Monette Chilson's Blog, page 3

Inquire Within

At this week’s Religion Newswriters Association conference, Clifford Saron referenced a University of Virginia study—reported by Science Magazine this past summer—that, astoundingly, found that people would rather administer an electrical shock to themselves than sit alone and meditate.* Really? How we get to a point, as a culture, that we prefer physical pain to quiet contemplation? What are we afraid of?

Over the past decade, my spiritual expression has evolved from outward (worship) to inward (contemplation). Singing and verbose prayers overstimulate me. They drown out the quiet whisper that I am training my soul to hear. When someone says, “Let us pray,” and then use words to fill the sacred silence, I am taken aback. I have become quite the spiritual introvert.

We, in the West, are obsessed with the takeaway. So, what do I get out of all this silence? Well, it depends on the day. It depends on what God needs to teach me. This week, in the silence, I realized that I was creating chaos and unrest in my life by overcommitting. Overcommitting to good and worthy pursuits, but overcommitting nonetheless. Without a quiet space to reflect, I would have forged ahead, my prayers a string of words, songs and good deeds, pulling me along, leaving me jangling like a tin can behind one of those just-married-mobiles.

Instead, the need to back off was revealed to me. I switched my list from a to-do list to an un-do list. Counterintuitively, I forced myself to cancel two things before delving into the litany of productivity running through my head. I had to create space before I could extend any further. If you practice yoga, you know that feeling well. Not “know” in a intellectual way, but “know” because you’ve moved it and breathed it. You’ve learned that to get length in your spine, you must first create space, and you must do it with out harming yourself in the process (no low back crunching).

In another meditative revelation, I realized that I was suffering from Cinderella Syndrome—that I was not allowing myself to go the ball until I had done all my work. What that looked like in my life was trying to fulfill all my outside obligations before giving myself permission to do the things that fulfill me, personally. We all know that if we wait until we’ve checked all those other things off our lists, we’ll never get to the work of our heart. There will always be something to lure us away from the work that’s dearest to us, the work that blurs the line between the earthly and the ethereal, bringing us just a little closer to God.

So today, inquire within. Listen. And heed the wisdom that emerges from the silence.

Namaste.


* Thanks to Kelly Hughes for tipping me off via Twitter to this fascinating study!

Life in the Slow Lane

peaches, patchouli,
blackberries, bullfrogs,
crickets and card games.

Summer’s creeping molasses, not-in-a-hurry pace captured in sensory-rich pixels. You probably have your own summery words, defined by your experience of living outside the workaday mentality that keeps us all in line the rest of the year.

If they don’t immediately come to mind, try using the yogic practice of sensory awareness (pratyahara) to connect with them. This low-profile fifth limb of yoga makes us aware of sensory perceptions so that we can eventually detach from them.

While you’re still in the season’s warm grasp—before the full force of back-to-school frenzy, fall breezes, the first thoughts of the impending holidays that come unbidden in October—stop and breathe them in. Listen to the sounds around you (waves, birds or a welcome decrease in the hum of traffic). Taste what’s growing around you (in your yard, garden or at the local farmer’s market). Look at Mother Nature showing off with abundant greenery, clear that she’s not yet concerned about autumn’s steadfast approach.

I post this a bit reflectively, as I sit here in Houston looking back wistfully on my summer in the North Carolina mountains. I navigate the stifling heat, straddling summer and fall—one child back in school, the other one still running wild and barefoot through days of bike-riding, swimming and card games. A bit in both worlds, I already feel an autumnal undertow pulling me toward responsibility and a scheduled life of bedtimes, alarm clocks and carpools. I have an olfactory memory of the tranquilizing pachouli scented candles and bath oils I use in the mountains, and it struck me how different they are from the stimulating ginger scented ones I’ve opted for here at home.

I am oddly surprised by how I seemed to match the scents around me to the rhythm of the season without realizing it. Suddenly, I am overcome by the desire to go out and buy some patchouli. To sneak it into fall’s unrelenting quest for productiveness. To subvert the season with this bohemian smell. To tuck a bit of summer into my fall.

That is my wish for you—that you can find a way to carry some of your favorite summer sensory experiences into this season that can feel so very serious, lightening and livening your experience of it.

Namaste.

Dirty-Footed Freedom

It was day two of the Wild Goose Festival, a kind of Woodstock for the spiritual crowd. I’d retired my soggy, mud-caked sandals from day one, and set out in a clean, dry, muck-free pair. As I stepped from the solid asphalt onto the puddle-ridden festival terrain, I made a mental note to watch where I stepped lest I end up like I had yesterday. That is to say, a dirt-streaked ragamuffin from the knee down.

