Alana Levandoski
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Heart and Heart ... & Heartbroken

3/16/2019

21 Comments

 

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

- 8th century Muslim poet Rabia al-Basri

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself 
that you have built against it.

- Rumi



We are connected now, not just by the invisible lines of the energy at the heart of all things. This "heart of all things" connection has always been, even as groups encountered each other, clashed, made war or peace, and lived in their place and time which shaped their cultural and spiritual expressions. Today, we are now connected by the internet, and the global summit of the world of ideas, and… ideologies… is available to anyone who is able to log in.



On March 15th, 2019, the very same day that 15-year-old Greta Thunberg led a worldwide skip school protest for climate justice, a 28-year-old man chose to enact a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, claiming his actions were anti-immigration in intent.


I have never had the honour of visiting New Zealand, but I have had the honour of knowing a number of folks from New Zealand, and I have always felt there is an innocence and beauty carried in the culture, that is palpable in the presence of the people I have known.


Today, as I held my youngest, who is nearing his 3rd birthday, I longed for little 3-year-old Mucad Ibrahim to be okay. To be safe and with his family. My heart stretched all the way to the families in Christchurch, grieving and in shock, and then, to the Ummah around the world.


Words are powerful. The energy behind our words are powerful. It is clear that a grassroots movement for the things that make this world beautiful is growing. But it is also clear that an alt-right neo white supremacy movement is growing. And I’m going to be clear about something: the degree to which we can suffer and mourn with our Muslim brothers and sisters about this massacre, is the exact degree to which we have faced the brunt of our own addiction to overconsumption, fundamentalism, power, and white privilege. Now is not the time to say “what about” anything. As Saint Francis wrote, "O Master, let me not seek as much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love." We must put the parable of the Good Samaritan to work now more than ever ... to see the highest and the good in the "other", and to look at our own corruption. Let's not kid ourselves... and as Christians, let's call it out... this white nationalist terrorism rearing its hideous head has its roots in slaveholder Christianity, and in an Islamophobia forged in great part by Christian fundamentalism.


The song I want to share today, Heart and Heart, comes from the new Meditation With Children album (to be released April 27th, 2019). There is a beautiful line I worked with, from a poem called Reality, by one of my favourite poets, the 8th Century Sufi mystic Rabia al-Basri.


The line I used from her poem is:


In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.


This line brings us back to the heart of all things, that I mentioned at the beginning of this reflection.


But here’s the tricky bit. Unitive or nondual consciousness is not uniformity. It is not homogeneous. We don’t get to skip innocently over this line of Rabia al-Basri’s, this week of all weeks, and begin to feel good about how we’re all connected and how there’s no separation between us and God and the world.  While that is true, we are also in the physical realm and we walk around in the skin we’re in.  


We must plant Rabia’s line in the most diverse, symbiotic garden you could ever dream of.

As the global summit of online ideologies continues to embolden entitlement, there is a Oneness that is not superficial, that is not cheaply relativistic, and it is in-building an awareness and a love here in our corporeal state, for far-off places and people who are different from ourselves.  As more and more awaken to inborn delusions of entitlement and the lie of exceptionalism... that diverse garden has a chance to grow into a beautiful, cacophonous, balance. 

​
Inshallah.

PS- Lastly, there is a petition speaking out against the white nationalism behind this shooting, and it is being organized to gather names and messages that will be bound into books and delivered to the families effected by the massacres in Christchurch. 

To sign the petition and send your message, click here.



PPS- And men... all of you... go and get initiated through either the Mankind Project or Illuman and then start a men's group in your area when you get home. Love needs all hands on deck, so if it is your tendency to sleep your way through these violent events caused by angry young men, arise and be counted, Elders. The world needs you.

21 Comments
Randy Martin link
3/16/2019 11:25:04 pm

My experience of men's groups is that they are limited. Mixed groups get a lot more done. Men need women to show the way. Men get stuck and can't go ver far on their own. I"m aware many men will disagree with this and have gotten a lot from men's groups. Just my experience. If men learn to open up in the presence of women and women learn to open their wounds in the presence of men a lot more integration and healing occurs. We need each other.

