Monette Chilson's Blog, page 2

Tools for Transformation

The luster of those New Year���s resolutions has already begun to fade, but that sparkly sense of ���New Year, New You������as cliche as it is���still hangs in the air. It���s into this lingering atmosphere of possibility that I���ll toss a couple of resources. Not mandates to ���give up this��� or ���add this��� but two different programs I am using to reach those places in me that could use some tweaking.

I embarked on the first���Baron Baptiste���s Forty Days to Personal Revolution���a week ago. It is based on his book by the same name, but it extends past the pages of the book when it is done in concert with a group of people like I am doing with 1,000 other folks at Yoga One locations around Houston. Yoga studios across the country are offering their own versions of this program which includes a 40-day commitment to moving, meditating & breathing your way to a more balanced self. There is encouragement to eat in more balancing ways too, and many offer weekly meetings for accountability and complimentary workshops to help kick-start an existing practice or launch a new one. I like this program because it���s accessible and unintimidating to new yogis but allows us longtime yogis to go deeper and identify gaps in our practice that we didn���t even know were there.

I am particularly drawn to Baptiste���s way of seeing yoga as a tool that works for people from every faith tradition. In my book, Sophia Rising: Awakening Your Sacred Wisdom Through Yoga, I advocated for the inherent compatibility of yoga with every spiritual tradition. Baptiste does the same, saying:

���I attempt to bridge the gap between the wisdom of the East that can and does apply to us here and the teachings of great masters such as Jesus and Moses. We forget that what these masters taught lies at the heart of what we seek in yoga, and they stand as perhaps some of the greatest yogis who have ever lived. Many of us have rejected these teachers in favor of what we perceive as the more mysterious and fascinating ones from faraway cultures, but the teachings of one can deepen our understanding of the others.���

I have not been the best at blogging lately���understatement since my last post was three months ago���but I am going to try to post a reflection on each week���s theme. First up, presence, followed by vitality. Look for something later this week if you want to follow along or journey through the book together.

When this forty-day program is over in mid-March, I will dive into a second program���this one designed by my dear friend Trista Hendren, author of The Girl God series, using her new workbook, New Love: A Reprogramming Toolbox for Undoing the Knots.

Undoing the knots. Isn���t that exactly what we all set out to do every new year with our resolutions, intentions and goals? We are trying to undo physical, mental and spiritual knots that keep us from being the best version of ourselves. The problem is, though, without a deep understanding of what knotted us up in the first place, we can end up with a few new tools but even bigger knots.

The idea of reprogramming from the core appeals to me. That is why���in addition to kicking off the year with the forty-day yoga program and vows to start taking my vitamins and learn to chant in Sanskrit���I am working through this book that will help me change some of the bedrock programming that leads to dissatisfaction.

The particular knots this book helps untangle are universal for women conditioned within the model of modern femininity. Trista describes the program���s over-arching goals, saying:

���This toolbox is a means to help you break free of those oppressions individually, facilitating the release of the collective female consciousness from the indoctrination of inferiority most of us were raised with. In doing so, we hop to rattle the cage that women have been locked up in for thousands of years.���

Even if you were raised���like I was���with parents who encouraged your dreams without placing any gender-limiting notions on them, this book will encourage you to explore the subconscious default that lies beneath the surface of our psyche. The one that causes us to default to male imagery and language, especially in the realm of sacred experience which has been presented predominately through a masculine lens in all the world���s major religions.

This is all fascinating to me because it feeds into the work I���m doing for my next book which will explore���more deeply than my first book���the impact of a patriarchal worldview on our spiritual lives and what we can do about it. I hope to have more news soon on the next book, but for now, please join me in using the tools of your choice to untie your knots. If you choose to travel alongside me through either of these two books, please post here to report on your progress and insights.

Happy New Year, all!

