Memoir Handbook #6: Be a Seeker

I’ve been reading the Bible since my Dad expressed disappointment about finding the inscribed New American translation he gave me for my high school graduation on a shelf in his house. As a result, I took it home with me after a visit about 20 years ago. I often found my Dad reading his Bible in the middle of the night during visits home from college that usually involved late night experiments with alcohol after family dinners. There he’d be at 2am, under a lamp, and if you tiptoed by without interaction it wasn’t that he didn’t clock the time and your arrival, it was just that his interest in Scripture took precedence.

I don’t know much about the Bible and have only recently sought guidance from someone who knows it well, but that’s why I love reading it. Because it is never over, solved, or achieved. It holds my interest, surprises and soothes me. I have collected several translations over the last few years. I read Scripture to get schooled, find balance and humility, to feel loved, and to be prompted toward a wholesome objective. I have read one line of one verse, looked up (aha!) and groped the cushions for a nearby pen to inventory a balancing awareness in my journal.

Meditation after that feels like surrender to a supernatural parental power that seems to transmit a ‘good work, and I still love you’ that often remains throughout the day. Sometimes I read Scripture aloud, basking in relief and satisfied curiosity. Sometimes I’m like “I just don’t even get that at all” out loud, and I don’t have the bandwidth to try. Sometimes I weep. This morning Proverbs 4 told me to guard my heart above all else for it determines the course of my life.

Because I was a mediocre and oft frustrated student who was patiently taught grammar and reading by my great aunt Marguerite, I have a firmament. She demonstrated compassion and curious, friendly instruction. I was hypersensitive and felt odd, which she corrected by explaining to me that I was an artist. That took me from self-consciousness to contentment. But she wasn’t just loving, empowering, and there, she was devoted to God through service to others.

I once heard Lara Logan say that her mom would quip “you were born with your bladder behind your eyes, girl” because she was always tearful. That was how my great aunt was - tears were always under the surface, more for joy than sorrow, and her pockets (or sleeves) always contained rumpled Kleenex and a rosary. I loved her deeply and dearly, and I felt seen and loved by her, no matter what.

with my great aunt Marguerite Shevlin, my earth angel

Because of her, I can recognize God in action through another. I can discern the difference between total reliance on other fallible humans and reliance on God through prompts, hints and help from other fallible humans.

Marguerite Shevlin, circa 1980

To quantify and qualify my relationship with God here feels like a narrow hallway with the heat cranked up, in a car coat. I won’t measure up to a fundamentalist vibration which I reject wholeheartedly, and then I will seem too strict for others. Fundamentalism is the problem. It’s everywhere on fire at the moment, because we are in a war, and we are traumatized. Many on all “sides” of all issues are hurting, and so out comes the rule book.

I surrender to God, not fundamentalism.

I don’t see the difference, in terms of energy, between a Marxist college student correcting me by saying “the term is sis-gendered birthing parent” instead of mother, and a Christian telling me that concepts I learned as a yoga teacher trainer are demonic. I just don’t. Both scenarios represent fundamentalism, a commitment to basic limitations instead of the nuance and dignity of individual experience and a search.

I see crystals simply as a part of God’s creation containing earth elements, just like herbal medicine, however I reject ritual and New Age things I used to reach for in disempowered moments, and trust solely in the access I have to Jesus Christ, once unavailable to me prior to a personal commitment. Therefore I would probably relate to even the most devout and strictly religious Christian if I were to unpack the fundamental truths I accept as the foundation of my life. But it took a long time to deeply understand and achieve that foundation, and the truth is, it’s private. As soon as I express it, it shrinks.

I won’t make the cut for fundamentalism. I won’t do it. I am too much of a rebel, despite chronic explainitis and an inner kid that doesn’t want anyone to be left out. I’m too much of a mother wanting you to find your way to Scripture. And I am too intent on rejecting organized institutional religion and all of its secret passageways into the darkness we now fight. Plus, I left my Bible on that childhood room shelf because of people telling me what to do and how, from a narrow place. I don’t want that to happen to you.

The most profound alteration to my spiritual path happened upon entering a Catholic mass in Florence, Italy and realizing God spoke Italian. I know it seems ridiculous but honestly it had never occurred to me, and it broke my world open. I drifted from the shore of Catholicism. I was out to sea once I sat on a bar stool in Dublin learning from a local about American churches that were funding the IRA and advancing the conflict in Northern Ireland. By the time I got to Los Angeles right after that trip, I wasn’t even on the water anymore. My childhood nickname was butterfly, and I had taken flight.

