Tonight David and I talked about standing with, loving, supporting and caring for those who are dying. I have had many opportunities to be in that privileged position and I consider it a blessing from God. It always asks me to be the best that I can be. To surrender all the ideas I have about how life will go and when death should happen. To let go of everything that I think and feel so that I can be there for someone else and to be present with how they think and feel. I realize that my self identification comes from repeatedly coming present with my loving, my acceptance, my compassion, my extraordinary strength and my tender heart during these periods of service.
Once, when Anson was pretty close to passing over I was lying in bed with him, silently chanting...asking inwardly for the ministerial body of my church to be present and to assist Anson in his passing. Inwardly I heard them chanting their support along with me. Anson motioned for me to come closer so he could whisper in my ear...he said, "it's pretty...but too loud. Chant softer." As if I needed confirmation about what is real and what is the maya of this world. I should have expected this from Anson because when his wife and I and a couple of friends did prayer communion with him, he told us he could see something working with him....and then he asked for ice cream..he was so cool-a-rama...but anyway......
I am not sure how I came to this ministry but I bring my strength and love to it. What became clear to me tonight when David and I were talking is how much healing it has brought me. It was only in talking about that I became consciously aware for the first time that I am no longer angry at God for stealing my father on my 10th birthday. I can bring myself to that day and to that exact moment without grief.
The impact of that really didn't hit me so much in the moment, but I was driving home along PCH tonight when Linda Ronstadt reminded me that "Love Has No Pride"...a song that has the potential to bring me to my knees and I had this moment that went like this...you know what. I'm ok. Life is ok. I'm happy.
There have been too many who have passed for me to name them all, but each one has left their mark on me. To a man they have revealed their hearts and their souls to me and healed me so profoundly in ways I could never have been smart enough to ask God for.
I used to define myself by my drug induced, lack-filled behavior in the days when lack and drugs were a regular part of my existance. Now I define myself by the depth of my loving, by my willingness to serve and by the acceptance, calm and strength I bring to that service. Thank you everyone of you who have allowed me to heal my fragile heart and to know myself as a soul and a minister.
God bless us all
Rachelle
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
but...but....but.....this is LA
I was out of town for a couple of days....Rancho Santa Fe...go if you haven't. Old world beauty and verdant land...fresh air.
Anyway..I digress. The point is I am back in town and I came back with THE HUNGER. The, "oh my god, I have to eat right now or I will chew through my own fist" kind of hunger. So..I go, innocently enough, to Chin Chin's in Brentwood. I start out the conversation with my server in my usual way.
Me: "I am highly allergic to sugar. What can I have?"
Server: "Nothing. Every single sauce has sugar"
Me: " Every SINGLE sauce?!"
Server: (with great distain) "Yes...it is a chinese restaurant"
It turns out I can eat nothing at Chin Chin's. I also do not eat garlic and without exception every sauce has both sugar and garlic in it. The chefs are (according to said server) completely incapable of making me a sauce that does not contain those two ingredients, which they must seriously believe to be the secret of their success.
Starving and not a little upset, I cross the street to Whole Foods. Keep in mind that when I once accidentally strayed into a K-Mart on a sale day..also a Sunday....I spent an hour in the Fairfax Whole Foods walking up and down the aisles at a museum pace to heal myself from the frenzy I had just left...
Whoops..sorry...another digression.
I enter Whole Foods. I can not eat the tuna salad, chicken salad, potato salad or cole slaw. I can not eat the Nori wrapped Halibut or ANY of the sushi. I can not eat the Teriyaki chicken breasts or salmon. Likewise the pot roast or the sliced roast turkey. Hot dogs...sugar, chicken dogs...sugar. Shall I go on....Pasta dishes, cold and hot salads, luncheon stuffings...SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR. Don't get me started on the breads or the frozen foods. Let's not even go into the areas of potato chips and crunchy snacks. More than half, MORE THAN half of the potato chip items had sugar. Salad dressings...sugar. Pasta sauces..sugar again.
If I listed all the items that had sugar this article would have enough entries to cover the whole front page of the New York Times. In case you are looking at some food item and are thinking of arguing with me. Let me give you the list. Sugar is no longer called sugar. The food brokers out there are smart and this is LA. Now sugar is called:
Sugar, sucrose, fructose, cane juice and her sister..organic cane juice, maple crystals, honey, corn syrup. On the healthier side, but still sugar we have: fruit juice, barley malt, brown rice syrup, manitol, sorbitol, stevia and the always popular...naturally sweetened. SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR.
And in the same breathe we worry that we are raising a nation of obese children.
Go into your restaurants..ask if your tempura batter has sugar (it does). Since you can't have that, how about some sushi. No luck...sushi rice has sugar. Ask if your pasta sauce has sugar. Ask about your salad dressings. Go to the deli section of your supermarket. See what you can get if you have no sugar at all. I got naked tuna and some salad fixings. It fed my hunger but not my soul.
I expected more from this town.
