The wisdom of the Divine is foolishness to us, and our wisdom is foolishness to the Divine…(a little paraphrase from the Good Book)

It is April Fool’s Day as I write—one of my favorites. It is the day to celebrate that what we often think is the highest and best is not at all what the Divine has in mind. The Divine as Trickster fools us, even when we think we have put aside all of our ego and only want what the Divine wants, watch out! The Beloved likes to pull pranks! These Divine pranks are not, of course, intended to harm, but to point out to us where we have over-estimated our importance, put too much stock in our own plans or ideas, or are convinced that our ways are the best ways (for everyone!) 

The ability to laugh at our own seriousness seems to me the best medicine to heal what ails us. The hyena, the blue jay, the coyote are all animal medicines that embody this laughing fool that winks at us, even where we are the most vulnerable, to see if we still get the joke—that ultimately all is well, ultimately all is Divine, ultimately nothing matters, ultimately nothing can harm us. So what’s with all the kvetching? the handwringing? the angst?

To be sure, the curve balls life can throw at us can seem pretty harsh, the suffering- severe. But if we can step back a bit to the cheap seats in our mind and embrace the bigger picture, these curve balls can then be seen as our greatest teachers. From this stance, curve balls are no longer things to fear, but our best paths to more love, joy, peace, freedom, abundance, compassion—to heaven—right here, right now.

It is always amazing to me that nothing that I planned as an educational path or career path has come to pass. Not one goal, except that I did graduate from college. But the college that I went to (and then the graduate school), what I majored in, what I did as jobs after, have always been totally different than what I intended. I have been steered into so many unexpected twists and turns—but ultimately better, beyond anything I could dream or imagine from my limited self (to paraphrase the Good Book again)—that I have learned to trust the Fool. I have learned to surrender. And surrender. And surrender again. Which simply means letting go and going with the Flow.

This is why I go just a wee bit away (okay a whole lotta away) from the law of attraction, and visualization boards, and the entire manifest your dreams meme in our spiritual culture. These things are all good, and have their place, and make good points, but they are still too limited. You cannot imagine what the Divine has in store for you. Period. We might get glimpses of it; we might catch an inkling of it, but still our minds will diminish even the interpretation of what it could be that the Divine wants to bring about through us, and by holding onto and even demanding the lesser, we can push away and miss the greater.

So allow the Fool who is within and without, to trip you up a bit so you can be freed from your limitedness and open to the better Whatever. Allow yourself to deeply rest and deeply play, as Martha Beck exhorts, because the new world order will come in no other way. Allow yourself to dream, to imagine, to visualize, but then totally let go of all of it, and enjoy the moment that is. For who knows what the Divine Jester will do?

“What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make enough plans.” David Whyte

All the writing that wanted to come out of me this month (except for fiction) was this poem. Enjoy!

Finn and Rudy
The barren trees mourned 
     their once brazen autumnal hues, 
dull leaves scattered on the field--
     remnants of a rich life now in decay;
The lifeless sky with its frozen breeze stung the skin as I plodded
     my way yet again through the rutted ’scape--
this season of death might have caused me to despair;

But the sudden scent of jasmine seized my senses
     inviting me deeper into the sweet nectar of the impending spring.
Still adaze, I drifted down a different road
     where a young boy named Finn asked me to play.
Willingly, I obliged,
     as I
     stepped
     into the center
     of his spiraling labyrinth
     composed of rosy chalk on
     the grayest of asphalt—as surprising
     as spying an old woman licking a raspberry
     popsicle in the drizzling rain; winding my way
     through, the energy maze dizzied me—it was so strong;
     I arose as if from a vortex submerged unseen beneath a frenzied sea.
How did Finn know?

Just as I left that well-laid path, Rudy the she-dog ran to me
     pressing her sinewy body gently against my thighs,
she invoked the ancient rite
     of human-animal blessing, and I reverently placed
my hand on her head
     caressing the raven dark fur
as we released our rough edges together.

Monica McDowell © 2012

"I've seen fire and I've seen rain..."
James Taylor, song lyrics*

_
Question: What do Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas, beeswax candles, and St. Brigid all have in common?

Answer: They’re all celebrated today, on February 2nd!