Reply
Alana
3/16/2019 11:38:46 pm

Hi Randy,

I hear you! That might be where you are at. I still think that the original instructions from almost all indigenous cultures would have a circle of male elders that could tell an angry 28 year old man that life is not about him and he is going to die someday. I was initiated into adulthood in a mixed group and it was wonderful. I also know my husband was initiated in a men's setting and runs a men's council group and I am grateful for the fruits from it. I agree though that an evolving/maturing group will probably end up mixed!

Reply
Liz Day
3/17/2019 02:26:55 am

I feel moved by you sharing your experience on this subject Randy, thank you.

Reply
Denis Langford
3/17/2019 08:43:39 am

My experience and belief is the same as yours Randy, and I have sang your song often. My experience with Illuman over last couple of years is teaching me that most men aren’t where we are. Most men need need other men to help them to be transformed beyond the violence. Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Mark Pierson
3/17/2019 12:04:27 am

Thank you from New Zealand. It is a very sad and questioning time for us. You concern and song are much appreciated. Thank you.

Reply
Alana
3/17/2019 07:49:20 am

Love and courage from across the world Mark.

Reply
Sue Pickering link
3/17/2019 12:31:42 am

Thank you Alana
As we sat with Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand this afternoon I was prompted to invite a time of silence so we could enter that place where 'heart meets heart' and be consoled by the Love which is all around us and which is being expressed in so many ways here in Aotearoa as we grieve and grapple with the cloak of sadness and anger which has been flung over us as a nation. You music and ongoing deep contemplative reflection is such a gift - especially in times like this. Thank you again
Sue

Reply
Alana
3/17/2019 08:00:47 am

Sue, thank-you for sharing. I have been holding the contemplative community in New Zealand in my heart. You included. Love and light, Alana

Reply
Jill Montgomery
3/17/2019 12:57:46 am

Thanks so much for your heart stretching out to us here. Your words resonate..... I teach English and some of my students will have been effected by this - I write this Sunday night before heading in tomorrow to reach out and share in the grief of this tragedy. I find myself too examining my own heart and position of privilege.... deeply challenging...... may we all know the great peace Jill

Reply
Alana
3/17/2019 08:03:27 am

Jill - holding you and the challenges ahead as you step into your community. May wisdom and maturity grow and prevail and carry the whole of this, together with our great self-emptying Lover.

Reply
Steve S link
3/18/2019 10:23:05 am

I am continually moved by your sensitivity to the events that take place in the world around us: the recent event in New Zealand is today's example.

The song is perfect and your reference to Baria al Basri is further evidence of the resources that you seek as you frame and share your response.

Your weekly reflections and songs are eagerly looked forward to by me and family members. You are a witness to God being present in our world through the talents and skills of people like yourself.

YOU ARE A GIFT, received weekly.

I love you, Alana

Ana Lisa de Jong link
3/17/2019 01:09:45 am

Thank you Alana, for thinking of us in New Zealand. We are moved by the ground-swell of love. Only this wave of love can drive the darkness out. After Friday's events if felt like a loss of innocence for us in NZ. Below was my poetic response:

SACRILEGE

The evening is still and perfect
hushed, but for a bird
or a singing cricket,
breaking the silence.

Unearthly,
this silence which,
like a funeral shroud
has fallen.

Has laid its blanket wide,
that any sound
from man or beast
seems out of place.
A smudge has marred the landscape.
A black mark
not like this silver rising moon,
against the fading apricot of sky,

but more like,
a pen that’s run amok
on a painting
beyond price.

The sacrilege
of which,
we stand aghast,
and feel the black pour into the soul.

But out of this silence might emerge,
a disquiet,
a ground-swell of outrage
and holy discontent -

At how God, in His temple
has once more been defiled,
and God in His people
struck and maimed.