But as I walked down the main promenade—the widest of the sodden paths used to traverse the wooded weekend home of peace-loving folks of every persuasion—I found that I couldn’t watch my step and greet the strangers-who-might-become-friends who were passing by. I couldn’t watch my step and stop to ask about the missions of organizations lining both sides of this thoroughfare. I couldn’t watch my step and be fully present to the unleashed spirit that defines the Wild Goose Festival.

So I made a choice. I stopped watching my step. I refrained from looking where I was going and, instead, let the festival happen to me. Stepping in a few mud puddles may not seem like a very big deal. But surrendering my desire to stay clean and untainted in the midst of the messiest mixture of spirit, justice, music and art that God ever cooked up was a big deal.

Because I wasn’t watchdogging my feet, they carried me to visit with women who were trying to make it easier to find churches across the country that were gay and lesbian friendly. They carried me back to the book tent to sign a book for a woman who’d attended my session the day before. And they walked me smack dab into a reunion with friends I hadn’t seen in ten years.

These were people I was meant to connect with that day—part of God’s plan for my little bitty role in the Wild Goose Festival. And I would have missed them all if I’d chosen to worry about getting my feet dirty. If I’d watched my step instead of walking my path.

Today, as we celebrate the unbounded freedoms we enjoy, let us remember that just because we have the freedom to keep our feet clean, doesn’t mean we should. The theme of this year’s festival was Living Liberation, and it occurs to me that sometimes we need to liberate ourselves from our own limiting ways in order to experience God’s expansive ones—even if it means getting our feet dirty.

What might you be missing by trying to avoid the messy, muddy parts of life? What joys have you discovered when you let yourself get mired in its turbidity?


The 4th annual Wild Goose Festival happened June 26­29 in Hot Springs, just north of Asheville in the mountains of Western North Carolina. A gathering at the intersection of justice, spirituality, music and the arts, the four­day event featured 75+ discussions, conversations, and explorations from provocative speakers and performances by dozens of musicians and artists. Visit their site for reflections on the 2014 festival and for news on the 2015 event as it nears.

A Wild Goose Mentality

So I’m getting ready to drive across the country to speak at the Wild Goose Festival in the mountains of North Carolina in a few days. Doesn’t the very idea of a gathering called the Wild Goose Festival make you smile?

The term “wild goose” is a Celtic spirituality metaphor that evokes unpredictability, beauty, and grace. I grew up hearing the term phrase “wild goose chase” used to denote a task that was of no apparent use or lacked a predictable outcome. Because wild goose chases are not productive in the efficient Western way, they are usually referred to dismissively, if not with downright derision. A complete waste of time.

I beg to differ.

I see life’s wild goose chases through a Celtic lens. Rather than beings futile, they are beautiful, graceful, unpredictable adventures. If my destination is not set in stone, then I am not disappointed if I veer off course. Indeed, some of life’s most spectacular moments are the unplanned ones. The ones that happen when we’re following our own inner wisdom rather than a self-imposed plan. When we are on the wild goose chases of our souls.

We can’t live life as one giant wild goose chase, for there are, of course, meals to be made, finances to be managed and responsibilities that require a modicum of foresight. Summer, though, is the perfect time to throw out your compass and live with a wild goose mentality for a few months. People seem to accept that things are less structured during the months between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so you won’t ruffle too many feathers.

What is that thing that’s been nagging at you to explore? That idea that doesn’t make a lick of sense but keeps calling to your heart. Now is the time to draw it, write it, paint it, build it, sing it, dance it. To give it life for no good reason. To embark on your own beautiful, graceful, unpredictable wild goose chase.

Need ideas for how to get started? Join me and a gaggle of other wild goose-minded folks who’ll be speaking, singing, moving, praying, meditating and praying the whispers of our hearts. Whether they make sense to anyone else or not.

Please comment below if you’d like to share the beauty, grace and utter unpredictability of your own wild goose chase. I would be honored to share your journey.

The Wild Goose Festival—in Hot Springs, NC (near Asheville) June 26-29—provides space for courageous, imaginative, and participative social justice work, creative expression, spiritual practice, and astonishing music. My session on yoga as a liberating practice will be Saturday, 6/28 at 9:45 in the chapel. Use promo code MCHILSON for a 30% discount on tickets.

Shake Up Your Summer Practice

Flexible as we are, yogis are just as much creatures of habit as those whose shadows have never darkened a mat. We like our routine. If you’re anything like me, left to your own devices, you do the poses you like and avoid those you don’t. Am I right?

I forward bend three times as often as I back bend in my home practice. We are hard-wired for happiness, and we feel happy when we feel successful. I am not such a successful back-bender, so I often hop, skip and jump right past them. Summer, my friends, is the perfect time to turn your well-cultivated, contented practice on its head. Perhaps literally.

