My Holy Land, My Heart

A Story I Shared for the Superhero of Love, "Love Forward Talks" on November 11th

Would you like to hear this story instead of reading it? I invite you to listen to a reading if you prefer to hear me tell this story…you can listen right here. (Thank you to The Vernon Spring for the backdrop track “Sunset Village.”)

I learned to take the hand of fear at a very young age.  Not realizing then that each time it would be an invitation to take the pilgrimage of my life…into the Holy Land.

I’ve taken these steps over and over and over again…more skillful with each journey.

Just moments before I found my little body shaking from head to toe of a bone-deep chill, I could see the purple line that would stay around my tummy for hours being formed in the ice cold bath.  And just before that, the terror of his favorite punishment was working me with the face of fear.

The anticipation killed a part of me each time. 

I would watch him walk into the bathroom after threatening words, and I would hear the innocent water being drawn and transmuted by his anger into a bath of ice.

“Get in…and stay there until I tell you to come out!” he would force me in despite my pleading and uncontrollable crying.

The truth is I was a perfect child.  Aren’t we all?

I was seven.

A burnt tongue from a spoonful of pepper, scars still on my body from belt whippings, a fear of cold water…

All holy sites in the Holy Land; the body keeps the score.

There is a Hindu legend about a time when all humans were gods, but they abused that divinity.  They so abused it that Brahma, the chief god, decided to take it away from them and hide it where they would never find it again.

Where to hide it became the big question. The lesser gods were called into council to consider this question: “Where shall we hide humanity’s divinity?” The council said, “We will bury humanity’s divinity deep in the earth,” but Brahma said, “No that will not do; one day they will dig deep into the earth and will find it.”

Then they said, “We will sink their divinity into the deepest ocean.” Again Brahma replied, “No not there, for they will learn to dive into the deepest waters, and search the ocean bed and find it.”

Then the lesser gods said, “We will take it to the top of the highest mountain and hide it there.” But again Brahma replied, “No, for eventually humans will climb every high mountain on earth; they will be sure some day to find it and take it up again.”

Then the lesser gods gave up and concluded, “We do not know where to hide it, for it seems there is no place on earth or in the sea that humans will not eventually reach.”  Then Brahma said, “Here is what we will do with humanity’s divinity.  We will hide it deep down in humans themselves; they will never think to look for it there.”

Ever since then, the legend concludes, humans have been going to and fro throughout the earth, climbing, digging, diving, exploring and searching for something already within themselves.  The divinity within humanity is still the best-kept secret of the ages.

Many years later, after a divorce, a breast cancer scare, and a string of heartbreaks, I found myself with my heart in a million pieces on my yoga mat in a sun-filled studio in the center of San Francisco with my beloved teacher.

“Think of someone who has caused you harm or suffering…” he said as he guided us through one of the foundational practices of the Bhakti Yoga tradition.

Instantly, a flash of childhood images with associated emotions made its way through me; culminating in a deep, deep gnosis that it was my father who was being called there to the mat with me in this moment. 

What happened next is in one of the many chapters of my life that have helped me anchor into being a Christian mystic.  It was the grace of God that took me by the hand in that moment deep into the Holy Land, to the exact place within me that Brahma and the lesser gods speak of in the legend I just shared.

“Picture this person here with you now…” my yoga teacher continued.

I could see my father’s face.  By this time it had been many, many years since we had spoken or seen each other.

I knew this practice, and the next words of the prayer that were coming, and in that moment I felt it: what is possible when you descend, when you allow yourself to be guided into the Holy Land and you sit at the altar of your heart…this “best kept secret” within us.

“May you be happy,” my teacher invited each of us to say to this person who has caused us harm, and I did.  “May you be healthy, May you be free from harm and free from suffering…” he continued, and I felt the words, each one from my heart onto the mat.  “And may my life touch your life in some way for the better…” he finished as these final words found their resting place between me and my father on the mat that day; a sacred and stoic silence filled the room which became the container and witness for my silent tears and sobbing.

My father asked me to dinner years after this; it had been fifteen or so years since we’d seen each other.  In our meeting of the hearts an apology was offered, and I felt its sincerity and the instant highest-spiritual-act-holiness impulse to offer him forgiveness in that moment.

A direct offering from the Holy Land of me.

Learning my capacity to forgive at this altar in the Holy Land of me; the capacity of my heart, has been one of the most beautiful gifts of this lifetime.  The potential for instant alchemy, for transmuting pain and suffering into Love, has felt saintly at times.

We were at one of her favorite foodie spots in the East Bay (eating at the bar), having one of our regular “sister dates” years before she passed away when she looked at me and said, “I saw your reply to Dad on Facebook that said ‘I love you…”  There was a long pause, we rarely talked about our father who by this time was absent to all of us in various ways.

“None of us can understand how you can say that to him, how you can forgive him…after all that he has done to you…” she said in her clear and powerful way, I could feel the energy of our sisters standing behind her as she vied for my allegiance with her words.

“I haven’t forgiven him for him,” my words cutting through her non-verbal request, on a mission to soften her and offer my own clarity and some deeper understanding…which had honestly taken me deeper into my own heart before this dinner – I was ready to share my truth, an embodied one.

“I have forgiven him…for me,” I continued.

So much of our time together is a blur now, it’s been three years since I lost this favorite baby sister of mine.  Grief and deep loss have a similar way of guiding you into the Holy Land.

I remember the day she received her diagnosis, I was newly settling into my dream life in Paris.  (I was beginning to more intentionally create the Holy Land outside of me that I had come to know within.)

I will never forget the fear in her voice when she called me and asked me to come home to be with her.  I took the first flight that I could find and I was beside her from that moment until she passed away four years later.

The hand of fear, witnessing her journey, was a constant invitation to return to the Holy Land within.  This time I sat with God there and pleaded with Him.  I allowed Him to see me in my guilt, in my despair, in my deep, deep sadness… At the altar of my heart in this Holy Land of me I lit candles and I prayed…for my sister and her daughter and the papa who would soon be alone too…and I still do.

The cancer made her angry; I loved her harder.

Her anger pushed me away; I loved her harder.

In the end I couldn’t love her harder anywhere else but within myself: in the Holy Land of me so that’s where I sat…and I loved her as hard as I could there.

She met me there recently…

I felt her enter the room just as fear was reaching out its hand again, this time a needle biopsy into my throat; a literal invitation to return to the Holy Land.  Just as she floated in, the fear faded away and together we made our way to the altar within me, and she sat there at my heart with me.

This inner land of me is made holy by the ones that I meet there; by the work that I do there; by the gifts and blessings that I find and collect there.  It is the holiest land on earth…within me, an altar of a hidden heart filled with divinity.

It is within you too…within all of us…