I pulled out of my driveway onto a busy street here in Bend.  I stopped at the stoplight in front of my house, turning left.  I was looking down at my cellphone and didn’t see the left arrow immediately, but turned in plenty of time to make the light and noticed a large white late model pick up behind me, gunning on my tail as I moved down the next block.  At the first stop sign, I pulled up and the truck pulled up next to me, and the man, probably early 40′s, maybe a little younger was yelling at me.  “Hey lady, you don’t know how to drive.”  I pulled up so I could be even with his window, even though in my little Suzuki I was sitting about, oh, 10 feet lower than his truck.  He said a couple other things about my driving, and then said, ‘You suck at driving, you old bitch.”

Something rose up in me, some sort of anger at his hubris.  I said, without a moment’s hesitation, “And you suck at being a good human being.”  He turned left, fuming and I drove on my way.  I was glad I stood up for myself, and felt sad for his anger.

As I processed the incident this evening,  I wish I’d done something else.  I wish I’d said, “Hey, why don’t you pull over up ahead and we can talk about this.”  I was not physically afraid of him–I’m in good shape. Out of his large truck he would have been ashamed to yell at me and call me names.  If I’d had my wits about me and had asked him for a dialogue, and he’d accepted (a lot of ‘ifs’, for sure) I would have talked to him about respect and honoring.  I would have asked him a real question like “What gives any human the right to assume that another human doesn’t know how to do something just because they aren’t exhibiting that skill in the moment?”  “If I talked to someone you love that way, would you think it appropriate?”  In other words, I could have exhibited some tough love for this emotionally young man who was out of control and not appropriate. And if that worked, I’d try some more love.

So the truth was, I don’t suck at driving and he doesn’t suck at being a good human being.  Neither of us were maybe exhibiting our skills in those particular areas at the moment, but I believe we both have them.

At a workshop Andy and I attended over the weekend with Sobonfu Some, a Prosperity Ritual at Breitenbush Hotsprings, Sobonfu talked about how she ‘tortures’ people by loving  them until they can barely stand it, and/or they give in to the power of love.

In retrospect, I could have engaged that man until he begged for mercy, or got back in his big white truck and drove away, shaking his head at the crazies in this town.  I wish I’d tortured him with love.

Ah, another missed opportunity for loving.

Hello!

I am facilitating a two-part workshop on “Soul Apprenticeship: Discovering Your Medicine” in Bend, May 12 and June 9.   If you’re wondering how your Soul Wounds can be transformed into your Soul Medicine, come explore!

We will be using art, soul cards, dance and other movement, journaling and waking dreaming as ways to explore and deepen our relationship with our larger, truer Self.

Cost is $60 for each day-long workshop; $95 for both.  Price includes full catered meal and materials.

Come play!

I cried like a baby–had a true “driveway experience” as I listened to this NPR’s ‘Snap Judgment’ story this past weekend.  Will you be my Xiao Xiao?  Will you help me to never forget what’s important, real, true? 

Xiao Xiao  on Snap Judgment

Geronimo resting Dec. 30 2011

Many of you know Geronimo my friend in wolf’s clothing through the Virtual Teahouse or from visiting me over the years. He’s a Siberian Husky/Wolf hybrid that  came to me at the age of 9 in January 2008;  he just turned 13 in November. He is winding down his life and doing it gracefully and with awareness, just as anyone who has met him would expect. 

Geronimo has been a teacher to me of presence, witness, self-containment.  He is the most non-aggressive dog I’ve ever been around.  He has never chased a small animal nor has he ever attacked another dog.  When attacked, he has just gotten away from the aggressor but never met aggression with the same.  He has a way of being a beta animal that has been an inspiration to me and many of my friends and spiritual companions.

As he leans into his own death, he is teaching me about grace, gratitude and generosity.  I am in awe of  his natural dignity.  His natural gravitas is like a beacon of self-respect and honesty.

Now almost blind, almost deaf and very wobbly,  but still coming into the companioning room to provide presence, he shows his love for me. So I clean up his vomit.  I help him up and off things.  I pet him and hug him and cry in his vanilla-smelling fur.  I will miss him terribly. Even the dreaded 4am walks–wherein he taught me about devotion, presence even while exhausted.  And he will always be ground, home, to me.

“Stay if you will. Go if you must.”

G and me Dec. 31 2011

This is how I want him to go–with my arms around him, telling him how sweet it is…

January 13, 2012  And that is exactly how he did go–on ‘our’ bed, with me wrapped around him and my beloveds wrapped around me.  But first, oh first–that morning we walked/wobbled 7 blocks.  He came home, ate large breakfast.  When the sweet vet came to the house he was out in the yard chewing a large bone like, well like it was the last thing he would ever do.  What a way to go–doing what you love, still  able to ambulate–no pooping or peeing in the house; chewing on a large (organic) beef bone…

Now, these 3 months later (late March) I am in awe of the entire process.  Each death I encounter with more intention, the greater the gifts, the less the haunting grief, the more the enchantment of it all–the mystery of it–abides.