Ireland, 1990s

My search has served me well, and because of it, I declare that we just don’t have any time left for telling others how to do it. It’s time for every single person to take full responsibility for their journey and manage their spiritual missions with discernment, discipline and devotion, ASAP. If you’re reading this, it’s likely because you have people in your life that have rejected you, but simultaneously look to you for answers and peace. You’ve gotta be fortified for the future. You’ll be helping a bunch of people that got duped into trusting man over God. People who lived of this world, instead of in it. Get your house in order on the inside, release your resentments, and as Wayne Dyer used to say, make sure your pipeline to God isn’t corroded. Because there are unconsciously Marxist college students everywhere believing lies from cultivated caricatures posing as political leaders, here to usher in a new religion.

Many unconsciously replaced God with State a long time ago, but 2020 was a revival. The political TV religion of 2020 filled the traumatized cracks in personalities with a thrilling invitation to join together with fellow citizens, (but not in person) stop going to the gym and get takeout in order to fight a deadly virus. In the 2020 the TV religion encouraged spiritual obedience to unelected leaders approved by the magazines in the nail salon that’s now closed, while remaining mindful of pronouns.

The TV religion places a person’s safety in other. Other fallible human has to do it correctly for the safety to be experienced, whether it’s a mask or a shot or a pronoun or whatever. I don’t rely on that level of trust in other fallible human beings. I prefer the faithful trust and safety of God. At best, the new TV religion feels like a deadly distraction.

Life experiences that made room in my heart for the search and caused me to reject religion also caused me to (unconsciously) reject God. I have been praying almost every day of my life, but I can identify moments when I was worshipping the world even if I was praying to God. That’s over, and that’s what I have finally understood - since 2020. But I’m not writing about it specifically. Because I don’t want to infringe upon your process or ruin a wordless devotion with words.

I want to emphasize a reframe of this. Although I’ve already said it. It bears repeating. God centered humans showing up for you and fortifying your trust in God is not the same as needing another human to behave or speak a certain way so you can feel imagined spiritual safety.

A nurse that serves God within the capacity of her vocation is not the same as the Godless, agenda-filled reverence for a nurse dancing on a TV commercial. Humans are fallible, God is unfailing. I worship God with a gratefulness for disciples who help activate my trust in God by showing God in action just like my great aunt did.

There’s a line with permissiveness in a seeker. Discipline breeds freedom, inside, where it matters. Scattered skimming of the surface misses out on the profound quiet in the bottom of the ocean. When you’re seeking a spiritual perspective without discipline, it can be dangerous.

I’m a recovering deluded, emotional Democrat who wrote songs in the music business. I encountered celebrity culture and taught yoga at Equinox Clubs all over the Los Angeles area. (If more midwestern girls saw TV stars flirting with guys at the gym in pink Uggs like I did, it would be easier to break the dreamspell.)

I’ve seen permissive spiritual bypass in parasites promoting tantra and whatever else and I’ve since coached women who were injured from it. My instincts were fierce and I managed to keep myself in tip top ethical shape in those days, because I was close enough to Jesus to remain on guard. I also come from good people, and had support group sisters.

Taking astavakrasana very seriously (haha) in Los Angeles, 2010

I did not use my yoga class to entertain myself or create a love life, which many did. I was there to serve. I faced ridicule and giggles for playing Christian praise music in my classes. I felt rejected when I told other yogis I was playing my songs at a church. I didn’t understand these were hints of what was to come in 2020.

I entered mansions to share yoga with a celebrity, expecting grace and brilliance, and got a tantrum or a confession for eating a steak. I have seen in person that which attracts hollow idol worship. I’m referring to people with whom you wouldn’t even want to have a cup of coffee. I intuitively understand the kind of permissive New Age bull that created the cultural climate in Los Angeles. It appears as a tempting, appealing, “loving” and harmless solution but actually gives way to pure evil. I know the very sophisticated, popular and prevalent brand of Satan getting you to believe that he doesn’t exist. The paradox is, a significant part of my path to Jesus was a vocation I would not actually pursue today - clarified in Romans 8:28.

Be A Seeker

I suggest you keep it wholesome and consistent, getting right with God yourself, in your way. Because it’s not over and you’re not done, or you wouldn’t be here. Stay the course knowing the freedom of discipline, and the harm in permissive delusion. If I can fully understand and actually be comforted by what it means to fear God, anyone can. I think it means to fear no people and live rigorous, Holy spirit-fueled truth in action.

Here’s a final example. Last weekend I was in a beautiful California home with an “Om” symbol installed in metal on the side gates, and a Christian pastor said the blessing before the meal. We were gathered there to listen to Firefighters for Freedom and others, and to preserve our basic freedoms from a place of love. Anyone preoccupied with the gray area between the symbol on the gate and the blessing would’ve missed out on the unity within a shared purpose. It’s just not time for that. Focus on yourself and how you can serve.

That way, I believe we will all eventually get the memo on what is essential. Let’s get to work.