Yes, we can see the smudge
in this night, still and perfect,
like a rent in the canvas
of a landscape.



That we’re not sure can now,
or ever, be repaired -
this defeat we feel, common to the
loss of innocence.

But we remember love,
and how each act of cowardly violence
can bring it out,
multiply it for good.

How the wave of hate,
can yet be pushed back,
by a love which grows in increments
until it floods the land.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2019

#darkday

Reply
Wilma Korthuis
3/17/2019 09:37:03 am

Your poem expresses our feelings

Reply
Alana
3/17/2019 09:39:26 am

“Until it floods the land” - May it be so. Thanks you for this.

Reply
Becky Butler (Charleston, SC)
3/17/2019 04:45:25 am

A poem by Sister Robin Stratton

To be a Carmelite is to hear the cry at the heart of the world-
the cry of yearning for God-
and to suffer that cry in my own skin.
It is to suffer that cry with my whole being before the face of God in prayer,
To be s Carmelite is to have been lured into desert, into solitude,
into community, into the heart of the world.
It is sometimes to say to God in the words of Peter:
It is so good to be here--
and at other times in the words of Jeremiah,
You duped me, Lord, and I let myself be duped...
.... It is to stand before the immensity of God
experienced as a pool of fire and be commanded to leap in,
knowing full well the leaping will mean death to some cherished illusion.
It is to sit in emptiness and sometimes know the breath of God so gently
that it raises hairs on the back of my neck.
It is the rhythm of life and death, light and darkness,
arctic cold and desert heat, spring blossoms and autumn decay.
It is life in its emptiness and fullness,
whose heart is the love of God
who pursues, captivates, and surrounds.

Reply
Lora Farlow
3/17/2019 08:39:36 am

The Great Reality. The Oneness of All...this reflection of our human fear (caused by belief in separation) turned blindly in to harm needs to be SEEN. Gentle ones need to step forth and share the truth of our sister and brotherhood. Harm no one in thought, word or deed..ourselves included...simple to say...profound in practice. This beautiful online community shows the power of love to travel through time and space to heal our fractured souls. Awakening to our True Natures...Knowing Our Oneness must be a top priority so that Love, Peace and Joy.....Truth, Beauty and Goodness is the air that we breathe, the water that we drink and the food that we share. Blessings to our beautiful New Zealand and it's people...Innocence is never truly lost...may you all be the shining Light of this Truth. Love, Lora

Reply
Denis Langford
3/17/2019 08:43:08 am

You’re words both written and sung touched us deeply this morning. Thank you.

Reply
Wilma Korthuis
3/17/2019 09:21:12 am

Words cannot express the sorrow I feel. My heart goes out to each of you directly impacted by this terrible tragedy. The whole world is impacted by this. May our eyes and hearts be opened to the truth that we are all one.

Reply
Bernadette McNab
3/17/2019 12:05:03 pm

Let us join in prayer for the injured and grieving of New Zealand and petition Almighty God for changing of hearts that begins with breathe upon me o wind of God. Let's also say a prayer for our Filipino brothers and sisters affected by tragedy as recent as Jan. 27, 2019 when 20 or more were killed in a bombing of a Catholic Church, with dozens more being injured.

Reply
Anne-Marie Pike
3/17/2019 04:19:49 pm

Beautiful... thank you.

Reply
Grandma RosieMerry Sheridan
3/26/2019 04:24:36 pm

Richard Rohr writes in The Universal Christ, "We are an incarnation, like Christ, of matter and spirit operating as one. This, more than anything we believe or accomplish, is how all of us continue the mystery of incarnation in space and time-either knowingly and joyfully-or not." Loving Thanks, Alana, for All the Heart to Heart you are doing; to Richard; and to each of you. My heart knowingly, joyfully, and sorrowfully beats on reverberating our Oneness from the inside out!

Reply



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    Alana Levandoski is a song and chant writer, recording artist and music producer, in the Christian tradition, who lives with her family on a regenerative farm on the Canadian prairies.

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