Rain and sun comes to the earth. Death is as much a part of life as birth. Endings and beginnings are each sacred. Loss and gain are simply movements in the endless cycle. The meaning we give to our experience is the meaning we choose. Everything, seen in its true light, is beautiful, including this Black Vulture feeding on a dead raccoon.
 |
| Black Vulture feeding on a raccoon, along Stringfellow Road on Pine Island. |
Ah, now the Vulture is a species that is able to make lemonade out of lemons. Let us all awaken our own sleeping inner-vultures…. So we can be more curious than afraid!
By Debra Basham, on March 4, 2012
A flock of peacocks live here in Harbor Hills, where I am visiting my husband’s brother and sister-in-law. Cindy and I wanted to get some photos. One day they were out, but neither of us had our cameras with us. One day we both had our cameras, but it was very foggy, so lighting would not be very good.
We decided to wait for a better day.
Thursday morning, our patience was rewarded!
 |
| Peacocks in Harbor Hills, Florida. |
The timing was just right for some really amazing encounters with both the peas and the hens. I got an amazing video with full display.That got me thinking about patience and timing in other areas of my life….
I know in the past I have been impatient with regards to developing consciousness, especially around my work. For example, when I think about Richard Bandler and John Grinder having created NLP (See: http://scs-matters.com/scs_nlp.shtml#) forty years ago, and not have it integrated in education or psychology or religion or life, yet.
I learned Healing Touch™ over seventeen years ago. I have since worked with a man who was able to cancel back surgery following one session. I enjoy being pain free, after having been told I would never have quality of life. I have seen cysts dissipate with my work. Yet, I still meet people who have never heard of Healing Touch™, I work for a hospital that will not allow Reiki (another energy modality) because it is considered to not be Christian, people can be afraid to make changes, and I have even been told that energy work is Satanic.
Yet, I notice this all seems very insignificant in the long run.
YET is a very important concept in this discussion. I trust it is just a matter of time until everyone recognizes what a difference energy work and NLP makes. In fact, often it is the difference that makes all the difference.
The next time I feel impatient, I hope I can remember the joy I had photographing the peacocks, and I can enjoy more patience and trust the timing. This is a snip from the video, but even thought it does not make a good quality photo, you can see that we were gifted a full display. The reward for our patience and timing….
By Debra Basham, on February 22, 2012
What would I do if I knew that I could not fail
If I believed would the wind always fill up my sail
How far would I go, what could I achieve…
Trusting the hero in me
If I Were Brave, words and music by Jana Stanfield and Jimmy Scott
 |
| Amazing sunset view seen while riding back from the marina off Maria. |
This morning it is still dark as I am enjoying the quiet activity here on the canal on Pine Island, savoring the last few mornings in this magical place. I just read a very touching chapter in My Grandfather’s Blessing, by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. It is titled simply, “When It Works.”
Rachel was an intern, working in an emergency room, when an unconscious infant was brought in. He was found to have a profound electrolyte imbalance and an irregular heartbeat, the result of severe dehydration following severe diarrhea.
The baby went into heart failure, and after four attempts with the defibrillator, the senior resident threw the paddles down, left the room, and went to give the parents the horrible news. Remen was left standing in that room with two nurses, and that baby.
She writes that something inside her called out to him, much as you might call a child in from playing to dinner. “I was too young a doctor and too inexperienced to know that after four attempts at defibrillation, no one comes back.” She grabbed the paddles and gave one more shock and it worked!
This past weekend I took a workshop in an energy technique called BARS. I did my first session with a good friend yesterday. In addition to learning a new energy technique, I appreciated those places where what was presented fits with what I have been teaching in SCS/NLP for years. For example, “If your logical mind could solve the things that were not working in your life, wouldn’t it have done so already?” and “Every time you do a Bars session on someone else, all the considerations that they have that are like the ones you have go away at the same time.”
And probably my favorite: “This is one way of doing it and you can also follow the energy….please follow your knowing.”
Suddenly I am reminded of a song chosen by dear friends for their wedding. “If I Were Brave,” by Jana Stanfield and Jimmy Scott, sung by Jana. You can find the rest of the lyrics online and listen at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF5V2PEujqs.
