Vocation/Formation

What does it look like to be a Chaplain?

What does it look like to be Meghan Yates, the Chaplain?

What services do I render?

I think first and foremost, I have rendered the service of progressed self mastery. Though I have made some crucial mistakes in my interpersonal relationships, I have always been true to my inner dialog and done everything in my power to communicate my coordinates to fellow travelers. I am ready to commit my heart of service to the community now after many years of clearing any noise that likely would have interrupted the clarity of care I could have given. I do think that I have served my community, now that I am looking at service through ChIME lenses. I have served as a family chaplain, keeping open and honest dialogs with my family. Making adjustments to my willingness to be intimate with them, and accepting them as they are more and more readily. I have served my friends with consistent encouragement and hope and sight of their greatness and highest well being. I have served as an artist committed to growth as service and encouraging others to see themselves clearly and with acceptance. I have served as a mentor to those younger and newer to their paths.

This last bit causes a bit of blood rushing excitement. This and the Art bit. I see myself in an education system, surrounded by learners steeped in learning. By those who need a mirror, an ear and a kind word. I am gifted with kind words.

I love loving.

I love language and nuance. It is becoming clearer to me that my service is with the young. I am inspired to incorporate creativity into my service, as when I have included it, things move around. I cannot take full credit for most of the performances and songs that have come through me. These stories are mysterious and require faith. They are highly intimate. They reflect my relationship with the Divine.

I do not think service has one face or filter. I think those committed to service are always "on". When your service is not about doing and saying, what is it about?

Last Tuesdays class was on precisely this topic, and I had begun to write this post prior to it. In that class I remembered being a little one and being asked what I wanted to do when I was older, and I said I wanted to hold a bowl atop my head. I wanted to hold space for God. Some women carry fruit I am so Glad to have remembered that! I have wrought myself sick thinking about what I should Do! How I should Say that I am.

Well, enough with being wrought sick. I am ready to step into mine own and with gentility and presence.

Until again.

All in a name

Before one can serve one must feed themselves.

This blog is likely to be centered on reporting my findings while I spend this year concentrating on excavation and validation of what I find there. Who knows where it will go from there! I am a traveller who believes in learning through storytelling and the riches within.

I have spent much of this week looking at the state of my heart both physically and otherwise. I have spent other periods of time looking at it, but judgement was interwoven with what was found there. Specifically on Thursday, this "looking" at was one of focus and intention in removing judgement. I called out of work and spent most of the day flat on my back asking myself what my heart was trying to tell me. Oh boy, was I bowled over! Loss was the first response. I thought of all that I have lost. Parents and friends were the hardest to look at. This loss has deeply affected me, but wasn't at the core of it. My heart was still fibrillating, leaping out of my chest...asking me to go deeper. I have to add something here...I do not believe illness is caused by sin or separation from the Divine. I do not believe that recovery is necessarily reflected in overcoming disease. I do however, feel that anytime my body has something to say that I am not listening to, it repeats. I believe in body intelligence. My body is often wiser than my thoughts. Wisdom is not necessarily medicine and the body knows medicine. My heart is in need of this variety of care. I have worked with doctors and remedies and my heart still yelps at my denial. I have faith in what the worlds healers and doctors offer, in the way that I know a bath will help relax me. I still need to get into the bath and attempt to remain relaxed after it. Outsiders can offer solace and space to recognize what is missing. I think there is more to the picture. For another time.

When I went deeper into my heart and asked it about loss, flashes of prior experiences washed over my inner sight and a small voice said something of the Divine Feminine.

The Divine Feminine! What does that mean? I know that it was not safe for me to be the girl I was when I was young. I couldn't be controlled so scare tactics were used. I didn't fit in, so I neutralized myself in my body politic.

At the ChIME convocation weekend we were asked to do a theater exercise where we walked around the room as a character that we developed within a few seconds and there was a problem that we encountered that occasionally stopped us in our tracks. My character was an 82 year old man whose left arm no longer worked and he needed to till the field in preparation for planting so that he could eat. No one was there to help him.

We didn't spend time analyzing these character impressions and where we came up with them, but my character has stuck with me for the last couple of weeks. My inner male is beyond gender and still working to the bone, disenfranchised from the feminine and alienated from meaningful contact and support. Who is this person? It doesn't seem like an obvious match the the Meghan Yates I know and love! But frankly, this picture is a portrait of my basic inner feelings. I am struggling right now. I am stressed and searching for the next level of balance. How do I integrate this loving, fertile mother into my life? How can I embody the marriage between my opposites?