Do you avoid inversions? Fling yourself upside down. Are you averse to poses that require strength rather than flexibility? Get ready to flex some idle muscles. Summer is the perfect time to shed your default mode, like a snake slithering out of old skin. Even if you are no longer directly connected to the school calendar and its built-in moratorium on routine between Memorial and Labor Days, claim that summer rhythm in your practice—asana and otherwise.

Experiment with those other seven limbs (meditation, breathwork, ethical practices, etc.) or wade into the waters of yoga’s sister science, Ayurveda. In Houston? Check out the Houston Ayurveda Center, a mecca for the practice of this ancient, healing wisdom. Or find a weekend workshop at a local yoga studio. Senior Iyengar teacher Peggy Kelly will be at Yoga Heart Studio June 21-22 offering sessions on each dosha. Take this online quiz to see where your own body, mind and spirit imbalances lie.

Take time to read some classic yogic texts, many of which are considered public domain (if they’re over 100 years old) and are available online for free via Project Gutenberg and other sites. If you’re a reader interested in yoga books, join or form a yoga book club. I moderate an online group on Goodreads (a site that connects readers and writers) called Yoga Folks. Its almost 1,000 members are a great source of information and inspiration.

Whether your summer travels take you far or near, give your practice a vacation of its own. Let it take you places you might never have dreamt of but that you just might fall in love with—if you’re willing to go along for the ride

Thrive or Survive

Does this board game my ten-year-old made sound like your approach to mothering? Are you just trying to survive the hike? Ready or not, Mother’s Day is upon us. Everywhere we turn, we face airbrushed, orchestrated images of life with children. We struggle to find common ground between these silky perfect fabrications and the bumpy, lumpy fabric of our own lives. This steady diet of unrealistic images of motherhood and womanhood is just one of the stumbling blocks that can make us believe we are not enough—that entrenches in us a mindset in which our goal is merely to survive, rather than thrive, at this job called motherhood.

My dear friend Jessica Martin-Weber, better known on the web as The Leaky Boob, is a tireless advocate for breastfeeding and natural parenting. And she is passionate about helping women capture the joy of mothering—not the pre-packaged Hallmark card variety, but the joy that comes from embracing the imperfections and the chaos. About teaching our kids that they are enough, even as we acknowledge that we are too.

Everyone who’s ever parented a child knows that we can’t take care of them if we’re not caring for ourselves. I elaborate on this idea and provide a multi-sensory self-care exercise in my guest post on Jessica’s blog this week.

And as my Mother’s Day gift to you, please enjoy this plan I call the Power Hour which gives you a minute-by-minute guide to reclaiming an hour a day for you. When I presented this last month at MommyCon Austin, I delighted in hearing how the moms (and one dad!) were going to take this guide and carve out their own power hours—some as pre-dawn stirrings and others during late night solitude. It doesn’t matter how you put on that oxygen mask. Just that you do it.

Here’s to thriving, rather than surviving, the joyous messiness that is motherhood—and life!

A Journey Into Wholeness: Soul Travel from Lent to Easter

I always seek out a special book to accompany me through the Lenten season, one that speaks of the complex and sometimes contradictory nature of the extremes we ourselves experience during the six weeks between Ash Wednesday and Easter morning. Often I submerge myself in my friend Jerry Webber’s devotionals, books of quiet wisdom that meld introspection and inspiration beautifully. This year, I was asked to contribute one of the readings in a Lenten devotional—A Journey Into Wholeness: Soul Travel from Lent to Easter—compiled by contemplative activist Christine Sine, Executive Director of Mustard Seed Associates, a community-based organization that fosters shared values of simplicity, spirituality, sustainability and hospitality.

I plan to walk through the next forty-odd days with this book by my side. Like Christine, herself, the voices in the book manage to weave spiritual centering with compassionate faith. You can almost hear the book’s heart beating with love for a world in need. Not a world in need of proselytizing, but one in need of love given freely, with no strings attached.

This devotional does the dual job of taking us into our own brokenness, while simultaneously revealing ways we can impact the brokenness of the world around us—both in our daily microcosms and across the globe. Its perspective expanding in weekly increments, the book is divided into sections that resemble the concentric circles of a stone thrown in a pond, ever-widening in their ripples:

Week One: Journey into the Brokenness of our Inner Selves
Week Two: Journey into the Brokenness of Hunger
Week Three: Journey into the Brokenness of Homelessness
Week Four: Journey into the Brokenness of Creation
Week Five: Journey into the Brokenness of God’s Family

The final chapter of the book moves us, at long last, from the fully exposed brokenness of ourselves and our world through the final tumultuous week of death and joyous rebirth. Again, we are prompted to experience this, not only within but without—to make this experience about more than just ourselves.

