Stephanie Rutt

I, as so many around the country and the world, am grieving the loss of the innocent children and adults whose lives you took last Friday.  I still cannot watch the news or look at their faces without feeling my throat tighten and my eyes filling up.  Yet, this morning, I was drawn to rise early and write to you – because next to all those innocent faces, I also saw, dear Adam, your face.  I know how very desperately you did not want to be seen or to be known.  So, I am praying that this letter reaches you by the Grace only God can provide.

You may wonder, Adam, how I see you.  Well, in part, I see you though the eyes of my beautiful seven year old grandson who has autism.  You see, last year, at his end-of-year program, he decided he just could not walk out onto the stage with all those people staring.  Like you, though perhaps for different reasons, he decided he just could not be seen in that way.

And, as I watched the news, I saw your picture.  And, I saw you.  My first overwhelming thought was why the picture of you was so young – thirteen I believe.  I wondered how it was in this digital age no one, not even a national network, could find a more recent picture of you.  Did no one have a birthday or holiday picture?  Were there no pictures from any family gatherings, events, special occasions?  Was there no one who carried a picture of you on their smart phone?  Was there no one who held a more recent picture of you at anytime over the past seven years?  I came to know more of you, Adam, by what I did not see.

Later I heard that the first person you killed was your mother.  This was so very heartbreaking to hold.  As just a child, you could not have known or seen what was hidden deep in your mother’s heart.  I suspect that what was hidden there was her tender love for you yet sadly buried under the frustration and desperation a mother feels when confronted with an unrelenting helplessness to help her struggling child.  Sadly, it seems you did not feel this from your mother or, perhaps you did, but did not feel worthy of it.  I am so very sorry for this and regret that we will never know.

And, that picture of you at thirteen.  I saw you clearly, Adam, already hiding – hiding your face down from the camera and my heart ached for the pain already becoming unbearable for you.  Later, a schoolmate would say you hated to be up in front of the class as you would get all red in the face.  What shame you must have carried every day going to school until, finally, home schooling was the only bearable option.  I, like my grandson, for different reasons, also so wanted to hide as a young child.  This place in my heart knows you well, dear Adam.  From me, by only God’s Grace, you cannot hide.  I see you and I know you, tenderly.

Tenderly because I’m sure you did not realize, until the moment you passed, that you were really not going to escape anything.  God’s Grace requires that all hatred and evil be purged for it is the only way healing can happen for all.  It is why the Bible tells us we must reap what we have sown.  So, for all the tenderness and understanding my heart feels for you, for all I see and know of you my brother, our Beloved God loves you most of all.  And, only in His care do I pray you will come to know the amazing Grace that purges all fear, hatred and evil so though once blind you will see. 

And, only then, dear Adam, will you see and know, fully, the tender faces of the children you killed.  Only then will you look into their eyes and recognize their fear as your fear.  Only then will you feel their deep suffering as your suffering.  Only then will you look upon them and, for the first time, fully recognize yourself.

And, perhaps then, it may also be possible for you to feel the love that is felt for you in this moment by this stranger you never knew.

But knew you.

I love how the Beloved takes my talks on the most amazing detours – just in case I’ve forgotten I’m not in the driver’s seat!  Anyway, it happened this past Sunday in our worship service.  We were talking about the Dalai Lama, happiness and sledding – yes, sledding – about how we can choose to pick up our sled and create new pathways to living in both the snow and in our brains.  Good stuff.  And, then we spoke about anger and I shared what the Dalai Lama has said of how he handles his own experiences of anger.

It was around this point I found myself sharing an incident that occurred many months ago, one I’ve not thought about since.  On this particular day, I was in a hurry as I turned into the Mobil Station parking lot, the one just down the street, and, without noticing, hastily pulled into the handicapped parking space.  As I came to a stop, I immediately began rationalizing.  “I’m only going in for a bottled water.” I thought.  “Won’t be a minute.”  So, in I went.  And, it was, I’m quite sure, just a minute or so.  Yet, when I came out a handicapped van had pulled up next to me and a 60ish looking man in a wheelchair was in the process of making his way out the side door of the van.

