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Fall
2001 We understand many of you have been missing the newsletter. We have, too! So at long last we bring you news and views from the Endless Mountains.... Yes, it's true, we celebrate our twentieth year, although we don't look a day over nineteen. We incorporated into a 501(c)3 back in 1981. Some of you may remember the offices in that beautiful Riverside Drive apartment and the farmhouse at Tesserville Farm looking like, well, an old farmhouse. Twenty years later the IAM Counseling and Retreat Center at Tesserville Farm is a modern facility with a two decade history of successful work in the healing arts. With a satellite office on 57th Street in Manhattan, the uniqueness of the IAM Center is unsurpassed! Most places just don't do what we do. We know that, you know that, so spread the word! Jack Walters celebrates 65 years of life experience this January. This year he also celebrates 30 years of priesthood and the beginning of his training and ministry as a pastoral counselor. We honor his original vision for the Center. Fred Strugatz can't believe he was only of 26 years when this whole project began. We are very proud and humbled at all the participants who have crossed our threshold. From our very beginning we have had what we call a "core community" at the IAM Center, which transitions every five or six years. These are the folks who dedicate themselves to their own healing. They engage in sessions, join groups, and participate in workshops. We celebrate their dedication to their own and others' processes. Seeing people transform is the true reward of the work. Blessings on all who have shared in this experience. Whether coming for one session or twenty, self reflection is an art form, an enlightened path to loving ourselves and others. Speaking of those Endless Mountains, we are constantly amazed at the natural beauty of this place. In June the fireflies begin their performance at 9pm sharp and one can be lost in a sea of light. Then watch the full moon rise up over the back ridge and see the tops of the silos shine. If that doesn't do it for you, how about watching a rain storm come up the valley from a front row seat in our dining room. If you're not impressed yet, can we offer you stretches of fields with hay bales becoming sculptures on the landscape? And if you are into study, what about watching the mountains turn day by day into spectacular autumn colors! Nature is a great teacher.
September 11, 2001, 12 PM. Three and a half hours ago, I handed Emily the article on this summer's directed retreat that was to appear in this issue of the Newsletter. A few minutes later, someone called to tell us that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Tower in New York City. In the intervening couple of hours, a second commercial airline with passengers was driven into the second tower, the Pentagon was likewise hit, both the WTC's have collapsed and a fourth airplane with innocent passengers has crashed. The City of New York, indeed the whole country has been shut down because of the rage of some religious extremists. When we step back, however, and look over the major wars and conflicts in our scarred human history we must admit that most of them have been fought in the name of God. We look around at our modern world of brutality toward our fellow human beings and we see the ethnic/religious wars of the Baltic States, Northern Ireland, the war between the Moslems and Jews of the Middle East (which is now beginning to consume the world). Yet, in the case of Christianity, Judaism and Moslem, we essentially worship the same God. So how can anyone believe that they act in the name of God when this is the case? What lies below the surface is the rage we aim at each other when the other doesn't see what I see, doesn't agree with what I think, doesn't look at things the way I do. Certainly the people and powers who committed this heinous crime need to be held accountable for what they have done because others do not ‘see it the way they do'. But, when we look at the root cause of any war, it is about, ‘you are different than me. Because you are different, you are a threat and therefore, I must regard you as my enemy. If I think you are too much of a threat, I must eliminate you'. Thus, we have apartheid of South Africa, the Hutsi/Tutsi conflicts of Africa and the list is endless. Even at the personal level, how many marriages and families have we witnessed destroyed because two or more members of that unit have been at war with each other just simply because one or both could not tolerate that the other disagreed or didn't ‘see it the same way'? What is it that fuels the brutality we visit upon each other when we don't see ‘eye to eye'? At the root of it is the belief that if you disagree with me and I disagree with you, one of us must be wrong and the other right. To the demon power, to be wrong is equivalent to being worthless. When that is heard in the ‘Inner Place', that means, in order not to be condemned to worthless-ness of being ‘wrong', I must find a way to be ‘right'. Either, I convince you, convert you from your point of view or....I destroy you so you don't remind me by your counter opinion that I might just be wrong, leading to my worthless-ness. So, whenever I become angry or enraged with someone else because they ‘see it differently', don't agree with me, whatever form it make take, I participate in the darkness that destroyed the twin towers of New York, brought about ethnic cleansing of the Baltic countries and of Africa, the murder of a gay or black person just because they were different from myself. To end this kind of madness in the human world, then, each of us must claim and bring an end in ourselves our intolerance of the difference of others so we can be comfortable with our own differentness. And when we hear others, especially leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who blamed gays and lesbians, unwed mothers, unmarried couples, etc., as being the root evil that generated this horrendous act, we need to confront them because they foster the very same hatred that brought this about.
