It’s been a wild couple of weeks.
It may be the eclipse, I’m not sure, but it feels like a cosmic force has bitten us like a stray dog.
It’s not because I’m personally so in tune with the planetary movements, I’ve just had triple the number of messages and calls. Some of my closest friends are facing life-threatening challenges, so if you’re feeling it you’re not alone.
My poor sister-in-law was even bitten by a stray dog on a beach in Costa Rica.
Many people seem to be seeking a bit of extra love and support, and many of you have reported feeling like things are coming to a head in one way or another.
Today, let’s give ourselves a breather from the swelling, the bruises, and the nitty-gritty of whatever challenges we’re facing and pause where we are to look at the bigger picture.
Teleology comes from two Greek words: telos, meaning “end, purpose or goal”, and logos, meaning “explanation or reason”.
Teleology is helpful to allow us to see or reframe the events in our lives as not an isolated challenge but as a part of a larger picture or purpose.
This higher view allows us a different view of the discomfort we are currently experiencing based on the purpose they serve when we look at the larger landscape of our lives.
My Mom had her knee replaced Friday instead of only being focused on why this happened to her, the pain, the discomfort of her physio exercises, or the inconvenience of not being able to drive the Telos may be that this operation will lead her to a life of independence, moving freely and living fully for the rest of her life.
Teleology describes lifting above the dark woods, past the error and confusion, unexpected inconvenient event, or struggle to…WOW IF that had not happened I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Things seem to flow to us FROM an event, a challenge, or an inciting incident.
If I had not gone tree planting, I may not have met my husband. My kids would not exist.
If I had not suffered from chronic pain, I may never have turned to spiritual teachings which have taught me about love the whole point of life, and this incredible wonder-filled experience.
This substack would certainly not exist and I may still be feeling depressed or overwhelmed by my life looking outside myself for safety, fulfillment, and satisfaction all while doubting and self-sabotaging myself at every turn.
I would probably still be numbing out my pain and feeling like a victim of my circumstances.
I’m grateful beyond words for others who have connected the dots in their own lives to this bigger picture beyond the short-term struggles.
Kris Carr was diagnosed with stage 4 of a rare form of cancer without a cure and was working to “fight” and control her cancer then realized that because of cancer she had become a bestselling author, met her husband, made a movie, and had financial freedom because of it. She stopped fighting what was, and loved her tumors which in turn began to heal and shrink for the first time.
She may not be cured of cancer, but it was a game-changing shift in her consciousness and it reflected in her experience of it.
She was given 10 years to live 20 years ago. In the end, cancer was a gift in disguise. The worst and most life-threatening news became the catalyst for the most affirming.
It reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver called The Journey.
Her poem is like a doorway to encourage us to continue and take a step towards a greater life no matter what struggles we face.
Years ago, a man in our church went through a significant health and financial crisis. In danger of losing it all, he felt overwhelmed and paralyzed. I remember him describing how everything felt impossible. He felt abandoned. Alone. Even opening his Bible felt pointless. All he wanted was to get back to his life before the interruption and he couldn’t let that go.
But what if the interruption was happening for him TO see and experience something more?
For him to trust God, or life and teleology, instead of separating himself from it and focusing his powerful creative mind solely on the challenging circumstances and suffering and feeling stuck in a rut.
There will of course be obstacles in life, and it will feel scary when things change; but in the end, you have the power to decide to experience this inner shift for yourself when you’re ready to see more.
You can leave the bad advice and demands of other people based on their experiences, to follow YOUR instincts instead—that is, to forge your path in life based on inner guidance from YOUR personal experiences.
I have friends who call this inner guidance all kinds of things from Source, the Holy Spirit, Angels, synchronicity, the quantum field, and guides or council but to me, they are all describing the same internal teacher or ethereal force for good we all have access to. It’s our higher Self that knows best that we can have a direct line whenever we open up our mind to learn about it.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver, from Dream Work
I like to read poems a few times to see what comes to me between the lines. At first glance, my mind wandered from my perspective as a mother…is Mary saying to let my family fend for themselves and save myself by leaving in the middle of the night? ha, I confess I missed the magic.
I can see now that it’s about the biggest picture, my ability to show up and serve the greater good and the life I have that belongs to the world IS my destiny. And when we step towards our greater life…there is the possibility we will leave others behind.
I was not born to plant trees, teach high school geography, become a wife, a mother, a life coach, or a yoga instructor. I’m not here to sell group insurance and retirement plans to companies. I’m not even here to become a Minister. I did all of those things and they all offered me life experiences to eventually have the realization that I’m NOT what I do. I’m here to BE love. To serve God and no one else may understand my motivation.
When I became a minister and stepped outside my ego identity it felt like I was leaving in the middle of the night - it was dark, there was debris I had to step over and no one else wanted to come with me on my spiritual and sober path.
I remember one friend looking aghast at me: “Nona, why on earth would you do this?”
It WAS social suicide but it was the best thing for me.
I FINALLY knew what I had to do and began.
“Start walking, start walking towards Shams*, your legs will get heaving and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting.
Rumi
Note: *Shams was Rumi's mentor of sorts. He once said of him, "You are either the light of God or God," and followed him around until he disappeared. Rumi described his search for Shams as the search of his own identity… the search for the internal pointer.
I may not know how things will turn out on this new path, or how I’ll even earn a living going forward, but I feel like I’m starting to lift.
I love the way David Whyte re-reads lines over twice or even adds lib in between to make a clarifying point and deepen the learning.
There is a kind of knowing that lies dormant in us for years and one day we break open and it ALL begins to make sense.
The landscape of our lives finally comes into clear focus.