One of the most practical aspects of the book is its extensive appendices which provide, not only books for further reading, but hands-on tools like recipes for meals that cost less than $2 per person for eating in solidarity for much of the world as part of the Mutunga Challenge laid out in the book. Unlike the typical devotional, this one includes ways to take the convictions you develop during this transformational season beyond its pages. You’ll find an abundance of resources for your heart-lead activism including facts, statistics and challenges on hunger, poverty and environmental issues.

If the book’s dedication—“To all who seek to journey with Jesus towards a deeper faith and a more centered life”—seems to be speaking to the yearnings of your heart, pick it up and open yourself to its words. Enter to win a copy by commenting below on ways you have traditionally set this season apart as sacred or by sharing faith-deepening ideas you will be trying out this year. Extra entries for tweeting about the giveaway and following me and Mustard Seed Associates on Twitter. Contest open through midnight Friday.

Darkness and Light

If I could say one thing to you—and to myself—in the midst of the self-improvement vortex of January, it would be, “You are delightful just the way you are.” That’s right. You, the one with the Christmas tree still up on January 13 (that’s me), you are an amazing human being. You simply have so many creative impulses that the domestic ones sometimes get lost in the shuffle. And that’s OK.

And you, the women I see running yourselves ragged trying to be a supermom while looking like a supermodel, you don’t have to prove your worth. You are already worthy. The size two label is not your legitimizer, nor are the achievements of your children.

And you, sweet girls I see on my phone grasping at approval based on likes and followers, striking sexy poses just to get the next click. Every image you post could disappear today, and your inner light would not be diminished one bit.

Men and women caught up in the vicious cycle of achievement, gathering acceptance in the form of raises, promotions and awards, rest assured that your family and friends love you for who you are, not for what you do. Close your eyes and remember you are a human being, not a human doing.

When did we start thinking we had to be good at everything? When did it become unacceptable to have weaknesses to counterbalance our strengths? And why do we look outside for what is innately within us?

A novel approach, perhaps, but maybe we should launch this year by accepting our unique combination of strengths and weaknesses, rather than trying to eradicate our weaknesses with resolutions and white-knuckled will-power. Maybe, just maybe, we’d live more holistic lives if we could lean into our authentic selves—the darkness and the light.

Here’s to resolving to embrace them both.

Pause for Awareness

At a contemplative worship service, I was recently introduced to a set of questions described as “a pause for awareness prayer.” This set of five questions, posed by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn (www.linnministries.org), provides an easy-to-access structure that any of us can use to stop and remind ourselves of what really matters in our lives. I find this an especially important tool as the holiday season nears and our awareness scatters in a million directions at precisely the time we wish we could stop and enjoy the depth and mystery of the season.

There is no magic bullet that will give you a blissfully serene holiday, but asking yourself these five simple questions will remind you of what is life-giving and of soul level importance to you. Then you can decide if your holiday plans are in alignment with the inner desires that God’s placed in your heart. Or not. You can decide to adjust the way you approach the holidays. Or not. The choice is yours, but once you’ve honestly answered these questions, your will be equipped with an awareness that will begin to shape your behavior in small and not-so-small ways.

So I offer these ponderings for your pre-Advent contemplation:

* When in your life have you been so absorbed in something that time flew by?

* When have you felt most alive, especially in your body?

* What times of your life would you most like to repeat?

* What is the wildest thing you have done that turned out better than you ever imagined?

* If you only had one year to live, what would you do?

I will visit each of these questions myself in this season of reflection and look forward to discovering, along with you, what makes my heart sing. And how I can share that song with those around me this holiday season.

Pause for Awareness

At a contemplative worship service, I was recently introduced to a set of questions described as “a pause for awareness prayer.” This set of five questions, posed by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn (www.linnministries.org), provides an easy-to-access structure that any of us can use to stop and remind ourselves of what really matters in our lives. I find this an especially important tool as the holiday season nears and our awareness scatters in a million directions at precisely the time we wish we could stop and enjoy the depth and mystery of the season.

There is no magic bullet that will give you a blissfully serene holiday, but asking yourself these five simple questions will remind you of what is life-giving and of soul level importance to you. Then you can decide if your holiday plans are in alignment with the inner desires that God’s placed in your heart. Or not. You can decide to adjust the way you approach the holidays. Or not. The choice is yours, but once you’ve honestly answered these questions, your will be equipped with an awareness that will begin to shape your behavior in small and not-so-small ways.

So I offer these ponderings for your pre-Advent contemplation:

* When in your life have you been so absorbed in something that time flew by?

* When have you felt most alive, especially in your body?

* What times of your life would you most like to repeat?

* What is the wildest thing you have done that turned out better than you ever imagined?

* If you only had one year to live, what would you do?

I will visit each of these questions myself in this season of reflection and look forward to discovering, along with you, what makes my heart sing. And how I can share that song with those around me this holiday season.