I suppose this conversation with myself must come up every year?  I blogged about it May of a year ago.

Anyway, I felt I'd forgotten how I wanted to be - not goals, but ways of being.  And that I needed to remember what values are important to me.  Here, the fruit of a nice journal session, is the list.

1. Romantic Relationship with love and spark and partnership
2. Taking care of my own spirit
3. Be happy with myself & enjoy my own company
4. Sleep enough, exercise, eat well
5. Be charismatic and confident
6. Live truthfully (integrity)
7. Find and learn from mentors
8. Taking care of my “customers” in work
9. Keep my commitments
10. Follow up with people

I can only handle a "top ten" list.  The rest is too much to remember in the moment as life arises.  But, for what it's worth, here is the rest of the list:

1. Spread love
2. Live Lightly on the environment
3. Approach People
4. Building a team in my work
5. Make money
6. Study People
7. Help & Teach
8. Celebration & creation of beauty
9. Listen to God
10. Be a desired lover
11. Welcome people
12. Win
13. Be a “success” in the world’s eyes
14. Following spontaneous inspiration
15. Be happy and charming to myself
16. Be loved
17. Be attractive
18. Spread peace
19. Confront oppression
20. Build community
21. Set high expectations for myself
22. Get out there and DO, even when I feel stuck
23. win
24. Be thankful
25. Set goals

You'll notice it's all color coded - that's different levels.  Red is what I really want and orange what seems essential.  And on down.

I'm trusting that you, the reader, won't be actually holding me to these standards!  I want to live this way . . . but I get no exemption from being human and do not claim so.  Actually these are my growing edges.  The values I've locked in I don't have to think about.

Acceptance is what Eastern spiritual traditions suggest to alleviate suffering. This directly contradicts the world I grew up in, which was based on expectations.

As a teacher and leader, I know that expectations have their place – they spur us on towards something better. At the same time, I know I suffered from expectations that were other people’s notions of “normal” or some other box they wanted to keep me from expanding out of. And now, in my thirties, I find myself disillusioned because I had unrealistic expectations of human community. So I’m sorting this out for myself.

I’m grateful for the lesson of acceptance. I’ve become calmer and more accepting of how other people present themselves.

And yet . . .

I realize that I’m really unhappy because my expectations are not met. In fact, I’m really angry. I feel like somehow I was promised a better world than I find myself in.

So this is my spiritual crisis of the moment.   more »

The inner drama was like a switch changing from 'content' to 'I want' and quickly, 'I lack'. Not even that I did want very much, but once the switch was thrown all the repressed wanting was activated for every thing I've ever been denied. And that force seems stronger than my will. I can't choose 'abundance' then, no matter how many self-help books I've read in my life. So I was watching that inner drama with more awareness than before. And I didn't feel very good about it, or myself.

So I've been thinking about how I relate to people. I want to relate to everyone with love, but SO OFTEN there is some situation of wanting. Basically wanting love in some form. Wanting to fit in, wanting to be liked, wanting to be approved of, successful. I shoot myself in the foot that way, because then I get in my own way and am no service to others. I'm really grieving this. I want to find my power - in situations where it matters. I like being in situations where I am the leader or the teacher or the hero somehow - then people give me power and I feel approved of and it's all good. But I want to be able to feel my power in confrontive situations, when people don't like me. That is when things can be transformed (and also when you can go acting like a fool and hurt others). I want that for myself and instead I run up against my limits.

And so I've been living out the same drama that drives people to their God. 'I want' equals materialism, but it also equals thirst for God. 'I lack' calls for God to fill the space. But not even God can fill 'I lack.' Instead, we have to throw that switch back over to 'abundance.'

I have some power over that switch with myself. If I remain conscious, I can remember the that I can indeed always choose how I respond to situations, which keeps me away from the 'I lack' setting. But I have even more power with other people. So long as my own tangles don't wrap me up, I can set up an emotional climate with the people around me that help them remember they are secure. So I pray for help to do that as a leader.   more »

I reconnected with an old friend Laura who was very important to me when I was in college. Her letters have prompted me to look back at how my spirituality has changed over the last ten years or so.

I think what I have reworked is my expectations of community and people. My disappointment with Quakerism was being hit with the difference between what we Quakers say we aspire to and what we are actually being - normal humans. I've needed to make space for brokenness and healing and not healing yet and the wide category of "things that happen that I don't understand or are not according to my plan."

I was disillusioned about leadership roles because I wanted others to be as on board and committed as I was. I still feel that, even when I'm not in a leadership role, but I guess I have more of a sense of humor about it. (I've lately become aware of just how uneducated and unknowing politicians of my acquaintance are . . . It astounds me . . . And reminds me that there is work to do of communication and education.) So it's less about "The Cause" now and more about the individual relationship, starting with wherever they are at. But I don't give up easily on wanting things to be perfect, or at least measure up to my expectations (because obviously MY expectation are what's important in any situation, right?). And I've got a streak of British judgmentalism I can't exercise, especially when it concerns myself.

I've become less focused on seeking and discerning the spirit's leading.