Thank you Mr. G…you will always be my Guide, Friend and Sweetest Savvy Companion. Miss you, but you’ve moved on and are now helping, as your friends know, out there in Shaman land: helping humans make their huge, needed leaps of faith and trust.  Love to you, long time and catch you on the flip-flop…

Originally published as “Douglas Firs were our Sanctuary” on the Virtual Teahouse, which includes several collages that came directly from my work with this event, the story published in the Kairos Network Blog is in a slightly different format.  Titled: Douglas Firs were our Sanctuary: Remembering as Assisted Death

It was a hard story to write, but one that needed to be told.  The woman (Andreya) who the story is about was one of grace, humor and grit.  I hope your heart finds resonance with the work of the story.

Collage I made imaginging Andreya’s release from her broken body moments after her death. All rights reserved.

Here’s my webpage for the WDS…http://worlddominationsummit.com/~BethPatterson

Check it out…there will be more waves of tickets available.

Gram was born in 1898 to two itinerant Methodist minister ‘circuit riders’. She was the oldest of 5 children. From that generation, especially as the oldest child of strict upbringing, she took on the values of absolute and unthinking service to her family and others as a sacred trust. By the time I came along in the 1950′s she was herself in her 50′s, trying to put together a new life and recovering from an extremely abusive marriage, the death of one of her sons during WWII, severe mental illness in her other son, and the sense that the ‘picture’ that she had painted about what her life was supposed to look like was blurred and distorted.

By the time my mother, her oldest of two daughters, died in the late 1970′s of ovarian cancer, Gram’s picture of how life works had been completely turned upside down. Possibly because of the multiple traumas of her lifetime, her faith in the God of her fathers was strong, but not necessarily flexible. Gram had come to view life as something to be survived rather than cherished as unpredictable, unknowable and wild. Gram’s life had been full of great sorrow and precious little adventure, although she had wonderful life-long friends, and 5 generations of progeny who adored her.

While my relationship with Gram was one of the most solid and grounded in my life, there were some things we didn’t talk about. One of them was my liberal stance to politics and spirituality. Although I knew that I stood on my mother’s shoulders and she on Gram’s the gulf was seemingly too wide to dialogue around certain key life issues. Gram wanted to be able to understand my much less constructed spirituality, but we did not have the same framework, so we would occasionally talk about the issues but could never directly address them as the potential for rift between us was something neither of us wanted to risk.

In 1992 as I was in seminary in Colorado, Gram was living in an assisted living community in central Florida. She was 94 and going strong. She fell and broke her hip, or her hip broke and she fell. She hit her head in the fall and wasn’t able to use the ‘lifeline’. She wasn’t found in her little apartment until several hours later, and though rushed to the emergency room, she nearly died. Strapped to a gurney, Gram had the following near-death experience, which she related to me a few months later while I was visiting her. At first I was dismayed that she hadn’t told me about the experience on the phone, but I came to realize that this was such a powerful turning point for her, that it could only be transmitted face to face.

In the near-death experience, Gram was in a long rectangular ‘room’ with curtains drawn in front and behind her. The curtains were of no particular color and were not opaque. They seemed translucent. She said that the setting reminded her of a train or bus station. Somehow she knew that the curtain behind her clearly signified her life up to that time; the curtain in front symbolized her existence after physical death. A wall was on her right, but no wall that she could recall on her left. As she took all of this in, she felt a Presence sitting close to her on her left. When I pressed her for clarity she hesitantly called the entity Jesus. I’m quite sure the hesitancy came from humility, not lack of clarity. She never turned her head to look at him.

They had a long wordless conversation about what being in that particular moment in her life meant. Gram was emphatic about the fact that they didn’t ‘talk with words’; they communicated mind to mind, heart to heart. She recalled feeling like there was no past or future. They talked about whether she should choose to return to life on this side of the curtain, or go on. Up to that point, she didn’t know that she had a choice. The surprise in her voice as she told me about this was endearing and gave me a catch in my throat.

They talked about an incident for which she had not forgiven herself for 40+ years. Jesus said to her, ‘Verna, I know you’ve asked for forgiveness for something time and again, but for the Life of me, I can’t remember what it is.’ In recalling this moment Gram said, ‘And you know, I can’t seem to remember it now either.’ Gram had an incredible memory so I don’t think she meant this literally. I think she had let her memory be wiped clean of judgment and rhetoric.

In describing the entire experience, there was much detail and much that lacked words, but tears and body language spoke of the immensity of experience.

Part of the conversation with Jesus was about how to ‘be’ if she decided to return to this side of the curtain. He suggested that she just continue to talk to him like she was doing at that moment–all the time. When she expressed misgivings about how she could do so, he just gently said for her to try it and see how it worked. When she asked if it would be better for her family for her to stay ‘here’ he suggested that she might be just as useful on the other side of the curtain. This non-linearity was an astounding idea for pragmatic Gram.

Gram said that she felt fully awake during this encounter, and that coming back ‘here’ she started to fall back asleep. She said she knew she would wake up again when she actually did go to the other side of that curtain and she seemed to be much less fearful of dying after this revelation.

