Seeing Through Walls

The Heart as Guide through the Gate

^{A few invitations wait at the end of this one - Second Sunday this weekend, the podcast, and what’s coming this fall.}

El Santario de Chimayo, Chimayo, New Mexico

Dear ones,

My weeks this summer have had a shape, and it isn’t one I’d have chosen.

I work until I hit a wall. Not a tired wall — a failure wall, where I truly cannot do it anymore. Then I cry. Then I walk, or I hike, or I sleep. And out of that comes the answer to whatever wasn’t working, whatever wasn’t resourced, whatever there wasn’t enough of.

Every time. The breaking first, then the answer.

Here’s what it looked like this time.

For months — years, actually — I’ve had the sense of Niagara Falls coming through me. So much wanting to come — the teaching, the podcast, the circles, all of it real and all of it alive. And no one to hold it. So I kept doing every small piece myself, knowing the thing was growing and knowing I could not support what it was becoming.

Then I had a complete meltdown. And on the other side of it, for the first time, I had a name for what I needed: an online business manager.

I had been drowning without a word for the help I was missing.

I told a friend. He said, honestly, that sounds like a needle in a haystack — because I wanted someone who knew Circle, the platform where we host the circles, and ClickUp, the project management tool we’d already committed to, and who understood this kind of work. Even just one of those things would be workable.

I heard myself say: yes, you’re right. But that person is coming.

I had no evidence. I just knew.

The next day I messaged a woman who helps women doing work like this, whom I hadn’t spoken to in two years, and asked whether she happened to know anyone available. She had two people. Within two days I had hired one of them — Andrea, recommended by someone I trust, who knows all the platforms, knows this work, and speaks my language. She was available, and curious about what was coming her way. And given all that is coming, I hired the second person she recommended as well.

And here’s what’s easy to miss in a story told that fast. I have been asking for help for years. Years. It didn’t come three years ago when I first needed it, and I don’t know why. It came when the right person and the right moment finally met, and not one day sooner. If you are in the long part of that, you are not asking wrong. You are in the long part.

This is the thing I keep coming back to — in my preaching, in the circles, and now in my own life.

The teaching isn’t in getting it right.

The teaching is in getting it wrong, and then learning what the getting-it-wrong was there to tell you.

My wall wasn’t a personal failure. It was information. It was the work saying plainly that the capacity needed to grow, and that I could not grow it by pushing harder.

Which is what this whole season seems to be about. Chiron turned back on Monday, joining three others already retrograde — nearly everything slow in the sky has stopped and is walking back over ground it already covered. That isn’t punishment. It’s the same movement: going back to see what the getting-it-wrong was telling us, so we can adjust. Individually. And together, which is the part we’re worst at.

So let me tell you about one of mine, since you’ve had a front-row seat to it.

Three weeks ago the podcast started arriving in your inbox — and it arrived as show notes. No greeting, no image, written as show notes for Apple and Spotify rather than for you. Some of you read the text and never knew there was a recording underneath it, with music, far better than the transcript, lovingly created by an amazing cinematographer. Some of you didn’t want a podcast in your inbox at all and had no way to say so.

I got that wrong. And what it told me is how much this letter matters — to you, and to me.

I’ve missed you. That’s the honest thing underneath the logistics.

So the letter comes back to Sunday, where it belongs. The podcast moves to Wednesday. And you’ll be able to choose — one, or both, or neither here, if you’d rather follow the episodes on Apple or Spotify and keep your inbox for the writing.

Here’s a harder thing to say. I’ve launched part of my heart into the world with this podcast, and I’ve heard very little back. I’m built tribal. I’m made to walk with people through hard things, and I come alive when something comes back. So if something in an episode landed, or didn’t, I’d love to know. Reply to this one. Comment. Hearing from you is a tremendous gift, each and every time. Really.

