Patricia Pearce

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Dismantling: An Act of Creation

December 3, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

The new world simply can’t be built upon our past beliefs.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend my husband, Kip, and I pulled out our Bananagrams game and started playing. If you aren’t familiar with Bananagrams, it’s sort of like Scrabble in that it has little tiles with letters on them, but it has no board. You use the tiles to build your own grid of interlocking words based on the letters you’ve drawn, like a crossword puzzle.

But the other thing about Bananagrams that’s different is that you can rearrange your words at any time. If you draw a letter that you can’t fit into your existing grid, you can tear apart any or all parts of your puzzle and start over.

Kip and I played collaboratively rather than competitively, because it’s just more fun that way. We would draw the next letter and then we would both look at how it could be incorporated into the grid we had built together.

What I learned in the process is that Kip is totally fine with tearing things apart. He has no compunction about dismantling entire regions of the grid if there’s a word he sees could be built with the latest letter, and he always trusts that it will all turn out okay, that there’s a way all the letters can be reconfigured into something new.Continue Reading

The Quiet Coup

October 9, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

The coup that will change the world is already well underway.

For as long as I can remember, the ritual in our national political theater that has always moved me to tears is the moment after a presidential inauguration when the outgoing president boards the helicopter and flies away. It is an enactment of what is perhaps the most extraordinary characteristic of democracy: the peaceful transition of power.

It brings me to tears because I am aware of how precious it is, how novel it is, in a world that has for so long been governed by egoic drives for power and control, and it exemplifies the fundamental break with the past that the founders of our country made when they decided the United States would not be a monarchy.

Knowing that Donald Trump is completely beholden to the ego-mind, I have always had a hard time envisioning him peaceably getting on that helicopter and flying away, honoring the will of the people and the democratic process. This is not a condemnation of him. It is simply an observation of him. It is not in his constitution to yield power and control.Continue Reading

The Power of Joy

June 26, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

Joy is the most transformative power we can imagine.

This past week a message came across my path by White Eagle, a Hopi Elder, who was offering counsel on how to be in these times. She talked about the potential of this time as being a portal for us, and she emphasized the importance of taking care of ourselves, because when we take care of ourselves we are taking care of the whole.

She also talked about the importance of joy, and about joy as an act of resistance in the face of oppression. Here are some of her words:

. . . if you take this opportunity to look at yourself, rethink life and death, take care of yourself and others, you will cross the portal. . .

When you are taking care of yourselves, you are taking care of everything else. Do not lose the spiritual dimension of this crisis; have the eagle aspect from above and see the whole; see more broadly.

There is a social demand in this crisis, but there is also a spiritual demand — the two go hand in hand. . .

Learn about resistance of the indigenous and African peoples; we have always been, and continue to be, exterminated. But we still haven’t stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire, and having fun. Don’t feel guilty about being happy during this difficult time.

You do not help at all being sad and without energy. You help if good things emanate from the Universe now. It is through joy that one resists. Also, when the storm passes, each of you will be very important in the reconstruction of this new world.

You need to be well and strong. And for that, there is no other way than to maintain a beautiful, happy, and bright vibration. . .

What world do you want to build for you? For now, this is what you can do — serenity in the storm. Calm down, pray every day. Establish a routine to meet the sacred every day.

Good things emanate; what you emanate now is the most important thing. And sing, dance, resist through art, joy, faith, and love.

Continue Reading

Are You Looking for a Good Resource on Mindfulness?

October 15, 2014 by Patricia Pearce

Rather than posting a blog of my own writing this week, I’d like to share with you a wonderful resource I recently came upon through Shambala Sun‘s website. In case you aren’t familiar with it, Shambala Sun is a magazine that features teachings from the Buddhist and other contemplative traditions.

This free eBook (PDF), The Mindfulness Sampler, contains chapters by some of the pre-eminent teachers of mindfulness in our day, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, and many more, all writing about the power of awareness in daily life.

You can access the PDF here: The Mindfulness Sampler.

Peace,

Patricia

Facing Diverging Paths

June 11, 2014 by Patricia Pearce

Is there a path beckoning you?
Is there a path beckoning you?

In one of my morning meditation times this week, an image from a famous poem by Robert Frost came to my mind.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

I knew why this image of diverging paths had come to me at this particular time, since I am facing some important decisions, so I took the image as an invitation to do as Frost did, to take time to pause and consider.

I imagined myself sitting down in the woods at a place where two paths part to see what I could see, knowing as Frost did that by choosing one I was saying no to the other, leaving it untraveled, a life I might have lived and chose not to.