In many cultures and spiritual traditions February 2nd is an important day. It marks the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, thus the significance of the groundhog seeing its shadow (or not) in order to decipher the remaining winter weather patterns until spring. Interestingly, many of the celebrations of the day have to do with the element of fire (and its balancing element water). Candlemas is a Christian feast day marking the ritual purification of Mary after giving birth to Jesus. Her ritual purification would have been done, according to Jewish law, by immersing herself in spring water. Christians have traditionally marked this day by blessing and burning beeswax candles. The Pagan holiday in Ireland on this day is known as St. Brigid’s day, a day of celebrating her sacred flame by burning candles and by immersing oneself in healing wells and springs. Farmers in eastern Europe on this day spread ashes from their fires on fields to fertilize them and leap over bonfires to purify themselves. In ancient times in Greece and Rome, the period was set aside for the infernal gods for fertility and purification. And relatedly, since this is also February, the month of Valentine’s Day, the season of Eros, it is a time modern Americans celebrate passion, red, and love—all fiery energies. (The early Christian Valentines were celebrated as persecuted martyrs—fire energy, too!)

This year, 2012, we’ve got it especially hot! According to NASA we’ve just had a severe solar storm that knocked out some satellite reception and thus GPS didn’t always work and plane routes had to be rerouted. The storm resulted in a radiation storm hitting the earth this week and even triggered a rare geomagnetic storm around the earth. NASA photos have showed the aurora borealis in beautiful, vibrant forms over the planet’s poles. In addition, Mars, the planet of fire, is in retrograde right now, meaning there is a lot more of its energy around. If passion, anger, anxiety, emotional or physical pain, love relationships, or other situations in your life have been intense this week, now you know a strong reason why!

Question: Are you on fire?

Of course, we can look at this from a detrimental point of view as to “burning up.” We can also look at it positively, as Victor Frankl, Jewish psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor said, “What is to give light must endure burning.” Or, as an energy that propels us to pursue our dreams with passion, as in “I’m on fire! No one can stop me now!”

In my family this week, we celebrated my dad’s retirement from 49 years as a volunteer firefighter and 20 years as fire chief! In my own body, my nerves have been especially fiery, which has happened before during intense solar storms. The extra heat in my body has been releasing some toxins from my kidneys, a purification for sure. Energy work on myself didn’t help alleviate the heat much, so I’ve been balancing the fire by going to bed with a big ice pack on my back where my nerves were especially hot.

Fire and rain. Fire and water. Fire and ice.

It is good to have fire, to have passion. The trick is balancing it, holding it, working with it, without burning yourself, burning yourself out, or burning others with your zeal or temper flares. Passion is a lower chakra phenomenon, meaning strong feeling or suffering. Compassion is a heart phenomenon and means, “to feel or suffer with.” In other words, compassion means to understand another’s feelings or suffering and want to help. We can move our strong lower chakra fiery feelings and energy into our hearts, which are then balanced by being aware of and caring for the feelings of others. We can also make sure and clarify what our passion is for in the first place.

Question: What is your passion for?

Is it to meet basic hunger drives: food and sex? Is it to meet basic emotional needs for safety? Is it primarily centered on your own needs? Are you devouring others through lust or anger or control or are you devouring food, sex, or drugs to try to feed the fire? How is that working for you? Is there a way you can channel that fiery fuel into forward motion to pursue a dream of yours? If your dream is to help others or the planet are you balancing that with enough self-care so you don’t burn out? Are you so ardent for a cause that you attack your opponents without seeing they are just as passionate and feeling as you and learning from them as mirrors?

Question: What is this passion fire teaching you right now?

Looking squarely in the eye at all your lessons with passion helps to purify your motives. Ironically enough, this type of purification is humorously depicted in the movie, Groundhog’s Day! Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell are the main stars in the film, and in the plot, Bill Murray’s character relives Groundhog’s Day over and over again (a trial by fire!) until he learns to purify his love for others. You can also help purify your passion by setting the intention to use and balance fire energy appropriately and for the highest and best of all. Then ritualize this. You could burn a beeswax candle (fire) in the bathroom while you take a bath or shower (water); take a deep breath or do some breathwork (fire) and before and after drink a lot of (water); or maybe make a small fire outside, leap over it if you want, and then extinguish it with water. An extreme ritual would be to make a big bonfire on a beach and do an arctic bear plunge in icy waters. Perhaps you can come up with a unique fire and water ritual for yourself today.

Fire is a powerful element in our lives to help move us forward as individuals and society, even burning things up like phoenix fire, if necessary, to enable us to rebuild and be rebirthed in ways we previously could not or would not. Fire is powerful and beneficial, but like my firefighting dad always taught me, you have to be careful with it and you have to respect it. My highest and best intention is to “Be on fire for Love!” and to hold this passion within the cooling energy of universal Awareness.


*James Taylor wrote these lyrics in part after undergoing shock treatments (fire) for depression as a teenager. These treatments would end with cold showers (water/rain). It was also written partly to express suffering during times of great loss or struggles with success.