Courage to Change

I am the ultimate creature of habit. Ask anyone who knows me. I am loyal to a fault, and when I find something or someone I like, I am devoted. I write in the same comfy chair at my coffice every day. The regulars���bless their hearts���invariably offer me their seat if they happen to be in it when I arrive. I get stuck on favorite restaurants too. For a while, I ate at Houston���s iconic health food restaurant A Moveable Feast several times a week until my friends gently hinted that they���d love to eat somewhere else. Anywhere else. The breakfast tacos at the YMCA had me captivated for a season. The waiters at Nit Noi start making vegetarian spring rolls when I walk in the door. I am woefully predictable. And that���s not always a bad thing. There is comfort in routine and some wisdom in the old adage, ���If it ain���t broke, don���t fix it!���

But sometimes I���m so comfortable with my well-cultivated ways that I don���t notice they���re not serving me any longer. I have been a devotee of Iyengar yoga for the past 10+ years, almost half of the 22 years I���ve been practicing. It is the bedrock of my asana work and, surely, its focus on proper alignment will serve me well as I age.

Every summer, like it or not, my practice gets a bit of a shake-up when I head to our mountain house in North Carolina. I adore the studio there, and I quickly adapt to whatever style the teachers are offering. This summer it was lots of flowing yoga, and toward the end of the summer, I found myself in a three-hour bhavana workshop. Bhavana is a term found in yogic and Buddhist circles meaning ���to cultivate one���s potential through sincere practice.��� We practiced, we talked, we journaled,p[; and we had tea.

So why now���deep into fall, heading into the holiday season���am I reflecting on that summer workshop? Because yesterday my journal fell open to pages I wrote in that workshop. As I re-read those words, I was struck by the fact that I have manifested the changes that I identified through that journaling. I didn���t let my desire for predictability thwart my bhavana. I was brave enough to change, to do something different that would make a profound difference in my life on and off the mat.

I will share my journal entry here, in hopes that it will spark a recognition deep within you of something that needs to change within your own practice���whether asana-related or the bigger work of bringing your yogic presence to the whole of your life. Sitting on the floor of the studio in the mountains contemplating how I could cultivate my own potential through my practice, I wrote:

I���d like to synch the inner yogic strength I���ve developed this year with my practice on the mat. By necessity, I was gentle with myself during the time of great loss and profound grief.

Now I know deep within���in a way I did not before���that I can survive the unthinkable. I can do things like write my sister���s obituary, plan my nephew���s sixth birthday party and talk for hours on the phone with my sister���s husband about how we go about doing life without her. If you would have asked me, I would say I could never do those things.

But I did. And I am still here.

So now I want my practice to reflect this new-found strength and tenacity. I have been gentle with my physical practice long enough. Now I want to move and breathe and stretch into that inner strength. I don���t want to say, ���I can���t��� to poses that intimidate me. I want to sweat more, shake more and let my inner strength shine.

As I finished re-reading those words, I wanted to give myself a big hug for listening to my inner longings and for acting on them. For the last two months, I have done sweaty, messy flowing yoga three times a week and have worked out my grief in physical ways that I never could have within the safe confines of my Iyengar practice, with its props to keep us safe and its layered cues to make sure we were doing each posture just right.

When we come face-to-face with harsh realities���like Angie���s sudden, inexplicable death���all the props that make us feel safe fall away. We know that sometimes life just doesn���t make sense, and a practice as orchestrated and controlled as Iyengar is doesn���t express that sense of losing control.

So, for now, I move until my muscles are exhausted. I flow without thoughts about precision and perfection. I practice kriyas from the kundalini tradition that are designed to make us uncomfortable, so that we may grow beyond the discomfort. And I sweat a lot. I am out of my comfort zone in every way.

And I am still here.



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The Power of Showing Up

It���s been a really long time, friends. Months and months. I could tell you I had an unprecedentedly unscheduled summer where I intentionally unplugged to let myself heal. And that would be true. I could tell you that���also unprecedented���I hosted no one at our mountain house, not even my mother. And that would be true. I could tell you about all the healing things I did instead of writing, mainly crazy amounts of reading, yoga and self-exploration. All that would be true. I could tell you that all those things are why I haven���t written. But, honestly, I haven���t blogged because I wanted to do all that and then show up here with wise words like my old self. I wanted to slip back into the skin I wore before I lost my sister and pick up again where I left off. I really, really wanted to write words to you that had nothing to do with grief or loss.

