National Coming Out Day: Smiling at Fear

Phyllis & TZiPi at the Valentine's Day Sweetheart Ball for the Sonia Plotnick Health Fund, St Petersberg, FL, 2010.
Reflections on National Coming Out Day, October 11
Blessings of Being Awake: In 1977 I met my first Jewish lesbian and fell in love. Today we are still friends and still in love enough to keep working on our relationship. I was just coming out as a woman loving women. I was recently divorced, a single mom and a second year Occupational Therapy student. There were so many new experiences, so much to learn, so many trips and falls and so many fears that I could neither name nor face. There was so much I did not know that I did not know.

Spiritual Challenge:

• Laughing with myself as an act of self love as I begin to notice and then let go of the fears of not wanting others to know stuff about me, when the fact is they already do.

• Remembering that loving another is often easier than loving oneself and that when I do not love myself there is so much pain. Although I have practiced since 1995 to "treat myself as if I were my own lover", I am still a beginner.

• Accepting myself in all of who I am. Now that I am the oldest I have every been, with all those physical changes I do not like, takes a maturity and perspective I know I do not always have! Despite these challenges, I am going to keep heading toward the unknown, as it is an act of love. As the Hebrews spoke, "We will do and then we will understand."

• Learning that coming-out is a moment to moment, self-discovery experience. My coming-out must be done with love and a commitment to my soul's mission. Therefore, I hold the Torah's teaching that The One Without End, The Compassionate One is Holy, so, too am I Holy.

Spiritual Practice: To smile and remember that I am made in the image and likeness of the Divine. I am amazing most of the time and sometimes, as my Uncle Harry, the Doc, of blessed memory, would say, a jerk. I breathe deeply and say, "I am holy, sagging boobs, varicose veins, wrinkled face, gray haired wizened one." I can not hide from the Unending Love within me, nor do I want to hide from the mirror. I am good, kind and loving even when I wonder about that truth.
Blessings of the Vav: The Vav reminds me it is never to late to face the fears and come-out. Kathy Bates in the movie Unconditional Love is a great role model of the bravery of a warrior. So, I ordered the shruti box, a small wooden box that makes droning sounds to use while I am making voice sounds that Deborah, my voice therapy coach taught me. I am coming out as an experiential learner. I am experimenting with the Divine, being at one with all my fears. I am smiling at my fears as they evaporate. I am enjoying myself, my shruti box, my sounds and this life gifted to me.
May your coming-out be blessed, too!

Reminders of the Joy in Being Me.

Blessings of Staying Awake: Alicia taught us during the vision quest preparation and debrief to pay attention to what nature was trying to teach through her many and varied gifts. I had asked the mountains to offer me insight on the pilgrimage. Here are two cherished gifts that i am still allowing the knowing to evolve. This is where I sit today.
On the afternoon of the first day of the trek I was walking with Del and responding to her questions about what happened to the sacrifices in the Old Testament. At one point I was distracted and looked down and there was this piece of wood that looked just like a bird. I quickly picked it up and carried it carefully as a treasure; explaining my excitement to Dell in finding this piece of wood that my name means little bird in Hebrew. In getting back to the sacrifices, I explained that the root of the word for sacrifice is Korban, which mean to bring close. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the rabbis created prayer services, contemplation from the heart, to create the opportunity that the sacrifices offered. Those prayer services are now moments of being close with the Divine three times a day.
On the third day of the trek, Len and I had gone for a short walk where he was coaching me in how to slow down, take baby steps and be totally in the now, to use my breath carefully and deeply. Our conversation related to many things including my mother's death and the grief work yet I had to do. As I came to my tent feeling ready for the next day's walk up to the highest peak, I bent down to unzip the tent and there was this huge stone in the shape of the heart. I feel a connection to heart shaped hearts and quickly placed it inside the tent to be carried with my gear. I was taking this home, no matter the weight! And this morning as I told the story of finding the heart to Chuck, i spoke to my first attraction to the text in the Torah, 'circumcise your heart and don't have a stiff neck.' I need to circumcise my heart, remove the covering, learn something new about me, or as it says later in Deuteronomy, ' the Divine will circumcise it for you!'
Spiritual Challenge: To notice the gift and go deeper than the physicality of what presents itself. I will try to notice when I 'judge a book by its cover' as I may never open it and may miss what there is inside that will nurture my soul. I want to remember that everything has a spark of Ayn Sof, The-One-Without-End in it. I want to continue to believe that I am worthy of the gifts and keep turning them over until I find the essence.
Spiritual Practice: I will keep telling the story, until I unpack the secret message just for me. Today I am honoring my choice of using the Hebrew word TZiPi to introduce me by and to take pride in my connection to the tradition that continues to feed me. What I did naturally is who I am. And i am unburdened and free to be that me that i am.
Blessings of the Vav: We are told in Hebrew Wisdom, 'never stop doing' while 'knowing we will never finish'. There will always be a 'yes, and' moment, another opportunity to see a different point of view, gain perspective from some one else or even myself. The River of Light is endless and is flowing. I am learning how to swim!