For me, it was a forehead-slapping moment. Being sober, having a spontaneous awakening, and a deeper understanding of my life and our greater cosmic existence.
I remember having a HOLY SH*T moment - that this life is not what I thought and neither am I.
It felt like an epiphany and I’ve heard for other people it’s a slow burn or evolution.
We are all being called to this Divine dance, but not all of us are ready to say yes and hit the dance floor, we want to be wallflowers just a bit longer.
It seems like our exploration of our world is limited by our senses and it’s not something we can learn with our brains in books and this is a shame because it’s all we seem to know.
“If we look at this tree outside whose roots search beneath the pavement for water or a form which senses its sweet smell to the pollinating bees, or we ourselves and the inner forces that drive us to act, we can see that we all dance to a mysterious tune, and the piper who plays the melody from an inscrutable distance - whatever name we give him, Creative Force or God - escapes all book knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
After years of marinating in mourning, once we’ve been cooked in grief and have been broken down or have experienced a letting go of a way of an old way of being in the world, the way of living that you have outgrown marks your new beginning.
This is the road less traveled.
It’s not necessarily a religious path, but it is spiritual.
NEW LIFE emerges from this new path.
When we surrender control, we are moved by life from order to disorder, to re-order.
We are healed from the inside out. As we slide deeper into our true nature we experience our essential selves.
It’s the most powerfully wonderful and humbling feeling I’ve ever felt.
I think I love Mary’s work because she’s not overtly clever or full of obtuse stuffy words. She was a plain and simple person. She smoked. She lived quietly on the east end of Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachussetts for 50 years. She worshiped nature and sought to understand the divinity of life in it. If you ever wanted to meet her you just had to go to the beach at 5 am. When she died in 2019 it struck me that this simple Pulitzer Prize-winning woman’s passing was International News because she was authentic. She lived in integrity by simply being her true self, something I have personally had a heck of a time doing.
Her poems use nature as a doorway inside ourselves and it’s an experience we all share so her words speak to all of us.
Einstein’s work has this effect on me too.
I’m reading a great book right now - it’s called “Einstein and the Poet” by Dr. William Hermanns (who was the poet and had four private teleological conversations with Einstein that he describes in his book that changed his life.)
I’ve learned from this book that our genius is not created by others, we are born with it, but it’s so deeply buried beneath our cultural constructs and the people around us that we need to excavate it with self-evolved tenacity.
The same tenacity I saw on the Boston marathon runners faces last week, no matter what their time was. The winners and the ones in their seventh hour of the race had the same expression.
They were running their race and had unique challenges, but they shared a bigger goal.
Not just reaching the finish line but the telos of living their greatest life.
Collectively we’ve created mountains of knowledge to climb, more than we can in any lifetime if we keep our heads down, but when we take a break and look up, we will begin to see what the stars are showing us and we can intuit our next steps.
I was reminded in this book that when Einstein was 5, his father gave him a compass as a toy. He was so intrigued by the invisible forces that moved the needle that he could hardly sleep.
Entranced by the mysterious magnetic forces directing the needle, Einstein found in this simple device a profound glimpse into the hidden order of the natural world.
The compass, with its invisible guiding principle, became a metaphorical compass for Einstein himself, propelling him toward an exploration of the beauty of the universe.
We all have this experience. For some of us, it’s a dog, a pony, or a sailboat. Something captivates us and we have more questions than answers.
His father couldn’t give him an answer to appease his curiosity.
“What you don’t know, call ‘x’, then hunt until you find what it is.”
Einstein
What if we all did that, called everything we don’t know ‘x’?
That would mean that for me God is ‘x”. Not the male God he learned about in school or church, or any one religion, but the ineffable order of the universe.
Einstein and I have something else in common, we both suspect that a lot of what we’re taught in school and church is not entirely true.
His genius was that he wondered with the wisdom of the mind of a child and began to see Universal Patterns that are true for all of us.
Einstein had a tough walk down a dark road with huge fallen branches and stones to step over. He struggled in his early life at school. He was overlooked, he wasn’t athletic or perceived as good-looking or culturally valued and he questioned everything.
Deep down he knew that we didn’t have all of the answers and that science was never finished.
He failed a thousand times but after 9 years he finally published his work, and he was anxious about doing it. For good reasons, his life was threatened.
He wanted to give up many times, and he had innumerable sleepless nights, but he eventually found the answers he sought.
He knew he’d be on the top of everyone’s hit list. His answers deeply upset the status quo. He was sick for 14 days after he dropped off the papers to be published.
EVEN Einstein had self-doubts and he discovered with mathematical simplicity that matter and energy are the same thing.
Mass is concentrated energy. He didn’t come to this by accumulating old mountains for knowledge or by empirical methods, but through a philosophy of deduction.
Through intuition.
“It is intuition that improves the world, not thus the following the trodden path of thought. Intuition makes us look at unrelated facts and then think about them until they can all be brought under One law.
Intuition, not intellect is the open sesame of yourself.”
Einstein
For Aristotle, a telos didn’t necessarily need to involve any deliberation, intention, or intelligence.
It was about us flourishing as human beings.
The painful journey has always been about that all along.
There is nothing wrong with you. YOU are doing life perfectly.
No matter what physical or emotional trials you face in your life, nothing can ever change or hurt this deeper part of you that has no fear and wants to experience it all.
Let’s support each other to get radical and seek and solve for the ‘x’ in us by living the questions from that deeper place.
Be patient and keep putting one foot in front of the other or moving forward to the finish line any way you can, even if you need a push.
You’re not alone and anything is possible together.
I’m cheering for you as loud as I can, probably not in star-spangled shorties.
With love,
Rev Nona