The problem? I am still a mess. I am not my old self. And as much as I want to pretend for you, I can���t. So I could keep avoiding you. I could keep trying to force myself back into that old skin of mine. Or I could just show up and find the truth and the beauty in where I am, even if my inner critic tells me that I should be further along than I am.

So today I choose to show up. To pop in and say hello even though I don���t have it all together. And don���t have a well-crafted message ready for you. Sometimes coming to the table and sitting is enough. Join me?

Happily Ever After

Ten years ago today, I watched these two walk down the aisle to their happily ever after. Three months ago today, that happily ever after was ripped out from under them. And from all of us who loved Angie.

If you have traversed the landscape of grief, you know that these milestone days can be particularly trying. Two of them in one day is a lot to process. If you���re reading this and you���re the praying type, please pray for Keith.

As only God can orchestrate, the most mundane of tasks���clearing out 6,000+ emails in an old inbox dating back to 2010���was my salvation today. It was the perfect, mindless distraction for a teary day. I was ruthlessly deleting them by the hundreds until I came to the ones from Angie.

Every newly discovered message from her these days is too precious to discard. Each one like hearing her voice in my head, a moment of make believing that I can hit reply and she���ll get it. So I clicked on one. To my bafflement, it was her telling me how much she liked a blog post I���d written and how it would be great to get it published to comfort those who are grieving.

So in this otherworldly conversation that is bridging the gap between past and present, between earthly life and afterlife, she is telling me to go read my own words. She is telling me they will comfort me. I can���t imagine anything I���ve written would be enough to help. But I have to go read them because she���s telling me to. The post was written five long years ago and was no longer accessible on my site. I couldn���t even recall writing it. I searched my computer wondering if I���d archived it. Sure enough, I found more than two dozen old posts, anonymously titled ���blog archive��� and numbered one through twenty-five. I randomly clicked on number eleven, and that was it.

I had written it after a friend���s son was tragically killed. It was someone Angie and Keith knew well. It said all the things that I would say to someone in my shoes if I weren���t in these shoes. It reminded me that resuming life after something like this takes time. And that we expect our healing to come much sooner than it really does. Most importantly, though, it reminded me that we���re not alone in our grief, recounting a God who actually chose to come to earth and walk into pain instead of away from it.

What struck me even more that the words themselves was the connection I felt to Angie when I read them. Like she had somehow led me to them. I recreated that original post here with a bit of cutting and pasting.

And the happily ever after���what of that? She trailed it behind her as she moved through life. And she left us with so many reminders of her creativity and beauty. We see her most clearly when we look at Tate who���to those of us who knew her at six���could be her twin.

But I see her in so many other places too. In the set of washcloths she knitted for me (yep, hand-knitted washcloths!) that I use every single time I wash my face. In the lamp she made me for Christmas one year when she was a struggling young designer. I still read by it in the library most nights. In the art we found together that hangs in my yoga & writing room and inspires me during my home practice. And I could go on and on, as could all of us who love her. As probably any of you could about the loved ones you���ve lost.

She left an extraordinary amount of love in her wake. The best we can do these days is remember to notice it. To remember her by marveling at all she left behind. To trust that the real happily ever after in all our lives will come in a realm not of this world.

Love in a Box

Two months. So long to be living and breathing without Angie, yet not nearly long enough for healing to begin. The hurt still feels new and foreign. I have not made friends with it yet. Sometimes I see it coming and turn away, hoping it won’t notice me. I can hide from it in busyness and crowds, but as soon as I’m alone, there it is.

It comes to me in music as I drive (Carolyn Arends’ We’ve Been Waiting for You, a beautiful song-story of birth & death). In something I want to call Angie about but can’t (“OMG, I finally found that Siggi’s pumpkin spice yogurt you were raving about!”). As I’m planning Tate’s birthday party with my sisters and Angie’s closest friends (when he’ll turn six, and she won’t be there).