_ The other day I drove by a young man standing on the middle berm of a busy highway right beside a stop-lighted intersection. He was holding up a handmade cardboard sign common to roadside panhandlers that read, “Need gas money!” with the appropriate prop sitting on the ground beside him: a red, plastic gas can. All the while he was sipping on a venti Starbucks frappuccino which as you probably know costs as much as a gallon and a half of gasoline at current prices. Even if he had been given that drink by some generous soul driving by, he was still unknowingly sending a mixed message to all other passersby: “I need gas. Not.”

We humans are brilliant mixed message senders. You might insist “I am fine,” when it’s obvious to everyone in the room by your gloomy countenance that everything is not fine. At all. You might be told “I love you” but it strangely feels much more like an attack as it’s said to you with eyes that are glaringly angry.

In my own belief system (subject to change at any time without prior notice), I see the universe functioning as a giant mirror. It reflects back to you who you are in all your beauty and complexity. So when you are lacking clarity in your life and the universe doesn’t seem to be helping, it is often because you are sending mixed messages to the universe and the universe is simply reflecting back to you your own inner conflict. For example, you say, “yes” with your heart to the dream of your soul, but your mind ticks off one negative thought after another as to why you shouldn’t/couldn’t/daren’t move toward the dream. And when you feel one way, but think thoughts in the opposite way, the universe is unable to respond in a clear fashion: does it respond to your feelings or your thoughts? Thus, you set up the universal mirror to act like one big pushmi-pullyu of Dr. Doolittle fame: a two-headed beast going in two different directions at once which gets you nowhere except maybe frustrated and exhausted.

When you are clear, you are in alignment—heart, mind, body and soul—and you will experience the Flow in totality, to support your every need in fulfilling your life’s purpose (not the same as your ego wants). This doesn’t mean you won’t encounter obstacles. You will. It is part of the hero’s journey to learn how to transform obstacles into stepping stones, as well as learn how to read obstacles as signposts redirecting you to fulfill your purpose in a better way than you could imagine by yourself. Without clarity, though, you don’t even encounter obstacles—you just experience inertia, the blahs, and lack of creativity and insight. You feel stuck in the mud and your inner lake stays muddy as the universe reflects back our own unclarity in a spiraling feedback loop.

So how do you find enough clarity to make a commitment (and then surrender the results to the highest and best)? Here are 10 steps to inner clarity!

1) Get quiet. Notice your inner chaos and confusion. Observe it for awhile.

2) Examine your thoughts. Ask “why” a lot. “Why do I think that way?” Keep asking “why” until you discover some understanding which will generally lead you to…

3) Feelings of fear. It is a simplification but a generally accurate one that we are either moving from a place of love or from a place of fear. If we’re stuck and not finding clarity, it’s usually stemming from some unacknowledged fear. So name the fears you find in this process.

4) Go deeper. Go below your thoughts and feelings to an inner place of peace and calm. You can visualize this as going below the stormy white-capped sea to a place of undisturbed water below the surface of the storm. Say some mantras here like “I am safe. I am calm.” If feelings or thoughts arise that bring up anxiety just notice them, thank them, let them go and return to the deep, peaceful calm.

5) When you are calm and still ask your self, “What do I really want?” See what comes. It could be anything!

6) Then ask, “Why do I want this?” until you get to the feeling you believe this new thing will bring you more of, whether that’s love, joy, peace, satisfaction, security, etc. Give yourself that feeling now. Imagine that you have exactly what you want and it has given you the feeling that you want more of. Continue to feel this feeling.

7) Realize that since you can give yourself this feeling, you already have and can give yourself at any time what you truly desire! Now that you are feeling this love, joy, peace, or whatever it is, now what do you want to do in your life since you are feeling good? What clarity comes to you now?

8) What one step of commitment can you make—as tiny as you need it to be to not bring up paralyzing angst—to go in the direction of your clarity?

9) Take that step and then let go and see what guidance the universe gives you. The universe might redirect you or adjust your direction along the way. If nothing comes back to you or if confirmation comes back to you, keep taking steps in the direction of your clarity.

10) Repeat process above as necessary!

May all good things Flow to you as you seek ever greater clarity in your life!

_ When you self-identify in greater society as a mystic, as I do, you get 1) a lot of weird looks and 2) a few great perks. Recently, the perks have been outpacing the looks. I have guest lectured on mysticism at several local distinguished universities (and they didn’t throw me out!) and a request to do a review on my blog for the indie documentary, American Mystic. Being an amateur movie buff, I jumped at the chance for a free home screening of a film subject near and dear to my own contemplative heart.