The words touch my soul deeply today as I think of Dr. Remen and the man that baby boy grew up to be and I will leave you with the question….
Like the mighty oak sleeps in the heart of a seed,
are there miracles in you and me?
What would I do today if I were brave?
By Debra Basham, on February 15, 2012
In that half-asleep, half-awake state, I had the image of the word pain as a call to Place Attention Inside Now. A few moments later, arising for the day, I was sitting in silence with my journal on my lap (as is my morning schedule). I opened a daily inspirational book (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening) and read: “Until the heart becomes an inlet, it cannot be free….[P]ain comes from measuring the inevitable events of life against some idea of how we imagine things are supposed to be…. Life is hard enough without viewing all our pain as evidence of some basic insufficiency we must endure… All spiritual warriors have a broken heart, alas, must have a broken heart—because it is only through the break that the wonder and mysteries of life can enter us…. In daily life we are judged, discounted, and even pitied for glories that only we can affirm.”
My recent past has been filled with self-nagging. It feels as though a fog is lifting and I am seeing myself and the events through the lens of that broken heart. In the same way that a child will be terrified by the shadow cast on the wall, and have nothing to fear, what I am seeing now looks nothing like what I had imagined it being.
 |
| Immature Brown Pelicans at the Van Meter’s in St. James City on Pine Island |
Rachael Naomi Remen, M.D., author of Kitchen Table Wisdom, has written another marvelous book, My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Courage, and Belonging. In a chapter titled “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” she writes about the broken hearts of a mother and father following the death of their five year-old son, Timmy. At Timmy’s funeral, the pastor encouraged each person to allow his or her pain to touch him or her in a unique way, to draw strength from knowing we are not alone in that pain.
Each person was told the pain would help us love our children, each other, and life itself. That is living of life through our broken hearts. I have used the phrase, “Our hearts only break in one direction: open.” That did not come to me through the lens of a broken heart, for I have not buried my five year-old child, and, in the grand scheme of things, I have not had a difficult life.
Remen writes: “Spiritual awakening does not change life; it changes suffering.” Perhaps knowing, at some deep level, the depth of love that rushes into the heart that is broken open, I had been, like the shadow cast upon the wall, seeing the pain in my life as much larger than it really was, wanting all along, to love with all my heart, my mind, my soul, and my strength. I will begin now to see pain—physical or emotional, mental or spiritual—as what it really is, a sacred invitation to place attention inside now….
By Debra Basham, on February 8, 2012
Understanding our feelings is a lot like trying to change the diaper of a wiggling toddler. As soon as you think you have a leg up on it, something unexpected erupts. I have appreciated some of the writings about all this that have come into my awareness of late. On December 4, 1993, when I wrote this poem, I thought I was writing it for my sister, Janis. Today, I know it was as much for me and for you, too.
The Magic Sack
God has a gift for you…It is a magic sack.
It is tailor made, and fits upon your back.
It is filled with happy, mad and sad. All yourfeelings; good or bad.
There is room for every feeling here, as long as it’s your own.
Its not too heavy or too light, God made it so it fits just right.
Now comes the part to ease your heart, though difficult to bear.
YOU may not carry another’s sack, it is their own to wear.
For each child upon this earth, God made and loves for all life’s worth.
And each and every one, you see, mother, sister, and even me,
Has their very own magic sack tailor made to fit their back!!!
In times of less awareness, we may expect or even demand that others take on our emotions. According to Mark Nepo, in The Book of Awakening, this was because we wouldn’t “take the risk to ask them to hold us while we are hurting.”
Fortunately, you can learn to be present to your own emotions. And it is never too late to have a happy childhood. Nepo says it best: “If you think you have given them what’s yours to carry, go to them and thank them for holding your sadness and then lift it off their hearts and take it back. Ask them to hold you instead.”
I am profoundly grateful to those who have been willing to hold me rather than taking on my feelings. I have been held with respect and compassion and tenderness, and that has taught me to hold myself.
 |
| St. Jude Trail on Pine Island |
From today’s Daily OM: When we simply allow ourselves to fully feel our feelings as they come, we tend to let them go easily. This is all we are required to do; our feelings simply want to be felt.
|
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 43 other subscribers
|
Comments are closed 