This wound still needs tending. The cards and calls have trickled off, but still they come—often with unexpected surprises in them and always just when I need them the most. Like the care package, filled with all my favorite things and aptly labeled Love in a Box, that my friend Jenn sent me this past weekend. And copies of my favorite sister picture (used in this blog post) that arrived from Karen Sachar the same day.

When I begin to lose sight of what life without Angie could look like, they remind me. When grief draws outlines of this new life and asks me to color them in, it is love that helps me pick up the crayons. Left to my own devices, I would waffle between the drab color (too depressing) and the bright ones (too cheery). I might choose not to draw at all because nothing these days is just right. That is true. But lots of things are still worth picking up.

Therein lies the paradox. How to live into the sadness while also living into the joy. Not cry or be present to life’s beauty but cry and be present to it. I found myself in this space a few nights ago during a thunderstorm when I was tearfully marveling at the soothing, hypnotic quality of the rain from my candlelit bathtub. In the safe warmth of the tub, I gave myself in equal parts to the joy of the present moment and the grief of what will never be again. It was not a happy place, but it was a true place.

And from truth comes serenity. And—eventually—happiness. I’ve found myself returning to the Gandhi quote, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.” I have to believe if I keep embodying my truth—trying to live in harmony even with the disparate feelings inside me—the happiness will come back.

For my sake, and for Angie’s, I can’t let the love I feel for her stay in that box with her ashes. That’s not the kind of “love in a box” she would have wanted. I have to repackage it and find ways to send it out into the world. So today, while I cry, I will try to be that love for those who are here—for my kids, my husband, my mom & dad, my sisters and friends. And—how easily I forget—for myself.

I am acutely aware of how precious our time here is. That it really can be over in an instant. What a shame it would be to miss all the joys of this brief earthly experience. To fail to give myself fully to those I share it with. To miss the life that is because I am, ironically, consumed by the memory of one who did give herself fully to life and love every single day of her 42 years.

Go tell someone you love them. Better yet, show them. Be the love that someone in your life needs today, even if it means stepping outside the box you are so comfortable in.

The Difference Forty Days Makes

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteems, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within.
Amen.

Prayer of Welcome, Thomas Keating

Forty days ago I wrote a blog post in preparation for Lent. I wrote words that encouraged opening to what is rather than orchestrating contrived sacrifices, glibly saying things like, “Really, none of us know what we’ll find, which is kind of the most beautiful part of it all.” I started praying Thomas Keating’s Prayer of Welcome. But I had no idea what new reality I’d be asked to welcome. No idea what I would be asked to let go of during the coming days. I could not have known that it would feel like the opposite of beautiful. That it would make me fall to my knees and vomit. If I did, I would not—could not—have prayed that prayer. Even now, looking back, it seems that God was preparing me for what was to come.

Four days after I wrote the post and starting praying that prayer, my sister Angie, the joyful centerpiece of our sisterhood portrait above, was killed. Suddenly. Inexplicably. Tragically. In a season in which we are typically asked to seek out a sacrifice to bring us closer to God, my family was plunged unbidden into a new reality permeated by an unfathomable sacrifice not of our choosing.

Grief is unchartered territory for each of us. No matter how many have traversed that prickly terrain before us, it is always unknown and treacherous when we journey there ourselves. No one can give us their map, because their path is not ours.

Grief, like faith itself, is not a logistical proposition. Her death could not be rationalized and neither could my grief over her death. My mind played tricks on me, telling me that if I just wore the same clothes I was wearing before she died, it somehow wouldn’t have happened. So I donned them, day after day. And still she was gone. My grief convinced me that if I wrote obsessively in my journal, chronicling life from the moments preceding her death until the present, she would still be with us, carried magically on my words. So I scribbled nearly fifty pages. And still she was gone.

In those pages, I wrote about the absurdity of those early days saying, “Grief is allowed to be ridiculous. To throw rules out the window. To disregard the constructs of civility. Grief can be crazy. It can wail in public and fall to its knees. It can welcome friends in its bathrobe and sit with them in its unmade bed.”