“Oh, my gosh”, I said instantly, feeling terrible, “I am so sorry!” When he didn’t respond, I started again, “I…” but suddenly he looked up and just glared at me, saying with great contempt, “Yes, you are sorry.”  I immediately felt a tension in my chest as I continued to get into my car. And the drive home was slow.  Yet, the incident soon dissipated from my memory – until today.

When we were doing the beautiful Chant of Metta, or loving kindness meditation, I suddenly remembered my mom being in a wheelchair in her last few years.  I remembered how very hard everything was for her.  And, I remembered riding in the back of her van, a van just like the one in the Mobile Station parking lot.

So, later that afternoon, as I enjoyed perhaps this year’s last warm lounge in my hammock, I suddenly felt a deep desire to send that man, making his way out of his van that day, not just my apology but my heart-felt compassion.  So, wherever you are on this day, dear man, this is for you…

I no longer can remember the details of your face.  But I remember the feeling.   I am sorry for the pain in your heart and for the struggle in your days.  I understand – though, admittedly from afar.  I am sorry that my haste that day added unnecessarily to your challenges of which I can only imagine.  May you be free from physical pain.  May you be free from suffering.  Wherever you are today, may you be well.  May you be happy.  Do you have a hammock?  Could you make your way in and out of one, with help?  If so, I would welcome you to mine…because, today, we did enjoy that cloudless blue sky, those sweet, cool winds of summer’s last blessing, together, you and I, as you were in my heart.

Thank you for being with me.  You are my beloved.

It takes a lot to steal me away from my hammock on a clear summer’s day. But recently, my peaceful slumber was stirred by a wide-winged hawk flying through the cloudless sky. No problem. A gift really – until the hawk began to circle lower and lower. It was then I noticed the chipmunks scrambling for cover. Unwilling to witness what I thought might be a most unpleasant scenario for one of the chipmunks, I decided to go inside. My husband, hearing my dilemma, said in a quite practical yet tender tone, “Baby hawks have to eat too.”

In a matter of seconds, I could feel my exhale and a kind of calm settled in me. Of course!  Baby hawks have to eat too. It was as if the whole of creation had just been laid at my feet. We all live and are all sustained solely by the gift of life from others – our animal, plant and mineral relations. Of course! It is death that creates life.

We know this. Yet, it seems to be brought into crystal focus, if only momentarily, at the portal of birth and death, where all beginnings are endings and all endings are beginnings. It’s like we suddenly wake up to the most intrinsic nature of the sacred – like the hawks and the chipmunks, we all come in, live and exit. In the meantime, we are too often lulled back to cozy sleep. It’s why all traditions admonish us to wake up. Wake up to what? That each moment is a portal where, as Bernadette Farrell sings, in our living and our dying, we are bringing You to birth.     

Portals. A few days ago I held my new grandbaby for the first time. Unexpectedly, she opened her eyes – ever so briefly. Made my breath pause as this little one held me captive with her fixed gaze as the Beloved just communed between us. And later, I recalled, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the last time I heard my grandmother’s voice. I knew she was dying so, through the phone line, I savored each tiny nuance within each word to insure each sound would stay etched in my heart forever. Rarely, have I listened with such intent. Only in the passing can we savor the eternal. Only in our living and our dying, can we birth the Beloved.

All gratitude to the hawk and chipmunks, to my grandbaby and grandmother, for bringing the Beloved to birth…in me.

In honor of my recent release, Living the Prayer of Jesus: A Study of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, I felt I wanted to do something to help us all, more consciously, live the message of Jesus today.  The following Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI was what came to me…

Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI…

Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. Matthew 25:45

I am an interfaith minister in New Hampshire, USA, and I am blessed to serve as Presiding Minister of our Tree of Life Interfaith Temple.  I am little known outside my community here but, oh, do I have an ever expanding and abiding love for Jesus and for the teachings that first elicited the blessed ecstatic cry, birthing Christianity.  On our Temple’s wall hangs a portrait of Mother Teresa whom I have always considered my spiritual teacher and guide.  So, although I am not a Catholic, I have, with you, a deep and sustaining connection to the heart of Jesus.  This is why I am writing today.