At some point (actually I remember the moment - it was on an American Airlines flight, when I had time to think) the message came into my head that God was not leading me on to the next step in my life because it was time for ME to step up to the plate - that I needed to develop my own will and desire and that being a human is to be a co-creator, not only a follower. It was time for me to step out.

I've also become much more humble about leadings. First of all, I'm far more aware that I could be sensing impulses from my own ego and fear and pride. Easy to dress that up in nice spiritual language and I'm sure I have. I also trust less my own ability to discern. And I take it much less seriously - I no longer think that it is crucial, critical that I follow the leading because (the unspoken idea) everything depends on me. No, I'm just not that important. And, even more importantly, if I make a mistake (willfully or unintentionally), the world can handle it. Just move on.

(That's a very different attitude than many people around me have who say "there are no mistakes." I say instead, it's OK to make mistakes because you can handle it. You move on and mistakes become grist for what follows. Not to say there isn't trauma and distress.)   more »

I took today to rest. In several ways . . . I'm having a fast. Which is not an easy thing, at least not for me. I'm pretty hungry right now, weak, and fairly well preoccupied with food. But my body was calling out for this fast and I thought it would be a good idea to give my systems a rest. Actually, this recent trip was fairly stressful on me, especially because I didn't sleep well. Along with working hard and travel anxiety and the general disruption of being in a new place. Mostly it was just work, this trip, but I learned things and had some good times. I'm also taking a day of silence with my fast. Fasting from the stress of connecting.

I believe in rest. The good book says God rested on the seventh day and we should do the same. It seems to be written into the design of nature, as fields benefit from rest as well. There is a time for work and a time for play (to quote the same source!). At Kripalu they say it is "integration," which is to say that there is stuff happening below the surface, necessary to complete the change you make with your outward effort.

As a culture we do not believe in rest. We value hard work and working late and we work more than most other countries. And our spirituality is more intense, more driven, as well. But a more intense and driven spirituality does not actually make you more spiritual (although it may make you more religious, and indeed we are a more religious country than many, at least when compared to Europe). I don't have the space or longing to do it as much as I could, but I practice sometimes several types of fasting, not just avoiding food. There is avoiding computers and computer screens. Avoiding people (perhaps silence), avoiding being scheduled, avoiding a particular issue for a day. I believe that laying fallow for a day gives one part of me a rest, lets changes happen under the surface and is therefore very beneficial.   more »

I’ve been grieving. The full process: denial, bargaining, depression, anger, tears . . . I’ve really been knocked onto the floor. Hard. I lost something very important to me.

So I’ve been thinking about this. What have I lost? Most important of everything was love, receiving it, participating in it. It’s not that someone has stopped loving me, it’s that what’s been lost was the evidence of love and that “being” in it was what I, looking back, most valued.

There’s more to it, which I don’t want to blog about. And there is the whole aspect of giving my love, but I guess that doesn’t feel like a loss in the same way.

I realize that I let that love make me very happy and that I gave it importance.   more »

As spring comes, I’m remembering who I am, how I want to live. I wrote down in my journal what is most important to me – not causes, priorities, but my manner of being.

In order:

1. Following spontaneous inspiration
2. Sleep enough, exercise, eat well
3. Romantic relationship
4. Taking care of my own spirit (being happy, quiet time, journaling)
5. Building a team in my work
6. Taking care of my “customers” in work
7. Follow up with people
(   more »

I realize what a hermit I've been lately.

I've stayed home from Meeting. I'm disillusioned, not sure what use a church community could have to me or the world. I'm tired, tired putting on an act, and of putting up with other people's control needs. I don't feel any attraction to being there and any commitment I had has waned in the face of disillusionment.

So here I am at home, listening to my housemate's Steven Halprin   more »

I was watching how I was acting and I feel lacking. Specifically I feel a deficit of love. I’m fully competent, respectful, likeable, ethical . . . but not so loving. In fact, to be honest, I’m downright grumpy and annoyed sometimes.   more »

Alex Schein was running a poetry ("spoken word") workshop at the Pendle Hill youth service camp which I'm co-leading right now. So I wrote a poem in the workshop. Not making any claims about it, but having written it in the first place is surprising and makes me smile. Here it is:   more »

I can't think of anything that can take the place of romantic relationships as a giver of spiritual lessons. Other relationships don't have the same depth of risk and agony and commitment and love and necessity to give up control (even though other relationships may have all those things and plenty of romantic relationships lack them). I think it's the giving up control that is most important.

Community is the closest thing.   more »

Amanda struggles with acceptance and writes about it beautifully.  How well I know the agony of this struggle.

I grew up taught that I could grow up and change the world. How many times have I heard that story about the starfishes getting thrown back into the sea?   more »

A Statement of faith is commonly a list of beliefs, presented so we can determine if we agree. But humans have a long history of getting it wrong and then fighting about it. I want to present this as a snapshot of what now informs my choices and outlook. I hope that we can give more energy to learning and living in the spirit than in making dividing lines.

My faith is part explanation, part inspiration, part experience, and part trust.   more »