Rachelle
Anyway..I digress. The point is I am back in town and I came back with THE HUNGER. The, "oh my god, I have to eat right now or I will chew through my own fist" kind of hunger. So..I go, innocently enough, to Chin Chin's in Brentwood. I start out the conversation with my server in my usual way.
Me: "I am highly allergic to sugar. What can I have?"
Server: "Nothing. Every single sauce has sugar"
Me: " Every SINGLE sauce?!"
Server: (with great distain) "Yes...it is a chinese restaurant"
It turns out I can eat nothing at Chin Chin's. I also do not eat garlic and without exception every sauce has both sugar and garlic in it. The chefs are (according to said server) completely incapable of making me a sauce that does not contain those two ingredients, which they must seriously believe to be the secret of their success.
Starving and not a little upset, I cross the street to Whole Foods. Keep in mind that when I once accidentally strayed into a K-Mart on a sale day..also a Sunday....I spent an hour in the Fairfax Whole Foods walking up and down the aisles at a museum pace to heal myself from the frenzy I had just left...
Whoops..sorry...another digression.
I enter Whole Foods. I can not eat the tuna salad, chicken salad, potato salad or cole slaw. I can not eat the Nori wrapped Halibut or ANY of the sushi. I can not eat the Teriyaki chicken breasts or salmon. Likewise the pot roast or the sliced roast turkey. Hot dogs...sugar, chicken dogs...sugar. Shall I go on....Pasta dishes, cold and hot salads, luncheon stuffings...SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR. Don't get me started on the breads or the frozen foods. Let's not even go into the areas of potato chips and crunchy snacks. More than half, MORE THAN half of the potato chip items had sugar. Salad dressings...sugar. Pasta sauces..sugar again.
If I listed all the items that had sugar this article would have enough entries to cover the whole front page of the New York Times. In case you are looking at some food item and are thinking of arguing with me. Let me give you the list. Sugar is no longer called sugar. The food brokers out there are smart and this is LA. Now sugar is called:
Sugar, sucrose, fructose, cane juice and her sister..organic cane juice, maple crystals, honey, corn syrup. On the healthier side, but still sugar we have: fruit juice, barley malt, brown rice syrup, manitol, sorbitol, stevia and the always popular...naturally sweetened. SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR.
And in the same breathe we worry that we are raising a nation of obese children.
Go into your restaurants..ask if your tempura batter has sugar (it does). Since you can't have that, how about some sushi. No luck...sushi rice has sugar. Ask if your pasta sauce has sugar. Ask about your salad dressings. Go to the deli section of your supermarket. See what you can get if you have no sugar at all. I got naked tuna and some salad fixings. It fed my hunger but not my soul.
I expected more from this town.
Rachelle
Sunday, April 8, 2007
seriously...isn't it enough?
I love it when Christmas and Chanukah happen around the same time. Same with Easter and Passover. To me it just says that there are more people focused on the finer things in life. For me, the finest thing in life is gratitude and Easter and Passover just REEK of them.
The Passover Seder has always stood out in my heart and mind as a most profound and pure expression of gratitude. If God had led us out of bondage, but not out of Egypt..dianyu...out of Egypt but not to the Red Sea...dianyu....it goes on like this for some time, with all members of the Seder intoning in unison....dianyu.
Here is what dianyu means as I understand it. It means this: if God had given us this one thing and then nothing again ever again it would have been enough to sustain our gratitude for the rest of our lives.
Same with Easter. Christ died for our sins and we have been made pure. Our sins are forgiven forever. I don't know about you but that does it for me. I'm grateful. Darn grateful.
What is dianyu in your life? What have you already received that keeps you out of lack and in gratitude in perpetuity? If you are reading this the chances are good that you live in America. The land of free education, libraries, pet parks, double-stuff Oreos and soft toilet paper. You are not in bondage, God has forgiven you in advance and you have a computer to read this on. What more could you need?
It does turn out that I am not as stupid as I look, well maybe I am but that is really not the point here is it? The point is I know that life gives us many, oh so many whining opportunities. I have taken advantage of quite a number of them myself. I have privately beat my chest and keened at God and the moon for the position I have found myself in on more than one occasion. I have railed and raised my fists at extremely well attended church events when I felt it simply wasn't possible to let enough people know exactly how unhappy I was with God and his apparent lack of concern for me at worst and his tardiness at best. Always...always...always...I come back to gratitude.
What a blessing and a privilege it is to be able to express my unhappiness at my landlord. It means that I am not foraging in the freaking desert trying to feed my newborn. What delight and extravagance to confess my anger and upset at someone I thought was a friend. It means that I have the time and the audience to express this....usually over an organic cup of hand-dripped coffee, accompanied by a little snack treat.
What do you think of this? I do not care who you are, or what position you find yourself in right now. God, life, family, friends have already given you enough to be grateful for for the rest of your life. I believe this is true. I also believe that the aformentioned group has given you pause to stop and redefine your blessings and your perspective on them. I know you have felt hurt, suffering, pain and loneliness before. You probably will again but there is an energy on this planet that can lift you beyond the emotion and the thoughts and it is real and it is sustainable and it is dependable and it can save your life.
