Is it an intractable rigidity, fashioned by fear, that seems to accompany our moral fixations? The heart seems to lose its suppleness and ability to reach toward the unknown when haunted by fear. Once we decide that males are perpetrators and females are victims, there is little hope of introducing a level of healing for both males and females, and less hope that gender reconciliation might be possible.

Do you remember the promises you made to keep?

Not to this guy or that, not to parents or a boss, or

a spouse. These are promises made to life. Or did

you believe that only life was responsible for making

and keeping promises? You can’t enter a love story

with life until you come of age as a promise-keeper. 

Life makes no promise. As long as you believe so,

you remain a disappointed child on endless Christmas

mornings. Life only presents opportunity for defeat

and triumph, with the former being more likely. You

You came here to create. You were always meant to

create yourself again and again. The challenge is to

step into some unknown moment – a place you’ve

never really been before. Fear may get the best of

you, settling into the familiar, as if that’s all there is.

The familiar will break its promise of being undemanding.

                     

There is a significant measure of insidious activity

In the familiar. The opposite of creating is not

You are a pilgrim, moved, pulled and directed by tension.
You were welcomed to this world by uterine muscle spasms.
Invasive contractions remained oblivious regarding your readiness.
Forces larger than you will come again and again, ushering
you somewhere you’ve never been. Let your early beginning
continue to inform you about the nature of the journey.

It’s a journey directed by creative tension. It possesses a
primordial knowing about birthing, beginnings, endings
and a tendency to extract you from the familiar.
A life is a series of being reborn again and again. At times
there may be adequate preparation, as much as you
pretend you know where you’re going, you won’t have a clue.

Your childhood would have either been at least

a bit arid or overrun with strong winds and ongoing

cloudbursts. These early beginnings were marked by

too much or too little affection, attention and

encouragement. There would be no perfect climate.

You would turn to the only thing in your control.

You were not able to change what was coming

at you. So you changed the size of your soul. Or

at least pretended you could. Some under-sizing

would offer the hope that your family would not

• It is extremely helpful to recognize and name tension in the present moment.
• Locate the tension in your body.
• Direct your breath to the area of the tension.
• When possible, verbally acknowledge the presence of tension. Recognition and acknowledgement go a long way toward helping manage tension.
• Notice and name any emotion associated with the tension. Typically, fear will be the emotion affiliated with tension and occasionally, anger or sadness.
• Interrupt any catastrophic thinking. You likely will neither be fired, be abandoned by your family nor die in the next hour.

You have loved in so many ways. You’ve loved with

caution, commitment, anticipation, hope and even

with desperation.  The heart has boundless ways

to love and if you’re to come to know love, it will

serve you to welcome them all. This blessing is

for conditional and unconditional love.

Unconditional love arises from deep sentiment,

not especially driven by eros or desire. You’ll

find it cresting at the beginning and at the end.

It’s the love a newborn child receives. The heart

“It behooves us to follow only those who, in so many ways, understand how to follow themselves.”

We have heard from several visionaries. Rilke reminds us to avoid being seduced into complacency by comforting ourselves with the familiar. Frankl suggested remaining in a sustained relationship with life by being curious about what life is asking of us.  Kopp invites us to let go of striving for improvement. He recommends embracing our essential goodness now, as the starting place for all growth. I decided to add my own understanding that it was in our best interests to suspend attempts to get life right and allow life to get us right.

It’s been said that when we trust another, we hold the

belief that the other will tell us the truth and be kind to

to us. In a culture so concerned with what goes on

between people, we define trust as a belief in two things:

to believe the other will tell us the truth and will be kind to us.

The same definition can explain trusting ourselves.

We now have a way to measure the trust we hold for

ourselves. Do you believe you will allow yourself to know