Coming and goings of eternity: meeting again, still tasting delicious
Blessings of Staying Awake: Today my friend ME called from Canada. She reminded me of 'guest consciousness', a phrase that arose in the mind of me while I was traveling in New Zealand and a guest in Annette's home. ME has been using the phrase frequently, while I had forgotten it after I took it off the title of my book.
Spiritual Challenge: To remember that whether I am birthing from the womb or birthing from the heart, each is a holy offspring that needs to be nurtured. 'but no one listens' is not an option, I am need to listen. I need to listen!
Spiritual Practice: Make a list of the ideas that have come through me honor them some how!
Blessings of the Vav: I have fallen in love with AND because I want to de-but the world. First, I have to de-but my world and begin noticing how often i say 'ya, but! ' to my birthings. And LOL!!

Collecting The Dots of Being 'Gotten'

Divine Sparks Creating the Universal Force Field
Blessings of Being Awake: There have been moments in my life when i feel I had been 'gotten'! There was no need to try to be any one else but me. And I felt the tenderness, the acceptance, the joy right down to my core that did not need to hide, be politically correct or 'hush-up'. Those are rare moments when I have met some one who knows me better than I know me, the Self that walks too often in fear, loneliness, straight-jacketed.
Staying home this summer, making my travels purely domestic, has offered me the opportunity to open my heart to me and the struggles of re-learning how to love me, by remembering those who knew what it was like to be different and found me in the crowd of their life, and bestowed their kindness in their joy of finding clan.
One of the dots I am collecting was James Kavanaugh, a poet who came to Aiken, SC in the early 70's, thanks to my friend Beverly, to share his work and self. He was my family's guest for a dinner filled with being seen with chesed, loving kindness. He wrote 'Wisdom is not taught. Systems are taught. Wisdom comes from experiencing life.' And my dear therapist Tim reminded me that being mindful of the experience in one's body-mind-spirit is the gift we give ourselves to help us 'get' ourselves! And to experience the experience I must be awake.
Spiritual Challenge: I am beginning to collect the dots, the moments, the experiences when i was 'gotten' and name them and celebrate those courageous souls. And what I am beginning to notice, is that what i learned from them unconsciously, I am passing forward. And I do, when i am kind, laugh at life, ask for a name, listen to a story, cry with someone, offer to sit beside someone in their pain, celebrate the joy of a triumph. That is my job and my life's work is to learn that what I do for others I must do for me, too. I know loneliness, too well. And I have been touched by the light, the ner tamid, eternal light of these holy souls.
Spiritual Practice: I often say 'I am blessed' when asked how I am doing by strangers. I say it not because I was feeling blessed in the moment before i was asked. I do it to remind me of the blessings bestowed upon me when i was not even looking. By collecting these dots, I am collecting the blessings of the many experiences i have been gifted with by the Souls who 'got' me. And in this holy month of Elul, I am asking them for fogiveness for not telling them 'thank you'. And I am forgiving myself for not noticing their light they so generously shared with me.
Blessings of the Vav: Jim has died without me telling him thank you. And I will share this blog entry with his family. www.lifestorynet.com The Vav, is so holy in holding the linking energy and the individuality of the self. I have been blessed to listen to my heart that sits in the emotional state of the body and honor the words that came to me by creating this blog. There is a Society of the Vav and it is coming alive like me.

A New Name, A New Relationship

Origami; Making Hope Come Alive, Peace Park, Hiroshima, Japan
Blessings of Being Awake: In this most holy month of Elul, when we blow the Shofar everyday to remind us to wake up and come back to our true self, I am choosing to focus on something to prepare my soul and being-ness for the new year 5771. I have chosen to change my relationship with the three letter word for the Mystery of All Life, Blessing Bestower. These three letters, g-o-d, have lost their luster with me and have become more problematic than supportive and loving. There is an emptiness when I say this word. And now that my parents are dead and I am an orphan who must truly take care of me as there is no one else to do this, I am sensing a becoming of a more aliveness and as Rabbi Dovid Zeller, of blessed memory sings, believing in this aliveness as me. I have choosen a name for this Divine Ayn Sof, The One Without End that is Unending Love that empowers me and speaks to my wholeness. And for now it is HaRachamana, the Compassionate One. And I am smiling.
Spiritual Challenge: To remember that I am holy and I am HaRachamana, without judging the forgetting of falling back into the old familiar patterns of doubt. And to remember that I can hold Me as HaRachamana holds me and I can empty my body of anything that is not needed to be held any longer. Letting me back into my heart and my womb, and as Mystical Hebrew teaches, I am being the androgynous giver and receiver that I am.
Spiritual Practice:Breathing in the name, noticing my visceral reaction; breathing out the name and noticing the body's response. HaRachamana lives within for those moments I am awake and even when I am asleep walking through my life.
Blessings of the Vav: There is no end to what the mind can imagine and if i connect the dots, all the dots, i can begin to feel included in the the ten thousand things, no longer an outsider. When I listen to me, the HaRachamana, there is only possibilities.