Alex Mar, in this fascinating close-up, follows three young adult Americans who traverse their own unique paths as mystics-in-the-making. All have to learn to cope with, among other things, a society that largely marginalizes the spiritualities of non-traditional religions. You learn this goes far beyond getting weird looks by others, however, as the three narrate the personal meaning and struggles their counter-culture journeys bring to their daily lives.

Kubali, an African American young man from Rochester, NY, is the first we meet. He is studying to be a medium and a healer within the spiritualist church of his upbringing. Ever since he was a child he could hear, through his gift of clairaudience, his name being called by spirits. Chuck is the second to whom we are introduced. A Lakota Sioux, raised as a Christian on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, his plans in his teens to be a priest are interrupted when he is introduced to native spirituality. After a drunken crisis, he decides to change his ways and pursue his heritage under the guidance of the local medicine man. The third and final person we learn about is Morpheus, a self-identified witch from California. Growing up she spent much time in the woods, and after the Santa Cruz earthquake found herself spontaneously going into trances and chanting. Just as with the first two, she underwent training—Morpheus with a local witch in the faerie tradition while she worked at a pagan shop.

Trees, nature’s mystical beings, provide a unifying visual theme for the film as they center in ceremonies for all three narratives. We see Kubali and the spiritualists at a gathering place in their retreat center in the woods, called “inspiration stump” where mediumship is practiced and honed. The piercings Chuck undergoes during Sundances allow him to hang suspended from a tree by his own skin, allowing his spirit to fly free from his body. For Morpheus, her rituals take place under trees and in forest glades, surrounded by them. Throughout the interweaving of the stories, each self-narrated, we learn how the need to make ends meet keeps the three functioning as a part of society even while their main life’s purpose is oriented away from the hustle and bustle and toward the spirit-world.

American Mystic is a hauntingly courageous look at those who live close to “the other side,” trying to integrate that awareness in the midst of an increasingly materialistic and technological society.

 

 

The Occupy movement continues to highlight the grave inequities and injustices in our economic system. There appears to be enough energy in the United States and even around the world to keep the ground swell going for awhile. Good. It will need a lot of sustained energy to make a difference over time. It will also require a societal heart transplant.

Systemic counseling for group transformation defines two kinds of change: surface change and second-order change. With surface change the motto really is “the more things change the more things stay the same.” Surface change does nothing to fundamentally alter the system, the underlying order of a group, large or small. It’s like putting on new clothes over a still unwashed body. The stink will eventually become all too apparent in time.

Second-order change brings systemic change—a real, fundamental re-ordering of the structures that sustain groups, be they mental, relational, financial or other forms of power infrastructures in societies. Giving women the right to vote was a second-order change. So were civil rights laws. Whenever there is a redistribution of power, there is second-order change.

In order to effect a second-order change that is sustainable, not only is a lot of collective energy required, a heart change is also required. Having been a catalyst for systemic transformation on a national level, let me explain a bit of my story and what I mean.

At a church I was an associate pastor of many years ago, I experienced sexual harassment and when I reported it along with some other things, I was retaliated against. I eventually ended up filing civil rights discrimination lawsuits to hold the larger church body accountable for its many inequities and injustices against me and many others as well. It was a long drawn out case that dealt with constitutional law, church-state issues, and clergy sexual misconduct. It required me to take an activist stand, just as the Occupy movement is doing.

But for true transformation to happen, it required more than just taking a stand, important as that is. It also required that I find all the places I criticized about the system in my own heart. If I criticized the aggressive tactics of the larger church body against me, I looked for aggression within myself. If I was furious with their lies against me, I looked for the lies I told myself and others, no matter how small. I would then look for the core of good within the bad. I would find the light in the darkness. I would see that aggression and lying were tactics I used to protect myself when I didn’t feel safe. Then I would understand that the impulse to protect was good, even if I or they had twisted it into aggression or lying, and I would have  compassion for myself and them and then I could forgive myself and them.

When I would heal my own heart and soul by doing these steps above, the system would shift—often immediately. Right after I would heal within, I would get a phone call, email, or other notification that the courts had suddenly had a “change of heart” and rule in my favor. Or the larger church system would suddenly relent and choose to negotiate when previously they refused. This happened repeatedly over several years until finally the story played itself out. In the end, I became the first ordained minister in the country ever to be granted civil rights by a federal ruling—a second-order shift establishing new rights for clergywomen.

So, in shifting our unjust economic system, the Occupy movement is taking a crucial first step. The next step for all of us who wish to shift the economic inequities is to look at our own hearts with regard to how we use money. Upset about corporate greed? I hear you. But let us look within. How much of your income do you donate to charity? Even, or especially, on a good year? How many things do you buy that you don’t really need? The latest flat screen tv, the latest iPhone, the latest ____? Where are you wasteful and unaware with where your own money goes? Do you balance your checkbook, keep a budget, and balance necessities with play that help and do not hurt the environment (extra car trips to do errands, or plane rides to vacation spots around the globe)? Where are you not honest with your accounting? How much debt do you have on credit cards? Any criticism you have of the system, turn it around and ask yourself where it is in you.