I did all those things, and then I read. And read. And read. I read books the mirrored the raw emotions coursing through my veins. But when I was exhausted by lamenting her absence, I began searching for books that helped me understand where she was now. She could not have just vanished, for that was unthinkable. And it did not feel true to me. The spirit of Angie was still alive. I was sure of it.

Books on the afterlife became me new obsession. I needed to understand this new world in which my sister resides. If I couldn’t make sense of her death, I needed to make sense of this new life of hers. I could not get enough of stories of heaven from those who had experienced it via near death experiences and tales from those who were gifted with the ability to receive messages from those on the other side. It was like a curtain was being lifted and a new world was being revealed. Life here on earth became paradoxically more precious and less important. The afterlife had always seemed akin to fantastical Bible stories of life lived inside a giant fish or within the walls of an edenic gardens—analogous settings used to teach a lesson. But suddenly it seemed real because my sister was there. It had to be real because my sister was there.

I keep coming back to the significance of 40 days.

The traditional morning period of many world religions is 40 days.

Jesus wandered in the desert for 40 days.

The Lenten season is 40 days.

Eastern Orthodox Christians believe the soul ascends to heaven 40 days after death.

Jesus ascended to heaven 40 days after his crucifixion.

Now please understand that God typically doesn’t speak to me through numbers. They are, in fact, generally unintelligible to me. But I couldn’t ignore this message as it made its way to me again and again. When I sat down to begin writing this, I calculated how long it had been since I wrote that last post—the one that now seems Pollyanna-ish in its optimism. It had been exactly 40 days.

More calculating revealed that the traditional 40-day morning period for Angie, believed by some to also complete her soul’s ascension to heaven, fell on Thursday, April 2, which also happened to be Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday), the day Jesus’s soul ascended to heaven. Angie did everything in style, and it just seemed fitting that she’d ascend with Jesus. The 40-day mourning period following her death was encapsulated just within the bounds of Lent (which is a little longer than 40 days since Sundays are not included in the count). So this somber season of reflection took on new meaning to me as I mourned her absence. While the numbers were all neat and tidy, the experience was anything but and many times felt much like what Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness must have felt like, knowing God was close but feeling forsaken all the same.

So tonight, I will go to a Maundy Thursday service, and I will try to smile through my tears at the image of Angie ascending to heaven with Jesus. I will mark the official end of the mourning period, but I will not say goodbye to Angie. I will, instead, hang onto my love for her until we are together again, seeking ways here on earth spread the love she embodied so fully.

Refocus Your Lenten Lens

On Ash Wednesday, we are supposed to announce to the world what we’re giving up, right? We plot and ponder, looking for the thing that—through its discarding—makes us somehow holier. Isn’t that always the way with us? Aren’t we forever looking to things—to quick fixes—to repair the broken parts of us?

We want a pat answer. One that denotes the proper amount of commitment but that is not so ambitious that it dooms us to failure. In short, we want a system where we check boxes, follow rules and “succeed.” Even our spirituality, it seems, we turn into a game of winners and losers. Find the right sacrifice? You win! Forget to pick one or buckle before your forty days are up? You lose. Simple, right?

But what if it’s not? What if we’re coming at this all wrong? What if God really doesn’t care whether or not we eat chocolate or play word games on our phone or even check our email (all things I’ve given up during Lents of yore)? What if the real point of it all is finding a way to refocus our attention on God through the experience of Jesus? Sometimes a well-chosen sacrifice can help us along that path, but sometimes it’s just a distraction—something to focus on instead of looking at those deep-seated fears that are really keeping us separated from God.

As you make your way through the Lenten season, open your heart to prayers and practices that allow you to finally feel safe enough in God’s presence to face the fears that are actually causing some of those habits you’re tempted to give up. Ironically, by giving up perfunctory giving up of Lent, you might just find yourself feeling less compulsive about some of your vices. Or you may find new eyes and realize that what you perceived as vices are not at all. Really, none of us know what we’ll find, which is kind of the most beautiful part of it all. We don’t need to mandate or dictate the rules for a “successful” Lent. We just need to show up and listen. This is the prayer from contemplative Thomas Keating that I’ll be using to usher in a new kind of Lenten season in my soul. Would love to hear about your prayers and practices for journeying with Jesus during this season.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteems, approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within.
Amen.

