These Four Things I Know - by Sharon Juliahna Grace Westman          first published in Seek, a journal of grass roots spirituality written by those on the quest

My earliest memories are of an awareness of a source of light and all encompassing love, whom I have always named God.  When I was little enough for my father to still have been carrying me over his shoulder to my bed, I heard someone call my name.  It wasn't my dad, as he said when I asked.  Then, I thought, it was God who had said my name, and I rested into my pillow in the dark of the room, peaceful.

I was twenty-four when I stood in Julia's living room with almost all of my family, around her bed as her breathing slowed, the gaps between breaths lengthening until her life left her body.  It was as though I could see, no -- let me say this -- I saw the essence of her, as much as you can see something invisible, leave her body.  One moment she was inside, the next she was not, and it was instantly revealed that the body had never been her.  I had been afraid to die, afraid I wouldn't really be dead and locked and suffocating in a coffin.  The moment of her last breath illustrated like charcoal on cotton white paper that death takes us somewhere else which seemed to me to be just behind a curtain we can't even see.  Her breathing ceased, her body became lifeless, and I felt she was closer to my own spirit than ever before.  I didn't call her Julia before she let me watch her die and fly to this mysterious beyond.  It was always Grandma Westman.  And it has been, ever since, "my grandmother, Julia."

And then I know this:  The times in my life when I've enjoyed the thrill of waking up to seeing I'm truly alive and have felt so much my aliveness that I could sense life and all of the elements of creation pressing against my skin, have been those times when I've known the joy of meeting love and falling in with it, and those times of deepest loss.  Love and grief each seeming to appear before my eyes with lives of their own, granting me the dizzying wonder of coming to know one's presence in my life and the aches and piercing surprises of coming to know their absence.  Both experiences, the coming in and the going out, rouse me from what suddenly seems to have been dreamland to see the Garden and my humanity in it.

I know that unconditional love is paramount.  If I were sitting next to you now, I would tell you the long, beautiful, complicated, incredible story of how I came to know this on a deeper level than believing it to be true.  I think we perhaps all know this, and I want you to know, if you don't already, that it's confirmed again and again by those who've journeyed nearly through the death experience, have been warmed by the radiance of The source of light and all encompassing love, and have returned to this side of the curtain with a great urgency to tell us this very thing. These are the myths of my life, the ones which I would use to tell someone, "This is who I am.  I will tell you what I know from life itself, and oh, please tell me what you know." Ah, I know one more thing.  My daughter taught me this, and it was so sweet and perfect to learn it from her.  Yet, I am forevermore astounded that no one else told me, and it is this:  A baby will sleep on top of your heart, right under your chin, night after night after night, until inches and pounds call her to snuggle instead beside you.

Writings

All original contents of this site, including original photos and art, are copyrighted by Sharon Juliahna Grace Westman and may not be reproduced without her knowledge and consent.  If you wish to use some of the thoughts expressed here, please email her or call her at 1-877-298-0639. She will be so delighted to know of your interest.  Copyright  - Sharon Juliahna Grace Westman, CLCP  2002 - 2008

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COACHING AND RESOURCES FOR OPEN HEARTS AND BELOVED LIVES

What has always been true for you?  It's always been true for me that I've wanted to write, to act, to explore, to create and to fashion spaces for open hearts.  This picture (may take a bit to load!) is a reminder to me of my joy in an enduring bond with this vision for my life.  It was taken on the front porch of the farm house my family has lived in for now parts of three centuries, perfect for our first stage.  And it was taken when I was about six, which is how old I was when my first little story was published in a tiny local newspaper.  This has been a steady light of encouragement always.

What will I allow to speak loudest?    My heart, where resides the voice that came with my birth.                                                                                                                             JG

Lessons From a Gentle Teacher - by Sharon Juliahna Grace Westman      first published in SEEK, a journal of grass roots spirituality written by those on the quest, slightly revised here

Just what I would write for you in this journal has been one of those elements floating always loosely in mind for some time. I fell asleep on my couch last night, and as I lay curled up there in silence this morning, I wondered would I tell you the love story or the wisdom story?  The love story?  The wisdom story?

It's the wisdom story, because my thoughts became very purposeful this morning as I thought of the heroine of the wisdom story, and how she wants me to share her story.  She, the heroine, is my grandmother, my mother's mother.  Today she is 101 years old, just three months shy of 102, having been born on January 29, 1899.

Before you read of the darkest moment of her life, let me tell you who she really is, who she always has been, because a brilliant spirit emanates from Ruth.  She has a purely joyous laugh that comes easily from deep within her.  She's clear.  Her eyes are bright.  She's open, strong, intelligent, courageous, and gentle.  And she's been waiting with great patience for me to write the story we've talked about during several conversations over the last few years.  Here I am, Grandma.  I'm finally doing it!  I know you've wondered when, when will she tell me it's done.  This, apparently, is the day.