I am reaching out to you with an idea – an idea that could invite many Catholics and other fellow Christians to walk, even more succinctly, in the footsteps of Jesus and to serve the least of these, in ways we can only yet imagine.  Whereas I am little known, you, Sir, are the most well known spiritual leader in our world.  You have the power to do what others may not.  So, I ask of you, What if?  What if you were to lead the Catholic Church community in responding to the ever pervasive accounts, now worldwide, of abuse of children by priests, by declaring the following:

If just one child has been hurt by our lack of awareness, over site or mismanagement;  If just one child has been hurt while serving in our trusted care, indeed, it is one too many.  So, unified, we rise up as the living body of Christ, ready to respond as we know our Lord Jesus Christ would have us respond. 

Starting Immediately, all the major parishes of our Catholic Church, worldwide, will join with their local mental health professionals to create and sustain, free to the public, centers of healing for all those children and adult children who have been victims of sexual abuse by priests and others.  Furthermore, these healing centers will also offer programs to provide care for the perpetrators of abuse, priests and others, for our Lord has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” We will welcome all, victims and perpetrators, into the heart of our Lord through our open doors and we will soothe the wounds of the suffering with the living balm of our Lord Jesus Christ.       

I know many thoughtful and conscientious Catholic clergy and lay people have worked tirelessly in their communities to respond to the heart wrenching cry for help by so many.  But, you as leader, are in the fortuitous position to truly begin to transform the depth of this human suffering.  You have an opportunity to bring the living balm of Jesus to touch and to heal the countless wounded souls worldwide.

And, with such opportunity comes clear responsibility and accountability.  I challenge you to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, to do as He would do, to serve as He would serve, to ignite a passion for answering His charge:   love one another as I have loved you and, in doing so, to bring the living balm of Christ Jesus to heal the world.  Know, as well, that I stand ready to support the devout and loving Catholics in our community in answering your charge.  We are all children of the living God, after all.

I believe Jesus would expect no less of us.

As Mother Teresa once said, “I never say ‘no’ to Jesus.”  As a result, her healing ministry touched the world.  Will you do the same?

Yesterday Doug and I went to a hotdog stand.  It was one of those (blessed) first sun-in-my-face days I look forward to each spring.  As we ordered, I noticed the man standing above us staring down, his eyes, smile, and how we had a good belly laugh when, confused, I ordered a 10” foot long!  As Doug and I sat at the picnic table, I thought about how hotdogs probably aren’t so good for you.  But, the sun was warm on my face and even time seemed to be still as I just enjoyed this man with whom I’ve been sitting for over thirty years.  I found myself drenched in the sensations of pebbled rocks under my feet and the cool, rough, yet sturdy, brown bench and table that had graciously agreed to provide support for our delectable feast.  And, looking up, I giggled to find myself in a front row seat, watching the sun dance with leaves and as it played hide-in-seek with the clouds.  I thought about sauerkraut and how it used to be cabbage and wondered about the hands that kneaded the homemade buns and squeezed the lemons for our lemonade.

Mostly, later, I remembered feeling so gifted, overcome with that-which-was-right-before-me, that I forgot to even think or reflect on it.  Just too in it.  Who’d a thought?  After years of looking to the great wonders of the world, it was all there, the Beloved just waiting to play, at the hotdog stand.

This post is dedicated to Joe and to all the hidden parts of ourselves yearning to be welcomed Home.  It is also the dedication to my book, An Ordinary Life Transformed: Lessons for Everyone from the Bhagavad Gita.

I was over forty before I found out about Joe. I was rummaging through my grandmother’s cedar chest as I had done so often in the past during my summer visits. All the old pictures were there, mostly those taken “down home” where my grandmother had grown up. Among the yellowed and torn pictures were the familiar faces of those I had long known, mixed in with others I did not recognize. One such picture was of what looked to be a teenage boy. He was standing alone out in the yard.

Although I had run across this picture before, this time the face staring back at me held my attention and roused my curiosity.  I walked into the kitchen where my grandmother was busy cleaning, moving pots and pans from the stove to the sink. “Nanny,” I said, “who’s this?” She looked at the picture briefly and said rather matter-of-factly, “That’s Joe,” as she continued to move the pots and pans. When no further explanation came, I said, “Well, who’s Joe?” My grandmother never stopped her work nor looked at me as she offered her brief explanation. “Joe was my younger brother. But, he was never right.” It was clear she was not about to be drawn into any type of conversation about it.