I have seen some of these things in myself and in many people who are protesting the inequities in our larger system. These questions of mine, uncomfortable as they may be, are what is required to bring about lasting, heart-full change on a systemic level. There is no judgment in these questions. It is honest self-inquiry only. But after taking a stand, until we heal within with all the love, compassion, and forgiveness we can give ourselves and others along with any corresponding corrective action we can take in our own lives, any change we are able to generate will either be surface change or short-lived at best.

Use the Occupy movement’s energy to motivate you to look within and heal. Occupying our hearts is a stimulus plan that will really bring true second-order change!

The question of security comes up a lot in healing work. It is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed because it is difficult to heal if you think you are in danger on any level. Mentally, emotionally and physically, your energy is drained when consciously and unconsciously you are trying to make sure you (and your loved ones) are safe and not destroyed. This is instinctual in so far as our bodies are wired for survival and our DNA has generations of coding in it to pay attention to signs of danger. We evolved this way in order to ensure our species would survive in hostile environments with predators around threatening to attack.

Most of us no longer live in an environment where a lion could be poised to pounce on us at any time. However, many of us still live with this constant sense of needing to be on the alert or an underlying dread or foreboding. This is especially the case when some kind of trauma has happened to us, destroying any sense of security that we may have managed to have prior to the trauma, despite our predisposed genetic hardwiring telling us to always be ready to fight or run for our lives.

As is well known, after big trauma people will often respond by curling up into the fetal position. This is also what can happen energetically when you go through any kind of trauma—big or small. Your energy draws up from the ground and curls up tighter around you to try to protect you. This is all fine and good. It is the animal instinctual part of you trying to reconnect with the feeling of total security in the womb. The difficulty is that once the trauma is over, your energy may not relax and re-extend itself, thus keeping itself cut of from the earth’s energy and from the grounding needed to heal. This can result in getting into a constant feedback loop of fear and anxiety which can also get hardwired into our brain’s patterning. The ability to move and release these anxious energies out of the body and into the ground can remain unavailable because you have unknowingly blocked your root chakra (energy center) from reconnecting with the earth.

Thus solution #1 is to reground yourself. We are electromagnetic beings. We need grounding just like electricity does to work properly. People in many developed countries, especially urban and suburban environments, don’t get enough direct contact with the earth. For one, your shoes’ soles are mostly made of synthetic elements that disrupt the back and forth flow between the earth and our bodies. For two, we sit on chairs, sleep on beds, ride in cars—all keeping us up off the ground. For three, if you live above the ground floor in a condo or apartment building, there is even more distance between your natural connection to the earth. For four, much of non-rural life is connected to machines and technology more than nature.

The more we disconnect from the earth the harder it is to stay healthy and to heal when that is needed. The extra energy we carry in our bodies from stress is unable to leave effectively and it becomes stagnant and stuck causing inflammation and heat in our physical body, anxiety in our emotional body and compulsive thoughts in our mental body. This is one of the main reasons I think it can be difficult to heal thoroughly in a hospital. Some of them are skyscrapers! How can someone in a room fourteen floors up reground their energy after a trauma or surgery if they are so far away from direct contact with the earth on a 24/7 basis? (I think some research should be done to see if ICU psychosis could be reduced or eliminated by situating ICU’s on the ground floor and if possible, letting patients walk outside in their stocking feet.)

So, too, for you, walking outside on the ground or grass without shoes (leather moccasins are one exception) is a good way to help reground your energy. Sitting or lying on the ground or grass or beach is another good grounding exercise. Kneeling and putting your hands in dirt (gardening) can help too. I noticed that almost all of my clients who suffered from situational depression had blocked root chakras, so I encouraged them to spend time in direct contact with dirt!

Solution #2 to help yourself reground is to visualize that you have roots growing out of the bottom of your feet and tail bone (the root chakra) and into the earth. Send them all the way into the earth and see them spread out throughout the earth, then come back up into your feet and tail bone with your awareness. Feel or imagine the connection and flow between the earth and you. Say the affirmation, “I am safe.” Then feel safe. Imagine this if you have to. Imagine that nothing can harm you ever. Imagine what that would feel like. And let your body feel that feeling from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Tell your body, too, “You are safe.” If you’ve been through trauma talk to your body compassionately and gently like you would a frightened child.