As many of you know, my art work is an important part of my creative/spiritual life. Many years ago I received a large amount of marble pieces from a gentleman who had taken tons of marble out of churches in the coal mining areas of Pennsylvania because these churches were virtually sinking from coal mine fires. The marble altar rail in the garden is from this marble. About 6 months ago, I had completed a piece of pink alabaster stone. I often use the church marble for bases for the carved stone. I was in a dilemma because I could not find any piece that would work. Then one day I tripped over the doorstop into my kitchen. I looked down and there was a beautiful piece of marble that was originally the base of a column. I had disregarded it and used it as a doorstop! I had hardly even noticed it before. The phrase came flooding in: The stone rejected by the builder becomes the cornerstone. That stone was the perfect match for the carved alabastar and it now sits proudly on a pedestal in the New York office. People often comment on the beauty of that base. That is the concrete story of the stone rejected. I am not one given to quoting the Bible, but that phrase, "The stone which the builders rejected, becomes the cornerstone" is very meaning for me. This line first appears in Psalm 118. This sentence is a powerful statement for those of us who have suffered abuse. In our work at the Center, we find the parts of the Self that have suffered these abuses often feel rejected, disregarded, abandoned, less than. The builders who reject the stone can be our very own family of origin. People often refer to this place of rejection as "the black hole". It is a very deep and dark place where the person believes they are worthless because they did not receive mommy/daddy love. This is about the limitedness of the parent, not the worth of the child, but try telling that to a child who is clinging to the walls of a bottomless pit of non-love! That is why our goal is to be our own adult, the Central I - the only person who can help that child. As difficult as it is, my work in these instances often leads me to connect with the client that this mommy/daddy love did not happen, is not happening, will never happen. Harsh reality, but true. Recently, two different clients were experiencing this black hole. As we sat in a group process, I heard the first person referring to "that hole". Even though we were discussing a different issue, I kept hearing him say, "that hole". I questioned him what that hole was, and we began to understand it was the hole of not getting mommy/daddy love. What was happening was every difficulty the person encountered was falling into that hole. Every life disturbance then gets dumped into the toxic bottomless hole of non-love. No wonder that child is clinging on to his/her life in that black hole! Coming to terms with the concept that we cannot redo that original place of getting the love from mommy/daddy is the key for the Adult. The Adult then goes to the child in the black hole and gently explains this to them. "We did not get this love. It is OK. We are sad about this because there has been a loss. We are creating new love bonds in our life (self, spouse, partner, friends, group members, etc.). I can help you move out of that hole." Later that same week (synchronicity rules!) another client was in her black hole. She was experiencing a difficult court case. The child of shame was deep in the pit of no mommy/daddy love. Because of my earlier experience, I realized she was putting a current situation in that very same bottomless pit. It is like a magnet that draws everything down. To both clients I said the same thing. If we can come to terms with not getting mommy/daddy love, then we can release ourselves from that hole. We must creatively do something with that hole. Once the child is out we can dynamite the hole, put a high fence around it, fill it in with earth. We are not forgetting about the hole, we are making it sacred. I used the image of the concentration camps. Some were blown up, some became museums, yet they remain as holy places of man's injustice to man. We need these memorial places to remind us of what has been, but no one wants to be currently living there! Both clients understood the magnet of this black hole. One of these folks did a healing ritual that night of getting the child out and pouring cement into the hole. In doing that she was clearly the Adult, and began to realize that the court case was something she could handle. She did not have to carry with her the 50 years of the child being in "that hole". Realizing she walked around as the needy child looking for mommy/daddy love in every situation of her life was a big breakthrough. Both clients had a great sense of relief in understanding how powerful "that hole" was and is. Coming to terms with the meaning of "that hole", getting the child out, loving that part of ourselves, building new foundations, and memorializing the hole allows us to discover the true I AM. As the work unfolds and we claim our adult true Self, we begin to create a new foundation of strength and integrity and we become the cornerstone of our own life. THE CHILD THAT IS REJECTED BECOMES THE CORNERSTONE! |
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