With thanks to Miraculous Beings

I was at a retreat this past weekend called Healing the Heart of Democracy, put on by the Center for Courage and Renewal.

When I got home on Saturday evening I felt like I'd had six deep tissue massages and I spent most of Sunday either sleeping or attempting to walk in a straight line. I'm supposed to be in class today but the thought of my 4.30am Monday morning alarm and the journey was all too much so I wrote apologetic emails to my professors and I'm taking a sickie. I still haven't unpacked.

It's still a mystery to me how the circle process - with the help of those keeping the circle - is so powerful in generating such strong feelings of belonging, community, and safety so quickly. I just started to believe it right at the end, to the point that my deep sadness started to spill out in rather dramatic fashion. But I felt gathered in and held by the circle and in a healing bear hug that was a holy moment in itself.

I found that more often than not when we were invited to write I wanted to draw. I drew a sketch of our circle listening to one of the women speak and gave it to her to remind her of having being heard. Another woman who is a singer led us in a song she made up on the spot. We each have gifts to share. This is what I drew the next day (using up some of my many crayons) to describe the feeling of being held:

I tend to jump to straight to the fixing stage (for my deep feelings as well as my vocation) and I decided there and then I should allow myself to just feel, properly feel for a while first, which I continued to do on the drive home (in as much as one can while maintaining control of a moving vehicle). This is no doubt responsible for my withered state on Sunday.

And one of my favourite holy moments was stepping outside with a small group just as the wind picked up, to watch the sun set and pine trees do a very commendable hula dance in the wind. I felt totally energized by standing in the company of others witnessing the trees just going where the wind took them.

Today I read a poem by Rumi that fits perfectly with my experience:

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no,

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Beside ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

Rumi ~ Zero Circle  

(extract from There is a Passion in Me)