Grandma's first home was a two-room lofted log house shared with her parents and twelve brothers and sisters near a creek in Minnesota.  She lived her childhood in a wilderness, really.  Her parents were immigrants from Sweden who came to virgin land with trees and stones and tall grasses.  Only starlit darkness could be seen at night and acres of alone open space when daylight arrived.  Life was rugged and highly unpredictable.  Grandma's mother was afraid here.  She was afraid for her children here.  I don't know how prominent a force fear was in my great-grandmother's life, but fear about a hundred years old propels this story.

After seven years, my little grandmother's family had cut enough lumber to build a new two-story house.  I like that -- homes with upstairs stories and downstairs stories.  It was my great-grandfather on my father's side of the family who built this home for my grandmother when she was a girl of seven years.  She remembers well and will tell anyone who asks about the moment they opened the door to their new home and her one year young sister walked -- for the very first time -- no, she'd never walked before -- across the grand new wooden floor.  When Grandma tells this, it's as though the very image of it is before her eyes again.

Fast forward more than forty years and my Grandma and her husband, Grandpa, are now farming their own piece of land on top of a hill, just down the road from her childhood home.  There is no hint or inkling anywhere that something extraordinary is soon to occur as everyone is living their life in their times and places.  Their first daughter now lives in that house with two stories with her husband and two children, and a third soon to arrive.  Though my young mother has lived in California for a time, she's home, and her even younger brother is home, too, completing his last year of school.

March of 1950 arrives, and within the first days of the month something shifts.  There is a lot of snow and cold, and the days have become strangely long and isolating for Grandma.  She can't see so clearly because of a darkness that has come over her mind.  She suddenly feels lost in a nightmare that seems real, and she's afraid.  She's afraid for her children here.  It's early morning.  Ruth is afraid someone is coming to hurt her son, and in the nonsensical confusion a nightmare conjures she thinks she is protecting him but instead severely injures him with a knife.  My mother hears her brother calling for her and comes down to see her brother, her mother, somewhere in the middle of a violently dark dream.  She goes and gets her father from his work outside, and they come back into the unforgettable together.

My uncle was taken to the hospital as soon as help could arrive in the snow.  He survived his injury and today has a long scar on his neck and an intensely loving and honoring relationship with his mother.  My mother, grandfather, and grandmother waited a day of silent fog and into the evening for a doctor to arrive for her.  When he did, Grandma was taken to a hospital in St. Paul where she was given shock treatments and psychiatric care for weeks.  Those treating her thought her change of life to be the cause of her break from reality.  Grandpa visited her there sometimes.  When Grandma's treatment ended she returned home, still to a lasting silence about the events of March 5.

There began my grandmother's search to understand the workings of her three:  her mind, her body, her spirit.  What had happened?  How had it happened?  She began to read everything she could gain access to about the mind and body, and she has fashioned some reasoning within herself about the hows of what occurred.  Her will to understand has unfolded a wisdom of multifaceted insights for which I think she deserves an honorary doctorate from somewhere!  Not because they are new, but because of the path she has so diligently and inquisitively walked upon to come to know them.  She has poured over the thoughts of many others and embraced those that have seemed true and able to facilitate a peaceful life.

Now, I wonder how to share her learnings with you.  I'll tell you what comes to me from her words and presence when I sit and talk with her.  She's smiling.  She's very present with me.  She's the one person in my family with whom I can share kindred glances about something being sadly amiss when God is painted as a place and being of fear, however subtle the colorful, insidious strokes may be.  And we agree it's not true;  God is not that.  Peace and calm can be invited and embraced with long, deep breaths, and with knowing, really, that we are ultimately held in goodness and light.  And Granddaughter, it would be especially helpul if children could be reminded of this, and live in this, from their beginning.

Her presence and words always say to forgive easily and judge not; I've been there.  I've been in a time and space of having my body do things neither my mind nor heart intended.  I was forgiven, not shamed, not unrelentingly pathologized.  Let go easily.  Take three long, deep breaths.  Breathe, breathe, breathe - let go.  Breathe - let go.  What essentially matters is clear within your heart; free your thoughts of any concern for things that don't essentially matter.  Grandma believes that in the moment when her body acted without benefit of her mind or heart, it was an explosion of adrenaline that temporarily vanquished both.  A practice of deep breathing and letting go gifts us with equanimity.  In times when we feel a lack of calm within, our very breath can bring us back to peace.

Grandma's eyes tired of reading something like ten years ago, so her process of excavating books and other writings for more has been closed.  I tell her that progress is being made in all of this learning.  I tell her, yes Grandma, people are learning how to breathe deeply and to let go.  Yes, Grandma, I take deep breaths when I'm afraid.  Yes, other times, too.  Yes, Grandma, they are writing about adrenaline and how to care more wisely for our bodies, hearts, and minds.  Yes, Grandma, there are places, conversations, books, films, where God is painted beautifully.