“You are so grounded.”

I get this statement a lot from intuitives who read my energy. I believe it is because of the mystical awakening I had several years ago. I learned I was safe when I woke up and knew that my truest self was God—that my core was divine essence, (and so was everyone else’s.) After the shock of that startling insight wore off, I realized the direct implication of this was that I was safe no matter what. No matter what! No one could really do me harm in any way, even if they killed me. I was who I was and nothing for all eternity could change that.

So solution #3 to ground yourself is using this bit of mystical mojo. That fetal position our bodies like to curl into to feel safe? The understanding that each and every one of us has God within is also true in reverse. Each and everyone on of us is also always in God, in the womb of God. Imagine yourself all curled up inside God, totally safe (and all your loved ones, too). Affirming this spiritually can ease the need to physically curl up into an actual fetal position after trauma and keep the fight-flight-or-freeze triggers at bay even after trauma. When you know you are safe, even disease that comes up is not an occasion for worry, because it is just a teacher to help you learn and integrate more. But it can never in no way destroy the real you or your loved ones. EVERYONE IS SAFE! This is a truth that can heal the world. No more grasping. No more hoarding. No more striving. No more greed. No more attacking. No more fear.

To be sure, this is a knowing that comes through direct experience with this truth and cannot be manufactured through gimmicks, and being human, we will still have fears, griefs, and other emotions that arise in our being to work through and process. In the meantime before this truth becomes your own internal knowing, spending time in nature, connecting directly with mother earth, and visualizing and affirming that you are always safe can help your body relax again, stretch out, and begin to feel the security that is always true: You are safe!

--

The idea that you are safe is one of the key chapters in my book, You are Light. For more writing about this truth and meditations and exercises to help you read You are Light. Energy healing sessions that unblock your root chakra can also help as can EFT-Free for Life—a tapping technique considered “acupressure for the emotions” that neutralizes the hardwiring for anxiety, stress and PTSD triggers. I offer both of these in my healing practice. For more information visit my healing webpages or email me at monica@monicamcdowell.com.

Excerpt from My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
Chapter "Reality is a Unity"

My unusual experiences went beyond asking and getting immediate, specific answers.  I began noticing a unity with events and my surroundings that went way beyond any previous experiences in my life.  Once more, the first episode I had was when I was still working at the church. It was Ash Wednesday morning, February 28th, 2001.  I was to preach that night for the church’s Ash Wednesday service.  I had prepared a sermon based on a scripture passage about how catastrophes have within them the potential to help us open up all of our hearts to God and to one another.  Just as I was about to email my finished sermon to the office administrator who was in an office down the hall from me, I was silently lamenting to God:  No one is going to connect with my sermon.  We don’t suffer social catastrophes of any kind in the Northwest, let alone one on the order that could open up any hearts.  Why did I feel so strongly compelled to preach on this topic?  This is completely irrelevant.

As the saying goes:  be careful what you pray for…

For at the exact moment when I hit “send” to forward my email to the office administrator with sermon attached, the earth started to move.  It moved and it moved some more and I looked out the window and saw the normally straight, statuesque evergreens dancing as though they were made out of rubber and the earth rolling in fluid waves like the sea.  As I dove under my desk to wait out the earthquake, my first thought was, NEVER MIND, GOD!  Forget my complaint!  I decided an irrelevant sermon on catastrophe was much more desirable than a relevant one after all. 

As I looked out from under the desk watching the trees continue their dance and the earth its rolling, I pleaded out loud with God over and over, “Save my children, oh God, please keep my children safe.”  Then, in a matter of seconds it just stopped.  The rolling, the shaking, the rumbling, it was all over.  I ran out of my office and the church staff and I gathered for a quick prayer.  I then sprinted outside, jumped in my green Volkswagen Beetle (license plate:  HUMBUG), and drove the all of two blocks to the school and then pre-school to check on my kids.  There was terror in my son’s eyes, but everyone, everything was fine.

Back at the ranch, I surveyed my office.  Only one thing had fallen over—a picture that had been sitting on a picture stand.  The picture was a calligraphied scripture verse, “Be Still and Know That I Am God.”  Wow!  Then it hit me.  This verse comes from Psalm 46 that begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth should quake, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.”  It would be a good story for my sermon that night, Ash Wednesday, when we remember our physical mortality. 

Church was full that night.  The Nisqually Earthquake, as it was to be named, had shaken everyone on a lot of levels and spiritually they wanted reassurances.  Preaching my already finished sermon on how “catastrophe can open our hearts to God and to one another,” and “God is the one we can rely on during a total crisis” was surreal.  Twilight zone chills kept running up my spine.  How could I have prepared a sermon so relevant to the day’s events without any conscious knowledge of what was going to happen?