When she tried to tell me about her experience of Jesus, she was wordless. She just said how surprisingly close he was. I stumblingly quoted a Biblical phase, ‘No, Beth,’ she replied quickly and firmly. ‘Closer than your own skin.’

I remember taking in my breath sharply, as I felt my understanding of ancestral wisdom take a quantum leap. Somehow I knew that her words would be the Lighthouse for the rest of my life

A lovely soul, Susan Dearborn Jackson, made a remarkably clear and present passage this week in Eugene, Oregon on April 27th surrounded by friends, family and three Tibetan lamas.

Susan was one of the first people I met when I moved to central Oregon. She was a talented and spirited astrologer and gave me a couple of great readings that helped ground me in this new place. Later we connected through our work with dreams, as she was a member of the Dream Divas. During one of that group’s organizational meetings a couple years ago, she told us a story and we titled it ‘Tales of the Wandering Boob’ about the adventures of her breast prosthesis which once had a life of its own… Susan had us screaming-laughing as she told this raucous, slightly true ribald tale that made light of her physical struggle with cancer. Even the writing of the story can’t take the place of her telling it. And I can’t do it justice–you’ll just have to read it.

In the end, cancer was what ended Susan’s life this week. But her spirit, humor and kindness will stay embedded in many souls, including mine. Bon voyage, Susan. We hope wherever you are, you find all your boobs–whole, hearty and ready to rock!

Tales of the Wandering Boob

Note:Susan had planned to be come a blogger for the Virtual Teahouse after publishing this piece, but the recurrence of her cancer did not allow her to do this, so this story is the only one she published on the VTH.

This post is part of a synchroblog on the topic: Life Unfurling: Letting Go. Continuing to grow in faith by letting go of ideas, paradigms, beliefs once held tightly is the topic for this group of bloggers this month. Sheddingis not necessarily a painless process! People may think we've lost our minds, are ascribing to bad theology, or have put our souls in mortal danger. But most of us have found a deeper, richer, and riskier spiritual life as we’ve let go of rules, doctrines, theologies, once-beloved beliefs or practices along the way. The weeks following Easter are centered around new life, so May's synchroblog is about some of the things we're shedding along the way in our spiritual journeys and what we're learning in the process. Please visit the posts at the end of this one and take a grand tour!

I attended a raucous Seder on Tuesday April 19th with Jewish and gentile friends. I’ve attended Seders with most of these friends for five years or so now, and it’s becoming like Christmas with family, so to speak. This is not a sedate group and there’s no sanctimony. We drink, a lot. We eat amazing food. We laugh, a lot. We enjoy the maror (bitter herb–in this case homemade beet horseradish). And the chaorset (a delectable mixture of honey, walnuts, apples and love). And I am a big fan of Manoshevitz, although this fetish is not foisted on the rest of the group. There’s nothing that’s sacred…except that we are a band of pilgrims reliving the ancient story of moving from bondage and constriction, mitzrayim, to freedom, to the Promised Land. Is it a permanent fix? Not hardly. There’s some draw in the human psyche to make the Promised Land INTO Egypt, for Pete’s sake. And then we have to find our way to the next Promised Land, the next land of milk and honey. And leeks.

We mourn the drowning of our afflictors. We sing a chant from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Please call me by my true names. Please call me by my true names. So I can wake up. Wake up. And the door of my heart can be left open. The door of compassion.” We cannot leave them out of the circle. They are to wake up with us, go to the Promised Land with us.

So what is passed over in the end? It must be the lack of love–that is the only thing that we can pass over–that is a huge Reed Sea that we must all pass through–when we recognize and own our lack of love of self and other. Ah. Not an easy passage, and one that we revisit throughout our lives, diving ever deeper into the heart of that matter.

So, forever we celebrate the passage, honor our fellow pilgrims, wonder at the blood on the lintels, the doorposts, the liminal spaces of our hearts and wombs, and are born again into freedom, freedom to love more deeply. I love this, this passage from what seems safe into the unknown, which seems unsafe. And neither are either. It’s all just love. And it just is.

Passover

They thought they were safe

that spring night; when they daubed

the doorways with sacrificial blood.

To be sure, the angel of death

passed them over, but for what?

Forty years in the desert

without a home, without a bed,

following new laws to an unknown land.

Easier to have died in Egypt

or stayed there a slave, pretending

there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first

naked days outside the garden,

is that there is no safety,

only the terrible blessing

of the journey. You were born

through a doorway marked in blood.

We are, all of us, passed over,

brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,

whose imagination you hold.

God did not promise that we shall live,

but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,

brilliant in the desert sky.

~ Lynn Ungar ~

As I now prepare for Easter, being a student of the Love that is Christ, I embody this ancient wisdom that flows through the blood of my Jewish friends. The Reed Sea will part one more time. And then another and then another.

Daiyanu. It is enough. By golly, I am enough.

Crossing the Red Sea, a wall painting from the 1640s in Yaroslavl, Russia