Choices can be difficult because we know we will forever wonder about the paths we chose not to take, all those roads that we have left unexplored. We must accept this particular kind of loss so inherent to life — the loss of what might have been. Frost alludes to this in the title of his poem. Rather than calling it “The Road Taken,” he titled it, “The Road Not Taken.”

Choices can also be difficult because when we face diverging paths we can only see so far. We may be able to see what might lie ahead in the near future, but beyond that the path bends out of sight, into the undergrowth of uncertainty. This means we must always make our choices in the absence of full knowledge. We must make them guided by a deeper wisdom instead, one that we can only access within ourselves. Rather than merely deciding, we must discern which way to go.

In my meditation, letting any sense of urgency recede, I invited that deeper wisdom to come forth and show me what these diverging paths were representing.

As I gazed at them in my mind’s eye, what I saw was that one of the paths, the one slightly more traveled, was the path I would choose if I allowed fear to govern my choices. It was the safer path in so far as it was the way of conformity, the way of blending in with cultural norms and abiding by other people’s expectations.

The other path, the one less traveled, followed a different course. It followed the contours of the Self (not to be confused with self, or ego) rather than the contours of external expectations, and because it wasn’t beholden to accepted norms it was the path that could also lead to controversy.

Controversy literally means turning against. Ideas are controversial when they turn against established norms, challenging viewpoints or worldviews that have become accepted as reality.

Taking time in meditation to listen to my inner wisdom helped me see the choices before me more clearly and understand the dynamics at play in my ambivalence. I could recognize how fear had been whispering to me to take the “safer” road.

While some people thrive on controversy, I am not one of them. Nonetheless I know, and can sense that I have always known, which path I will choose, and that, for me, will make all the difference.

 

When Snow Claims the City

January 22, 2014 by Patricia Pearce

IMG_3241Yesterday we got about a foot of snow in Philadelphia, and most of us are enjoying a snow day today as the city digs itself out.

Throughout the snowstorm yesterday, sitting in the comfort of my home watching the fat flakes accumulating on the sidewalks and cars, I was grateful I didn’t have to go anywhere. After dinner, though, I put on my boots and bundled up to take a walk around the block.

The neighborhood was peacefully quiet, the only sound that of a snow shovel scraping the sidewalk in the next block. When I got to the corner I stopped near a street lamp and watched the flakes swirling in its light. Mesmerized by their random movements as they swooped this way and that on the currents of air I settled into that experience of timelessness that is always present but which I miss when I’m immersed in the daily tasks of life.Continue Reading

Opening to the Great Love: The Second Aspect of the Spiritual Life

July 19, 2013 by Patricia Pearce

How do you open to the Great Love?
How do you open to the Great Love?

In last week’s blog, Knowing Yourself, I wrote about what I see as the first aspect of the spiritual life and I offered some practices to help us grow in self-awareness. This week I’d like to explore what I see as the next aspect of the spiritual life: opening to the Great Love, by which I mean the consciousness that animates the Universe and each of us, the Reality in which everything is being birthed, nurtured into its fullness, and received back again in complete acceptance. This second aspect of the spiritual journey is one in which we come to the real, experiential awareness that we are not living our lives as isolated individuals alone in the cosmos.Continue Reading

Jailed for Earth’s Sake

April 22, 2013 by Patricia Pearce

How shall we each put our bodies on the line for Earth's future?
How shall we each put our bodies on the line for Earth’s future?

Nine years ago today I went to prison. Along with hundreds of other people in Philadelphia, I had engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience when the US launched its invasion of Iraq in 2003, and a year later we received our summons to appear in court. Those of us who refused to pay the $250 fine were sentenced to a week in maximum security federal prison and kept in lock-down in our cells 24 hours a day.

When we stepped through the doors of the prison on that sunny April day, with Philadelphia’s blossoming springtime in full swing, we entered a world unto itself, cut off from the outside by its thick concrete walls, locked doors, and glaring florescent lights.

We went through several hours of intake, including two strip searches, before we were finally issued our orange jumpsuits and escorted handcuffed to our cells. (My cellmate, Janeal Ravndal, was a Quaker woman who later wrote about our experience in her booklet, A Very Good Week Behind Bars, published by Pendle Hill Press.)

Our only connection to the outside was a narrow vertical frosted window, and a day or two after our arrival I discovered a tiny pinprick of clear glass where the frosted glaze hadn’t adhered. Smaller than the head of a pin, it was my only view to the out-of-doors. Peering through it I could make out the basic outlines of buildings, cars, a distant highway.Continue Reading

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