Later that year, after everything had blown up when I’d filed complaints of sexual misconduct and was retaliated against by the senior minister for doing so, catastrophe hit again.  Extraordinarily, for the second time in a few short months, I experienced a knowing that came from a profound interconnectedness.

By Labor Day of 2001, we moved into a house in Lake Forest Park, a suburb of Seattle, and settled our kids in their new elementary school situated just behind our house.  I loved being able to walk them to school, past all the towering, stately Douglas Firs lined up like sentries along our street.  After walking them to school every morning, I would then take my whistleblower survivor routine and walk to Starbucks and then on to Third Place Books.  Many days I would meander through the bookstore to find a good read and spend the better part of the morning in an oversized leather armchair, sipping my chai latte, contemplating all the while.  Nothing like good old-fashioned escapism when your life is falling apart.

The next Sunday, September 9th, early in the afternoon, I was sitting in our sunroom praying and reflecting on my ongoing travails, when suddenly I was overcome by “something.”  An impression?  A premonition?  All I know is that I gasped and said out loud, “Oh no!  There’s not just doom for the church, there’s doom for our country!”  I immediately started praying, “Lord, have mercy on our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.”  In fact, that is about all that came out of my mouth for the next hour as I went about household chores.  But it gradually faded away and I totally forgot about it. 

Later in the afternoon, my husband walked up to me rather jerkily and mechanically, like a robot, and declared in monotone, “I need to go to New Jersey.  I need to fly out tomorrow.” 

“Okay.”  I replied casually, “If you must, you must.” 

So, he went back to his office, booked a ticket online (a very expensive ticket), and started packing. 

This did not strike me as unusual at all.  Looking back I really don’t know why I didn’t question my husband’s strange behavior.  Usually he planned his business trips well in advance in order to get good prices on tickets, and so I could pre-plan the kids’ and my schedules while he would be away.  I guess it was because he sounded so certain that he had to fly, that I just shrugged my shoulders and went along with it.

I took him to the airport the next day, Monday, while the kids were in school and he called later that night to say he’d arrived safely. 

The next morning I woke up hearing the phone ringing—early.  Way too early for me.  I slowly got out of bed, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs to find out who had called.  I figured it was someone from the East Coast—probably one of my husband’s business associates who didn’t yet know that my husband was actually on the East Coast, and who had forgotten that we on the Pacific Coast are three hours earlier than our Atlantic cousins.  I was fuming at whoever it was who had forgotten to check the time and their brain before trying to reach us at such an ungodly hour.

Just as I got downstairs the phone rang again.  I picked up the remote phone and said mildly, “Hello?”  successfully withholding my early morning, pre-chai grumps.

“Monica!  I’ve been trying to reach you.  Have you seen the news?  Oh my God, there’s another one!  I’m watching TV right now.  Go downstairs and turn on the TV!  Oh my God!  A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center and now another one.  Oh my God!  Hurry!  They think it’s a terrorist attack.  I’m watching this live on TV!”

It was my husband.  I ran down to the basement with the phone and turned on the TV.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  Airplanes crashing into skyscrapers?  It looked like a scene from a movie.  Maybe a bad joke.  Maybe a “War of the Worlds” error, but no, it was on all the channels we got with our antenna (about 5) and it was the top news agencies reporting.  This was no joke.  This was no movie.  I immediately flashbacked to Sunday afternoon:  “There’s not just doom for the church, there’s doom for our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.” 

“Oh my God, I had a premonition on Sunday that there was doom for our country, but I completely forgot about it.  Oh my God.  I can’t believe it.”

“I’ve gotta go, Monica.  I’ve got to make some more phone calls to reach some people here about meetings in light of this.  I can’t believe this.  I’ll call you later.  I love you.”

“Love you, too.  Bye.”

I sat shell-shocked for a minute or two, and then I checked the messages.  My husband had left several, as had my mom.  I called my mom and recounted my premonition.  I also recalled while talking with my mom that my daughter had night terrors during the night after she had gone to bed.  I finally let her crawl into bed with me, because she just wouldn’t settle down.  She kept stirring, moaning, muttering, and waking up.  I had never known her to do this before.  Perhaps she was on some level having a sleeping premonition as well.

As you know, the rest of the week was a bit hellish.  Airports were shut down; the stock markets plummeted.  In fact, this is why I believe my husband had automatedly declared on Sunday afternoon that he was flying to New Jersey the next day.  On some level he too had known.  With the stock markets’ nose-dive, the family business went upside down, and the banks it had loans from were all in New Jersey.  If my husband had been in Seattle when the World Trade Centers were attacked, he never would have made it to New Jersey with all the airports closed, and we would have lost everything. 