'Love is All You Need' Is Not Enough for Me Today

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole Coming Out Alive
Blessings of Being Awake: I noticed the passion in my voice and the excitement in my body as I was talking to Cheryl yesterday about how I was interpreting the concepts of power and love that Adam Kahane wrote about in his book Power and Love. He expanded on Martin Luther King's and Paul Tillich's writing on love and power while telling his story with great vulnerability and inquiry of his work on social change. I told her that a book had not excited that much interest in me in a long time; I had written and drawn all over the margins, the notes invoking thoughts and emotions and a lot of Vavs and ands. And as I ranted on, I got clearer about how important these two energies were for me. Love is all you need has been my mantra; loving myself as if I were my own lover has been my intention. And in trying to figure out what that exactly meant has been my practice! And in this moment, what I am aware of is the missing element to loving me is power, the generative energy to grow my soul.

Spiritual Challenge: And in living as an only child, introvert, solo-no partner, I have ignored the love, the generative energy of connectedness and unity. My challenge is to learn how to live the paradox of I and We simultaneously. Oy vay, just writing those words makes me nauseous! This must be a large threshold to cross and I am on it making the transition to the other side, feeling the power and the love.
And I read the words of the poem that Nelson Mandela used during his imprisonment that are stuck on my computer and they inspire me forward, 'I am the master of my soul and I am the captain of my fate'. And I link them together with the words Hillel wrote, ' If I am not for myself who will be? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?'

Spiritual Practice: In my workshops on visioning and storytelling and strategic planning I use the phrase, ' together we can make anything happen' and often remember my father's famous line, 'we need each other.' So I need the mind, even when it separates me from others, I must value my body that holds all the emotions and sometimes cannot do every yoga move, and i must remember my Spirit that even when not physically seen I can feel. And I need you as you need me to be complete, individual and unique and connected. My practice is to live as if I am one, interdependent, intra-dependent, fulfilling my soul's mission to grow and heal the world for us together.

Blessings of the Vav: Is that this Otiot, letter Vav, exists with it's own intelligence and has the holiness of the mystical energy of connectedness, as she stands between heaven and earth, within the emotional torso of me, the third letter of the One Without End. And I am circumcising my heart, loosening the thickness of my neck and coming home.

Inspiration: Seeing the Garden Through the Doorway

Blessings of Being Awake: Learning for me has to be on my terms, I learn, like my teachers the Baal Shem Tov and the Buddha, by my own experience. Too often in the past I have felt like a failure trying to fit into someone else system, as in repeating the 5th grade because I could not get the multiplication tables down...reversing too many numbers or in grad school in quantitative statistics when I just could not get the concepts. Deep breath!! And here i am again on the edge of learning something really big and it involves all of me, head, body, spirit. I am learning to be consciously vulnerable with people who I think need me to be strong. I cannot hold my suffering in to myself any longer.
Spiritual Challenge: I need to believe and trust that this learning will benefit the world; that what I am practicing and getting good at is not just about me. And I need to remember that while I am saving my life and uncovering my pure soul by bringing me back into my heart, I am also living a life knowing i am unconditionally loved by the Ayn Sof, the One Without End, and am connecting with all that there is that is being loved. There is no hierarchy of who is loved.
Spiritual Practice: Deep breathing in and expiring and emptying all doubts and creating space for holding me and the pain of separation from the universe. Sitting in meditation knowing that this still time with me is building a relationship with me. And I will be laughing out loud at me for trying so hard to be perfect. I am taking the advice of two wise people. Nick Vacc of blessed memory, chair of my doctoral program department who told us PH.D. candidates, 'settle for a B'. And Pat Ryan in Improve Wisdom writes, be average.
Blessings of the Vav: I am no longer staying in confusion, i am more clear what my path is, so the 'but' is being left out fairly frequently from my vocabulary, as it is with my friends and clients and colleagues. And as I become more clear, my world opens up and I am feeling the blessings of the Unconditional Lover. Yes and, I am ready to cross the threshold into new learning.