So the "all in the name" bit. My name is of English/Irish heritage and means "speaker of truth and light who stands by the gates of God." I have always been struck by the fluidity and clarity in the meaning of my name. The thing that I am realizing is that I want to be Inside those gates! I have sustained my life with an arm's length sort of intimacy and it's not good enough anymore. I think the key to integration between my masculine nature as the container, playful and full of life force and my feminine mother who is full of inspiration and fully able to engage in rebirth is somewhere inside those gates.

That is all I can write for now. More later. Stay tuned.

The Test: part one

In my last post I spoke of a test. A test of fire of your own making. I have a knowing that I will be writing a few entries about this particular thread, so I have named this post in parts.

In the week following my first class at the Interfaith Seminary I have found a couple of pink elephants! Giant billowing reminders of How I Am, that seem to me now that they have always been there, telling me the things I can now hear.

Let me start with the Vow that I made to my new community.

I Vow

to Surrender myself

Wholly and with Compassion

to what I find to be true about Who I Am.

Tests of authenticity are unequivocal and undeniable. I have found a little of Jonah in myself. I have run away from a call to find myself in the belly of a whale, covered in a slime that takes longer to clean up than if I had just listened to the call to begin with. I am looking at that filmy cover now and appreciating Who I Have Been. Appreciation is my best solvent!

Back to the test...

In the last week people that I know and love and some that I don't know at all really, have just blurted out some things. Brief statements of personal belief and position. Some of these statements have greatly disturbed me! Shook something up in my chest and asked for a response. I found myself at first a little defensive...which Almost seems like a good thing. I wanted to protect my ideals as if they were an extension of my own flesh. After this had happened a couple of times, I found the real nugget. By going through this program I am setting myself up in a way to submit my personal statements and beliefs to the global pool, and let them live there. See what happens in contrast to them. Stay present to them and be Truthful about them even in moments of friction. See how they stand up in a storm.

How flexible will I be if I find that they crumble? How true to them will I be if they withstand Hell? What conditions gave permission for these ideals and personal truths to develop? Are they serving or hindering me and my path? How am I going to find any of the answers to these questions?

Fierce diligence to be present

and a deepening of personal practice.

Not being afraid of a little testing of structural integrity. Finding a stud in the wall reminds me that there is something underneath the plaster.

I am not interested in being Holy, or having good ideas. I am in it for the mastery. I want to know if what I have going on is going to make it through my own storms. I want to encourage others to know that this process is worth it, and that means that I have to go through with it Wholly and with Compassion and get to a place where I trust Who I Am.

Tale of the death rattle

I entered an Interfaith Ministry program which started a few days ago with opening weekend and more officially the first class was on Tuesday. I take great pleasure in forming new acquaintance and bonds, and I especially have been looking forward to forming a new circle of friends that are of like mind concerning not only ethical balance within spiritual and therefore political realms, but also intimate awareness and consideration of the Divine. I have found that much of what I was hoping for is there. I have to say that entrance and initiation into these circles causes such a stir in so many unknown places within a body, that a strange gurgling can be heard emerging from deep chambers. A death rattle. A surrendering of the accumulative residue that happens when one is only beginning to follow a call. Lets say for now that the rattle is causing a well of tears and a need to write about those tears! I am mourning a loss of parts of myself. I am mourning all that I have had to overcome to accept this challenge, this Being Present business! More present than keeping your eyes open all the time, which is the variety I prided myself on before slaying myself before my own alter as a sacrifice! I am finding that there are so many varieties of honesty! It's not enough to just say what and how you feel to others or yourself! I am finding for myself that I need to breath honesty into all of my actions and responses. I am looking to stop looking into, and start receiving the Gift! It looks like so many things! It looks right now like a dance to the music of the death rattle! A sweet song is slowly emerging from my guts, from the ignored corners of my processing organs, from the parts that are only now beginning to see the light of my new day! I am grateful and I am in pain for these new revelations! I am having to give up so much of how I thought I wanted to be in this world, and yet I am not surprised. Following a call requires a walk through your own fires for cleansing, a test. This test is contrary to what might be believed, is solely for yourself. A means to get to your own ends, or at least more means. You do what is Needed for your own salvation and there is no mistaking it. I have heard this call, this need for mourning and shedding for so long it seems ludicrous that it was partially ignored! But everything that has lead me to the point I am now makes a sort of sense of it. I have a great foundation right now, where in other times in my life I did not. Far from it! I am ready and a total fool for God! For Life itself. Lets see where it goes from here, shall we?

until again.