When we are in our hearts, that’s the contagious thing. That’s Jesus with the aperture of love blown wide open — a contagious energy still here, still among us. That’s the Buddha — enlightened and teaching others. It’s what draws every one of us toward a person who is actually authentic. Not gold plate. Real. Someone speaking from their vulnerability, from the place where they don’t have it figured out.

That’s what I’ve always tried to preach from, and it’s what we’ve been doing for years in the circles: here is where I don’t get it right, and here is what that had to teach me.

Tomorrow is the Lion’s Gate, and there will be a great deal made of it. What I notice is that if you actually look at the sky tomorrow, nothing is happening in it. Not one exact aspect. The loudest gate of the year, and it is completely silent.

A gate is where you stand when you are not through yet. There is what is, and there is what your heart is reaching toward, and the gate is the gap between them. Standing there is hard. Nothing is happening. There’s no evidence. Most of us either hurry through or turn back and decide the longing was foolish.

But that gap is exactly where I was standing when I heard myself say that person is coming. I had nothing. Only the reaching.

So perhaps that’s the practice this week. Stand in the gap without resolving it. Let there be distance between your life as it is and what your heart is reaching for — and don’t call the longing a mistake.

The lion is the heart. That’s all Leo has ever been — not performance, but the particular, irreplaceable thing each of us came here to do, and the courage to do it from the center instead of the edges.

I keep thinking of Aslan. In the middle of a hundred years of winter, before anyone has seen a thing, the word goes around Narnia: Aslan is on the move. Nothing has visibly changed. And the snow begins to melt anyway. He was never a tame lion — safe was never what was on offer — but he was good, and he was already coming.

Wednesday’s eclipse falls in Leo. So does the eclipse next August, whose shadow crosses Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, where there are more lion goddesses carved in stone than anywhere else on earth. Two Augusts. One lion. What gets planted this week gets harvested there. Someday, I’ll share about the lion dreams I’ve been having.

These two years we are being asked, patiently, to learn to live from the heart. Which is the whole of this work, and always has been.

Years ago I helped build out a new space when the seminary moved. I could literally see through the walls. I could stand in an empty shell and see exactly what a person would see once the walls were rearranged and the space was finished — and people looked at me like I was a little crazy, until it was done, and then they could see it too.

That’s where I am now. I can see it. And I have been one person, and seeing isn’t building.

But it’s close. I’m delighted to share The Remembering Way is now a nonprofit corporation, a ministry of the heart, which it has always been. We have a fiscal partner willing to receive charitable gifts to a brand new Bee Memorial Fund on our behalf — which I’m thrilled about because Bee is woven through every inch of this labor of love. We’re currently building out the structure to support new circles for this upcoming fall season, where more people can gather and actually participate in this work, rather than hear about it. The material is already there. I have years of it. It already works — I am moved to tears every day watching it work in the lives of those already in it.

“I’m not as lonely. I’m more courageous. I don’t remember the last time I cried, and I was crying a lot. In a lot of ways, I’m a new person.” — Mickie

Not years away. Weeks. Hopefully sooner. There will be kinks to work out. But it is closer than it has ever been, and it is breathtakingly beautiful, and I cannot wait to open the door.

photo credit: unknown

So, some wonderings. Carry them quietly if you’d rather — or answer them out loud, in the comments or by replying to this. I would love to hear.

Where have you hit a wall this summer — and what if it was never a failure, but information? What has the getting-it-wrong been trying to tell you?

What are you in the long part of? And could you let it be the long part, rather than evidence that you asked wrong?

And the one underneath all of them: what do you already know that you’ve been talking yourself out of?

Wednesday brings a total solar eclipse in the sign of the heart. I’ll write to you about it on Sunday — it deserves far more room than a paragraph. And it will be shorter than this one. This letter had some catching up to do.

Until then, I hope I’ll see you Sunday. Come as you are, and come as close as you long to.

And if something here is useful to you, pass it along to one person who might need it. That’s how this finds the people who are looking for it.

May we learn, together, to live from the heart. It is the most courageous — and contagious — thing we have.

With love always,
Elizabeth Lightfoot

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