But because he was already in New Jersey the very evening before the morning of 9/11, he could arrange face-to-face meetings with business partners and bank personnel to salvage what he could.  It was a divinely appointed flight he took on 9/10.  He was able to salvage enough to keep us afloat for quite a while.  It was a miracle of protection.  Even so, things would still be crashing down around us for a long time to come.

A WIG is the brainchild of life coach and best-selling author, Martha Beck. In her book, Finding Your Own North Star, she suggests a WIG for helping you leap ahead on your true path in life. What is a WIG, you say? WIG stands for Wildly Improbable Goals. It recently occurred to me that I hadn’t set my own WIG in awhile and so I took a little time, went through the process of setting my own Wildly Improbable Goal and (gosh darn golly!) it worked yet again. If you’d like to know how to set your own WIG, read on, my friend!

The first step is to think of five things that would make your soul blissfully happy. These are things beyond your ego needs. They are deep down soul desires. In fact, they may be very small things. That’s okay—we’ll use them later. But try to write down some biggies as well. For example, when I started to daydream about my own WIG, an idea sprang forth for an inter-spirituality meditation summit in Seattle. As my soul started to hum and purr I continued to write down all sorts of ideas around this central idea. By the end of my creative process, my sentiment was generally: This would be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, but I do not have the slightest idea how I would even begin to get started with this, let alone get this done! Not. A. Clue! This is the perfect sentiment a WIG should instill in you. So once you’ve thought up some big WIG’s then choose the one that feels the best right now to you.

The second step is then to let go of it. “What?” you stammer. “Aren’t I supposed to DO something?”

“Why yes,” I would reply, “You do something by letting go.” Say outloud to the universe: Universe, this WIG would be something I would totally LOVE to do. But I don’t have the slightest idea how to accomplish it. So right now, I’m giving the whole idea over to All That Is. I surrender.”

The third step is to wait. See if the universe responds in some way over the next few days. When I set my latest inter-spirituality meditation summit WIG it was a Monday evening and I had said almost the exact same words above to the universe. The very next morning, I opened up my facebook and lo and behold a local business associate, someone I’ve only exchanged emails with and never actually met, had posted, “Does someone want to help me organize a meditation flash mob in Seattle like the one in this video from London?”

Shock is not too much of an exaggeration of the feeling I had as I stared at her post. Since I was pretty sure her post was my cue from the universe, I replied, “Yes, I would.” From there with a few interesting turns, including getting in touch with the main organizer of the worldwide (94 cities, to date) “medmobs” I am now the official Seattle organizer! (Let me know if you want to attend…Here’s the facebook page to stay up-to-date !)

So fourth, after waiting to see if and how the universe responds to your WIG, then take a tiny step that’s very simple. My first step was simply to type “Yes, I would” on the business person’s facebook post. Now note, a flash mediation mob was not exactly what I had envisioned by a meditation summit. What I was thinking about was far more complicated and probably a lot less fun to put together and participate in than a flash medmob. This is why the total surrender and letting go of the WIG is so important. By doing so, you allow the universe to take care of the details and to show you how what you thought was the ultimate idea could be even better!

Even if you wait and the universe doesn’t seem to respond to your initial WIG setting and subsequent letting go, take a tiny small first step towards the WIG anyway and again wait and see what happens. This is the way to accomplish your WIG. Take a step, wait. Take another small step, wait. Over and over. If over time the universe isn’t responding at all, take that as a clue that either it’s not the right time or you need to choose another of your WIG’s or dig a little deeper into your soul to find the sweet spot that will yield an even better WIG. This step, wait, step, wait is a much less stressful and much more exciting way to find and accomplish your true path.

You will encounter fear along the way, even in taking those tiny little steps because you are stretching yourself beyond your self-limitations into the unknown. I had to breath deep several times before I typed in “Yes, I would.” But any fear you feel should be good fear not bad fear, though—the kind of exciting fear you feel on the top of the roller coaster right before it reaches the top of the track and plunges down. If it helps, promise yourself that after taking a small step you will reward yourself with one of the small soul pleasures that came to mind when you were brainstorming back in #1. For me, a small soul pleasure is a fuzzy velour coated pencil. I LOVE those. If even a small step along this medmob path seems a bit too much I might promise to go and buy a velour pencil for myself after I risk and take that small but soul-stretching step. That way I satisfy my soul with little rewards along its true path until it can accomplish fully the WIG that was beyond all that I could even imagine. And that accomplishment will be reward all in itself.

Good luck with your WIG! Let me know how it goes!