Happy New Year from Whoville

Dr. Suess did his job and did it well. What I remember from watching his Christmas classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original cartoon, not the Jim Carey remake) is the way those Whos kept on Christmasing no matter what the Grinch took from them. Yes, I was enamored with the improbable architecture, the outlandish characters and the crazy hats—like the one our dog is wearing in this picture—but I got it. I understood, at least intellectually, that Christmas wasn’t about the tree and the trappings. I understood, but deep down I didn’t think it would really be Christmas without the tree. And I didn’t think I could let Christmas pass without sending cards emblazoned with our kids’ photos far and wide. But throw in a bit of extra travel, a family wedding and last year’s long-forgotten donation of our temperamental 10-foot pre-lit tree to Good Will, and we ended up with just that stripped-down-to-its-essence kind of Christmas. And after a treeless and cardless season, I am here to tell you that somehow or other, Christmas came just the same.

So here, on the other side, I am considering the possibility that maybe there are more things—regular, non-holiday things—that take up space and time in my life that I could do without. What if we all looked at our lives through a Whoville lens, asking, “Would this life I’m called to live actually be more with less?” That little questions has endless implications that could change the way we spend our time, money and navigate our days.

As I’ve let this question bounce around my head and my prayers a bit, this is what it’s looking like for me—in very specific ways—as I take my deep New Year’s Day breath and prepare to plunge into 2015.

Less Clutter: My inbox horrifies my husband. I currently have 4,000 unread emails in it. Yep. Embarrassing, but true. So I’m starting my decluttering mission by unsubscribing from one email list each day. It’s a small but manageable step that will eventually lead to me starting my day with less to weed through before moving onto the things that matter.

Less Screen: I never text and drive, but stop lights are another story. I’ve found myself grabbing my phone to get a quick fix—to see who’s posted something new on Instagram, what’s happening on Twitter or if it’s my turn to play on Words with Friends. I am committing to staying off my phone and being present to my life while I’m in the car. To seeing what the world has to show me during those quiet moments at red lights.

Sometimes, though we need more of something, not less. Sometimes we need to reach out our hands to the Whos around us or figure out how to lift our voices in song with them. In that spirit, I’m adding a couple of things to life in 2015.

More Meditation: At the end of 2014, I started a consistent pranayama (breathwork) practice. In 2015, I’ll try participating in a group meditation session. I am drawn to the idea of a group of people quietly coming together for a spiritual practice. I will report back on how it goes!

More Yoga-Poses-That-I-Usually-Avoid: Years ago, I pulled a groin muscle and have avoided poses that stretch the spot ever since. I’ve let a past hurt limit my present. Sound familiar? This year, I’m committing to doing two poses each day that bring life back into that long-neglected area.

More Time With Soul Friends: You know who you are! Call me. Or I’ll call you. Let’s do lunch, sip tea, or walk in the woods. Sometimes it seems I don’t have time in my schedule, but really there is nothing more important than nourishing those relationships that feed our soul. Once a week, I’m inviting someone who matters to me to share life with me in ways that go beyond the quick exchange of “How are you? Fine! You? Great!”

The beauty of this exercise is not to do some sort of Herculean makeover of our lives, but to find small ways to refocus our attention on truth, light and life each day. To help us have the same realization about everyday joy that the Grinch had when he mused:

“Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"

Here’s to finding your “little bit more” in beautiful ways this year!

Give the Gift of God

What if you could give a gift that outshone than the most impressive trinket? One more valuable than the rarest of baubles? What if you could give a gift that let someone see God in a more expansive way than they ever thought possible?

There are probably a litany of little ones on your list—children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren or godchildren. To help you find meaningful gift for those impressionable young souls in your life, I reviewed a handful of spirit-expanding books that could make a real difference in their lives. Each has a different voice and feel, so read on to find out which one is right for your last-minute gift-giving needs. While we celebrate God’s coming in the form of baby Jesus during this season, these unique books could help children—boys and girls alike—carry an image of God that is big enough to include male and female imagery with them through the year. What better gift could you give them?

