North's Journey Journal

Over the past few months, I’ve been wanting to share more about faith. Events have taken priority and my writing at a deeper level has been pushed back. The events were major and will shape me for years to come.

The journey that I am on has deepened my faith. It’s that simple. I am still recovering from the ordeal or radiation and chemotherapy. I have odd bouts with pain in my jaw and energy swings that leave me very fatigued. But, I continue to know that I am more than the negative thoughts and side effects. It is through surrender and tuning into the ambiguity of it all that I am reminded that there is One Spirit and in my union with that knowing I know I am safe and blessed.

Recently, I watched Pema Chodren on Bill Moyers Faith and Reason.
Bill Moyer's Transcripts She talked about the “groundlessness of 9/11” and how nothing but kindness made any sense those first few days and then we all seemed to settle back into the circumstances of our lives and old patterns of defend and attack settled back in. The “groundlessness” of my situation is what is most challenging. The first few weeks after surgery, I was estatic with accepting life and the miracle of what the doctors were able to achieve. During radiation and chemo, it was just about coping with discomfort and pain day to day. Now its about being patient with the long recovery and healing process and oh yeah waiting for final results from future CT/PET scans. The groundlessness of my circumstances have no daily activity nor is there an event for which to prepare. It is all becoming a mental juggling act and a physical dance with fatigue that constantly wants to cut in on the action.

We all have circumstances that our minds can’t just fix. The inability to find the grounded answer is a shock to our egos. Often, we retreat into avoidance, denial, or act out in our addictions. My friend Wil Smith talks about separating ones Life from Life Circumstances. In God’s mind our life circumstances are such small things. Its our Life that is precious. That is what we must come to know in the midst of experiencing groundlessness. The circumstances and situations we find ourselves in are just distractions for our mind. My faith is the means that I am using to clear the distance and blocks between my heart and my mind and in that come to know God/dess. The paradox is that I have to constantly go deeper into groundlessness to tap my faith. That means no little silver statues, religious dogma or new age knickknacks and “chatkes”.

At the bottom of this Blog is a poem by David Whyte that speaks to surrendering to the “carver’s hand” when facing life’s circumstances. The place he speaks of, Braga Monestary, is in the Annapura mountain range. It is in the Manang valley at an elevation of approximately 12,000 ft. It is Tibetan and very ancient and third world. David Whyte is one of my favorite contemporary poets. He writes this poem from his own Trek to the region and entry into the Monastery.

I know that there are thoughts that take me away from peace with my situation. They can be “terrible faces with fierce eyes demanding, “Will you step through?”’ I sometimes succumb to them and get caught in dysfunctional emotions. When fatigue or depression hit, I don’t "step through", instead I trip and defend my actions. Sometimes, my love Stef or others close to me get the after burn. Where is the kindness of love in those moments? My faith tells me it is still there, but my attachment to the negativity is the block. If I am fortunate I take a deep breath and I remind myself that God is Breath. In that short affirmation I allow the “carver’s hand to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.” There is always an opportunity to calm the fear and limitations that I may feel by refocusing my mind. That is why I find this poem so powerful. Especially this verse…


"When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side
of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain."

Lately, I have had too much dry mouth and random pain. It is faith that is necessary to face the entrance to the shrine, to moisten the dryness and heal the pain. Without faith there is no entrance, just fear of what may be inside.

I attempt to meditate daily, although not always steady with my practice. In that practice I learn to stop fighting what is. What I have found is that the more I pray and meditate, the more I buffer the negative emotions that want to insert themselves into my experience and keep me from entering “the shrine”. It would be foolish to say I am distraction free. Just as it would be foolish to say I have reached Nirvana via the cancer trek. But I am finding faith is my path to being foolish. For to be a fool is to be groundless.

May you stop at the entrance to the ancient shrine between your heart and mind and contemplate your faith. May in that serenity you find the courage and peace to step into the entrance to groundlessness. And in doing so may you experience the only actions that really makes sense- loving Spirit completely and be kind to others. Have faith in the outcomes of these actions, they are the only ones that do not end in illusion. They bring the peace of the "silent carver's hand"


The Faces At Braga
By David Whyte- Where Many Rivers Meet


In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight
the old shrine room waits in silence.

While above the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, “Will you step through?”

In addition, the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beacons.

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word.

see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved in above,
eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.

Such love in solid wood!
Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.

Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carver’s hand.

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side
of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carver’s hands
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the shy.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration

to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.