It is not easy navigating the world with fragile boundaries, self-worth, and a potential history of manipulations. I often seek wisdom in spiritualities and unfamiliar religions because I need a substitute for the childhood traditions I have abandoned as a raft mid-stream. I am attracted to fashioning another raft, this one not pre-fabricated but gathered over some time by reaching for branches and tendrils. I am never confident about my assessments concerning relationships, and I mostly avoid going very deep with people anyhow or keep my head down so as to go unnoticed or divert the interest of others because I don’t yet know how to have healthy relationships that entail elements of balance or stay more-or-less in the middle way. It is awkward and fumbling to do life on one’s own, and I am hardly a victim. I completely admit that healing is within my purview and I simply have not tried hard enough, or that I just need to accept that no relationship is perfect and one cannot exactly have pleasure without pain, and so allow my body to sink into the underwater worlds and be taken by the sensory suctions of sea urchins and stings of jelly fish. Perhaps a relationship can also be one of peace and calm passions where those involved keep their attachments in check. I guess that is possible.
Continue reading “The Play of Emotional Insecurity and Pull by Elisabeth Schilling”
In 
For almost four years, I’ve been living with the long-term effects of an inner ear lesion. The lesion is long gone but its side effects are not. Throughout the day, I feel a combination of unsteadiness and sudden, unpredictable sensations of movement. On better days, the unsteadiness is almost non-existent and the feelings of movement are minimal. On worse days, I’m troubled with a type of brain fog that makes it hard to concentrate as well as disrupting unpredictable sensations of being on a boat that can’t pick one direction in which to move. It’s frustrating, tiring and demoralizing.
I was recently invited to address a gathering of resident chaplains in the pastoral care department of a major urban medical center. Specifically, they asked me to present the shamanic point of view of team building with an emphasis on creating alliances and community.
In 
In a recent interview on Voices of the Sacred Feminine on “
Many of us have a growing sense that we are at a crucial inflection point in our civilization and at a crossroads for the future of our planet. I’m not sure if that point needs to be defended, explained or expounded upon. To me it seems completely transparent, glaringly and frighteningly obvious. I live with that knowledge constantly, which translates into grief for the biodiversity that has already been lost and is accelerating; fear for the turmoil and human-made ecological catastrophes that will cause more and more people to lose their land and homes, leading to increased acts of violence towards the vulnerable;
Feminism and Religion 