I was stunned. It seemed incomprehensible to me that there had been a family member I had not known about. I was the one who had created photo albums of the family, wandered through graveyards with my grandmother to gather information about births and deaths and had started researching our family tree. At one point, I remembered an old family Bible in which my great-grandmother had placed a sheet of paper listing the names and birth dates of her children. The bottom of the sheet of paper had been torn off but there remained what looked like the top part of the capital letter ‘O’ at the bottom where the last name would have been added. I had never paid any attention to the mark before. Now I knew it was the top part of the letter ‘J’ written in cursive as the other names had been.

I remember my great-grandmother as a tiny, fast moving woman of few words. My great-grandfather was tall and had a rather hard expression about him. They were farmers who spent their days literally making their daily bread and doing what was necessary for simple survival, as rural folk did in the early part of the nineteen hundreds. Joe was the sixth and last child to be born. But there was no doubt he would change life for all of them forever.

I have come to have the deepest compassion for my family and the secret we have carried. I can only imagine how difficult and challenging it must have been for all of them, particularly the other children whose job it was to look after Joe, as there was little he could do for himself. I learned that as he approached adulthood the daily care became overwhelming and the difficult decision was made to put him into an institution. When the day came to take him, I was told, my otherwise stern great-grandfather “wailed” as he shaved. No one had ever seen him cry before. And, what was being buried deep in the heart of the one who tore Joe’s name off the list to go in the Bible?

Each of us has secrets and parts we feel should not be brought into the light.  We fear if others could really see us they would not accept or love us, when, in fact, it is we who do not accept and love ourselves. And all families have “something”— secrets, perceived flaws, lies, wrongdoings, injustices – things most family members believe are best kept hidden from the world. But, what is true will not let us go.

This is why the Bhagavad Gita opens with the protagonist Arjuna standing on a battlefield about to go to war with, principally, his own family, his cousins. In his family’s case, an overt injustice has occurred and it is Arjuna’s duty to restore righteousness. But, seeing his family before him, he falters and offers all his good reasons, rationalizations, for not being able to confront the injustice he knows is there.

And, at times, so it is with us.

Until one day our desire to live open and free becomes greater than the need to hide. Our secrets seek the light of day. Our perceived flaws seek transformation in the crucible of self-acceptance. And our lies, wrongdoings and injustices seek to be made right.

And Krishna, or God within, smiles.

Welcome home, Joe.

In our worship service this past Sunday, Rev. Jan Grossman spoke of the difference between the personal love of emotion and the universal love of devotion that extends out to embrace all.  I have found in my experience, again and again, that it is my surrender into trust that lands me most often in the love of devotion.  It is not something I can make happen.  Rather, it seems only possible to allow.

Surrender is a loaded word in our culture.  But, as usual on the spiritual path where paradox is the rule, it is surrender that actually predisposes us to receiving that which is infinitely sweeter than anything we could have imagined.  Surrender is where the mystery unfolds.

And, opening to the inner space of sweet surrender can happen on the bus home, in the grocery store, waiting in line at the bank.  I have found that the most beautiful surrender, what I have come to describe as dancing with God, can occur when I don’t even know the steps, when I have no sense of control to intrude.  Several years ago I had such an experience, this time involving the actual act of dancing, in a course I was taking in Sacred and Liturgical Dance at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

There were some students in our class who had Cerebral Palsy and were in wheelchairs.  Each had a helper to assist.  One afternoon, our teacher, Fr. Robert VerEecke, announced that we would be put in pairs and given a Psalm to dance over a period of about two minutes.  We would only have five minutes to talk with our partner and decide on an approach.  He purposefully did not give us a lot of time to plan it all out.

I was paired with one of the men with Cerebral Palsy.  As I approached him, I remember feeling uneasy for there was nothing in my experience from which I could draw.  Literally, I was blank.  There was no possibility for discussion or collaboration, not even the possibility of eye contact which might offer some confirmation that we were in sync.  His helper remained silent.  I don’t know how long I stood motionless as I tried not to stare at his frail and twisted body nor respond to his moaning sounds.  Somewhere in the background, I heard Fr. VerEecke say, “Just dance and only punctuate with key words as the spirit moves.”  “Just dance” I thought.  There was, literally, nothing else to do.