It saved mine.
In my church we say..Baruch bashan...it means the blessings already are
Happy Pasach
Happy Easter
God bless us all...everyone of us.
Rachelle
The Passover Seder has always stood out in my heart and mind as a most profound and pure expression of gratitude. If God had led us out of bondage, but not out of Egypt..dianyu...out of Egypt but not to the Red Sea...dianyu....it goes on like this for some time, with all members of the Seder intoning in unison....dianyu.
Here is what dianyu means as I understand it. It means this: if God had given us this one thing and then nothing again ever again it would have been enough to sustain our gratitude for the rest of our lives.
Same with Easter. Christ died for our sins and we have been made pure. Our sins are forgiven forever. I don't know about you but that does it for me. I'm grateful. Darn grateful.
What is dianyu in your life? What have you already received that keeps you out of lack and in gratitude in perpetuity? If you are reading this the chances are good that you live in America. The land of free education, libraries, pet parks, double-stuff Oreos and soft toilet paper. You are not in bondage, God has forgiven you in advance and you have a computer to read this on. What more could you need?
It does turn out that I am not as stupid as I look, well maybe I am but that is really not the point here is it? The point is I know that life gives us many, oh so many whining opportunities. I have taken advantage of quite a number of them myself. I have privately beat my chest and keened at God and the moon for the position I have found myself in on more than one occasion. I have railed and raised my fists at extremely well attended church events when I felt it simply wasn't possible to let enough people know exactly how unhappy I was with God and his apparent lack of concern for me at worst and his tardiness at best. Always...always...always...I come back to gratitude.
What a blessing and a privilege it is to be able to express my unhappiness at my landlord. It means that I am not foraging in the freaking desert trying to feed my newborn. What delight and extravagance to confess my anger and upset at someone I thought was a friend. It means that I have the time and the audience to express this....usually over an organic cup of hand-dripped coffee, accompanied by a little snack treat.
What do you think of this? I do not care who you are, or what position you find yourself in right now. God, life, family, friends have already given you enough to be grateful for for the rest of your life. I believe this is true. I also believe that the aformentioned group has given you pause to stop and redefine your blessings and your perspective on them. I know you have felt hurt, suffering, pain and loneliness before. You probably will again but there is an energy on this planet that can lift you beyond the emotion and the thoughts and it is real and it is sustainable and it is dependable and it can save your life.
It saved mine.
In my church we say..Baruch bashan...it means the blessings already are
Happy Pasach
Happy Easter
God bless us all...everyone of us.
Rachelle
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
It means something HAPPENED
It almost never fails. When I bring up the concept of forgiveness with someone, they will almost always launch into their discourse of EXACTLY how WRONGED they were. EXACTLY..mind you. They can relay to me every little offense related to the case they are making to the universal judge and jury who are surely listening and will STRIKE THE SINNERS down who have caused them pain, grief and suffering.
Yes...I say when they have paused for a sip of water that they are preparing to simmer and boil into a brand new rage. That's when you offer forgiveness. When something happens. Get it. Something happened.
No-one is disputing the basic facts of the case. For the sake of your lovely outburst I will give you as fact everything you say. Tom and Betty really did wrong you. Bad. Megabad. Can you forgive them?
It seems to me that forgiveness, compassion, tenderness and mercy and qualities that are used greatly...until SOMETHING HAPPENS. Funnily enough...people have a hard time associating the fact that this is their moment.
I understand that forgiveness isn't always the easiest path to take. But more than that..so much more than that, I understand that holding that level of rancor, pain, contraction and anger inside is just bad for ME. I forgive because it is better for ME. Sometimes I literally beg God to help me forgive. I don't want this anger but I'm mad. I don't want this pain but I am hurt. Really, really, really I am willing to give it up. WIll you help? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I set my course directly and set sail until I reach my destination. Forgiveness is freedom for me and no matter who you are you are not worth standing between me and the consciousness that sets me free.
Even when something happens...
Rachelle
Yes...I say when they have paused for a sip of water that they are preparing to simmer and boil into a brand new rage. That's when you offer forgiveness. When something happens. Get it. Something happened.
No-one is disputing the basic facts of the case. For the sake of your lovely outburst I will give you as fact everything you say. Tom and Betty really did wrong you. Bad. Megabad. Can you forgive them?
It seems to me that forgiveness, compassion, tenderness and mercy and qualities that are used greatly...until SOMETHING HAPPENS. Funnily enough...people have a hard time associating the fact that this is their moment.
I understand that forgiveness isn't always the easiest path to take. But more than that..so much more than that, I understand that holding that level of rancor, pain, contraction and anger inside is just bad for ME. I forgive because it is better for ME. Sometimes I literally beg God to help me forgive. I don't want this anger but I'm mad. I don't want this pain but I am hurt. Really, really, really I am willing to give it up. WIll you help? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I set my course directly and set sail until I reach my destination. Forgiveness is freedom for me and no matter who you are you are not worth standing between me and the consciousness that sets me free.
Even when something happens...
Rachelle
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