Tell Me Why (by Trista Hendren; illustrated by Elizabeth Sletness )

This latest book in Trista’s vibrantly illustrated children’s series uses a reimagined version of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve as an opening to begin discussing the loss of Mother God with children, especially with boys. The book does a beautiful job of describing the loss that boys feel when they are denied the companionship of the feminine side of God and, consequently, a healthy relationship with women in their lives. It is not a book that bashes men or masculinity; instead, it exposes the wounds caused by gender stereotyping and patriarchal religion, while leaving readers full of hope for reclaiming an Edenesque harmony between men and women. This is an ideal companion to the earlier books in this series, The Girl God (written to introduce the concept of God as female to girls who have never seen themselves reflected in divine imagery) and Mother Earth (a loving tribute and call to action to care for our world honor its sacredness).

Gift pick: With this book’s commentary on weighty social issues, it is better suited for children 8+. Younger children will be mesmerized by the mosaic-style illustrations but may be concerned about the parts that are they can’t yet process (gender stereotypes, poverty, mortality). Also a wonderful gifts for spiritually aware adults!

When God Was a Little Girl (by David R. Weiss; illustrated by Joan Lindeman)

Like Tell Me Why, this richly illustrated picture book is a whimsical retelling of the creation story. Its whimsy, while lighthearted and playful, delivers the priceless message of inclusivity to little girls who felt less connected to God than their male friends. Told as a story passed from a father to his young daughter on a car ride together, little girls listening to this tale will begin to imagine a God who sees and experiences life as they do—complete with giggles, singing, art, glitter and dancing. The illustrations are warm and inviting and do a lovely job of presenting a diverse picture of girlhood. This book will serve as a mirror for girls who haven’t ever seen themselves reflected in the God they’ve been told about. When God Was a Little Girl is richly deserving of the Silver Nautilus Award it received for its inspiring and life-changing message.

Gift Pick: This book is ideal for young children up to about age 9. A great read-aloud experience, this will plant a seed of God’s transcendent nature in a way that even the youngest readers will be able to grasp.

A Woman Called God (Peter Wilkes)

I have to say that it makes my heart happy that a man in his 70s wrote a book that asks the question, “What if everyone decided that God—the creator of the universe—is a woman?” For him to ask the question and pen this lighthearted cartoon-esque book in answer to the question is admirable. Its tone is strikingly different from the other two books I’ve reviewed here. While this could be read to or by a child, its adult nuances (like a reference to judgmental patriarchal religion driving him to take the prescription drug thorazine) and lack of warm fuzziness lend itself more to teens or adults wanting to kick-start the conversation on God’s gender imagery. The book, even in its brevity, manages to connect the dots between our treatment of the feminine and of Mother Earth, while encouraging readers to ask themselves tough questions about our perceptions of God. The book’s positive takeaway is that simply by changing one idea (how we perceive God), we could change so much more about the world we live in.

Gift Pick: This book would be an excellent choice for teen who enjoy graphic novels. This book packs a big punch without requiring much actual reading.

I feel honored that each of these authors sent me copies of their books to review. The more we expand the way we see God, the more we will begin to feel God at work in our life in ways that defy our expectations. Of course, if you are shopping for a yogi or would-be-yogi, my book—Sophia Rising: Awakening Your Sacred Wisdom Through Yoga—which will help readers use their yoga practice as a tool for accessing a holistic vision of the divine, including God’s feminine side.

Not In My Name

As much as I adore words, I am not delusional enough to believe that these strung together letters are powerful enough to convey all of life’s big ideas. We writers try. Sometimes we come close. Often, we fail. Nowhere are words less sufficient than in the realm of the spiritual.

Lately headlines have screamed loudly, bent on convincing us that the world is made up of us and them and that this translates seamlessly to right and wrong. Even the most educated folks seem to be making assumptions about people based on labels, often of the religious variety.