Still, I paused feeling uncertain and unclear.  Then, from somewhere beyond my growing anxiety, I remembered, “What’s the same in all of us…”  And, something lifted.  Suddenly, I could see this beautiful Soul before me.  I took a breath and stepped, not knowing where it was going or leading.  His helper responded and soon we were moving out across the floor.  As we moved forward, back, turned, paused, went fast, slow, I heard my voice, words, and my partner’s sounds mingle in and out, in and out, as we were carried, spiraling, into a kind of void where all stood perfectly still – where we were Danced. 

For me, this is the essence of devotional love.  It cuts through all external circumstances to penetrate into what’s the same in all of us.  It is the awe-mazing Grace of surrender where, though blind we see, and though lost, we are found.

Welcome Home.

Happy Valentines’ Day!!

I read a part of this poem, now also mentioned in the video clip, “The Gift from the Homeless Man” in my Thanks-giving service.  Here is the full poem.  May receiving it somehow serve your journey…    

“I Used to Want a Ph.D”

I used to want a Ph.D.

but that was long before I caught

You, my Beloved,

smiling at me through those sparkled leaves…

waving at me from that bottomless sky…

Long before I heard Your call pulsating soft

against the light brown breasts of

those two morning doves

caught on my screen porch…

Before I was abruptly stopped by that glance…

from the homeless man on the corner –

the one with the sign…

holding me fast by my surprise love for him…

Until later I realized it was You…

And, yes, my Beloved

Even long before you spoke for me when I could not…

I used to want a Ph.D. so I would know.

Now my soul, not knowing and undone

soars in stillness

helplessly caught in Your wonder.

http://youtu.be/A5-TLdHsbV8

I wrote this in support of our unit on loss for the Spiritual Mentoring Certificate Course.

The Gift of the Uninvited Guest

We all wish we didn’t have them.  Those uninvited guests – times we don’t see coming that turn our world inside out – times of loss and the often deep grief that accompanies them.  They can show up abruptly with no explanation.  Worse yet, they can make themselves quite at home settling in with fear, suffering and chaos in tow.  Our minds race frantically to understand, to restore order, to reclaim our vanishing sense of normalcy.  But peace too often remains a memory.

The uninvited guest has many disguises.  Sometimes it arrives as a natural disaster we witness in the lives of those around us.  It is hard to look, to let in, when there is so much unmasked suffering.  Yet, as we do, we may begin to sense the unexpected gift this unwanted guest of ours brings.  I notice that as I look squarely into the face of suffering that, somehow, it is that very suffering that stirs a kind of quake within me, opening me to places of feeling often kept hidden deep.  Suddenly, it doesn’t matter who they are, what nationality, what they believe.  Seeing, feeling their deep suffering stirs in me a compassion I can’t ignore.  And, allowing in the chaos, I am surprised at the feeling of unity I suddenly feel with a stranger.

Sometimes our uninvited guest is closer to home.  The unexpected change, accident, diagnosis, in our life or in the life of someone we love.  I had such a guest last November in the story I shared in The Mother Teresa Rosary: Next Chapter.

Yet, even as we are being broken open, there appears right there, the most unexpected gift brought by this uninvited guest – a gift, in fact, only this guest can bring.  It is the gift of remembrance that we are indeed mortal – that all we know and we love is finite – literally here today and gone tomorrow.  And, this is the most precious gift of all as it causes us, unhinged, to reach for something beyond our normal grasp, something beyond what we know or understand, something eternal and infinite.  It causes us to search for God.

Still, it is inescapable that this most precious gift can only be brought by the uninvited guest.  For it is only through darkness that we experience light.  Only through suffering that we can know joy.  Only through death that we know living.  It is why the poet Hahlil Gibran reminds us that should we seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure we will find our self in a …seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all your laughter, and weep, but not all your tears.  It’s why Rumi in his famous poem The Guest House tells us to welcome all of our emotional visitors – even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each quest honorably.  He may be clearing you out for some new delight. 

So, as we graciously receive each uninvited guest into our being, let’s allow love to have its way with us.  To use suffering as an opportunity to feel a little more deeply – compassion for both our self and others.  To use tragedy as an opportunity to grow much like the lotus flower using the muck under the water to blossoms because of not in spite of. To use so-called death as an opportunity to surrender all we hold dear only to find ourselves held by the Beloved.

Let’s receive with open arms the uninvited guest, the messenger.

For hidden there is a gift from God.

Rev. Stephanie Rutt