ISIS AND ISLAM: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

To be perfectly frank, I am appalled at how easily people merge the label “ISIS” with “Islam,” as if they are one and the same. I can tell you that, as a Christian, I would be mortified to be lumped in with any number of extremist groups that fall within the umbrella of Christianity. Throw me in with those who oppress women, practice racial discrimination and justify hate crimes against gays and lesbians, and I would strongly object, as I know most of you would.

So why isn’t everyone up in arms over our Muslim brothers and sisters being maligned by the ISIS label? You may have heard this before, but it bears repeating. An extremely small percentage of the world’s Muslim population recognizes ISIS as having any sort of authority over their lives. In other words, being Muslim does not equate with ISIS affiliation. We need to stop acting as if the two are interchangeable and start acting out of love, rather than from hate or fear. Jesus said, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35). If there is no love, there is no Christianity. Period. There is just an empty label that leaves the world seeing us in ways that will make you cringe.

#NOT IN MY NAME

I am certainly not alone in recognizing the dangers of this rampant stereotyping. The social media campaign
I love the campaign, but it saddens me that we need that campaign at all. That much of the world is so ready to condemn and battle an entire religious spectrum because of the appalling actions of one group. That Muslims feel the need to defend themselves to the rest of us. That the jury of public opinion convicted all of Islam without batting an eye.

TO KNOW IS TO LOVE

The antidote to generalizing is specializing. In this case, that means seeing faces and knowing individuals rather than seeing a faceless mass. It means getting to know Muslims in your midst or remembering all the wonderful Muslims you already know. For me, that means flashing back to evenings spent around the table at Pink Iftar dinner parties, multi-faith gatherings initiated by a group of Muslim women interested in dialoging with women from different religious traditions. I attended two and hosted one at my own home.

It also means looking no further than my son’s soccer coach, one of the most loving, generous individuals I know (Christians included) and one of the biggest influences on my son’s developing sense of self. And to his twins, two of my boy’s best friends. They are sweet, smart and delightful—not the type of boys that I have to be in the right mood to have over (you moms know what I’m talking about!). And, finally, to my dear friend and kindred spirit, Trista Hendren, author of a beautiful children’s book series that is brimming with unbounded divine love—love not restricted by gender, religion or any other self-imposed boundaries.

These people are not token Muslims in my life. They are people who are near and dear to me—and who happen to be Muslim.

GOD BLESS EVERYONE: NO EXCEPTIONS

The sermon I listened to this past Sunday was on oneness. On unity. And it focused on the bond among Christians across the globe and around the corner. We watched beautiful videos of our church’s far-flung mission trips. We marveled at the different styles of worship, both abroad and closer to home within the different worship communities in our own church. It was inspiring and heartening and yet it left me feeling that it was not enough. It was not enough to be filled with a feeling of oneness with those who choose or who were born into the same belief system as I was.

I felt the familiar stifling I’d felt in Christian settings all my life. It was the labeling‚—the Christian and the non-Christian—and I wished for the labels all to vanish. I wished to know one another by our love, not our label. I wished to sing about God, not “our” God, just God. I wished to stop using “he” as the only acceptable divine pronoun. I wished to move beyond it all.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? EVERYTHING

That is what was going through my head when my family talked about what we’d all taken away from church that day. My husband was telling our son about how love’s connective power was the heart of our message. When he paraphrased John 13:35, reminding him that “they will know we are Christians by our love,” I saw a shadow pass across our son’s face. In that shadow I saw all the same doubts I’d had about Christianity’s claims to be the only way to a God that I knew was so much bigger than any one religion.

My husband must have seen the shadow too because he quickly added that the same love we were talking about was also clearly found in his good friends who are atheist, Muslim and Jewish. I told him what I wish I’d heard as a child—that God sees the love in our hearts and doesn’t give a darn what word we use to describe it or what religious label we stick on it.

Even as a writer, I know that God cannot be contained by words, not matter how lovely, how ancient, how sanctified or canonized. So to those who condemn Muslims in the name of Christianity—from a place of fear rather than love, I say #NotInMyName.