Becoming a Sanctuary

Reflections on my 55th birthday

Taken by Soul of a Poet (Amy Carter) this week in Sainte Baume

“I did not come into this world to be comforted. I came to dance with God.” - Mirabai

I’ve entered the season of life that is rarely talked about, outside of cliches and infomercials with anti-aging hacks and midlife crisis hooks. I’m suddenly midway through the decade that brings the enormous gift of wisdom: hard-earned, embodied, lived experience that comes with an incredible amount of confidence. The kind of confidence that stands on its own, for its own sake, a confidence so certain that it just is.

And for a girl who has spent most of her life on a healing journey, this season of confidence is deep medicine.

I am 55 today.

I was born in the early morning hours on a Friday, May 14th in 1971. My spirit chose a rocky entry, and just like Mirabai says so beautifully above: I did not come into this world to be comforted. I was a deep little girl from the beginning, I remember praying and being superstitious at a very young age. I had an altar and daily conversations with God, He was the father I did not have on earth. And…I was brilliant (and still am) at floating out of this human body, and connecting with the Spirit part of me in an instant. A lot of times this was a trauma response, a way to disassociate with a tough reality - I love this about my story.

At seven, in times of terror, I turned to God. Not because someone taught me, or told me this was the right thing to do, but because something in me knew, remembered, and felt this connection deeply.

I came to dance with God.

Over the years this ability to connect to Spirit easily, to be “out of my body,” has served me well in my practices and on my spiritual path. But as I’ve come to know in one of the biggest and most profound lessons in this lifetime: the body is the whole point of being here. I have my beloved teacher Meggan Watterson to thank for teaching me this, and our beloved text the Gospel of Mary.

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God has pulled me back into the body over and over again in this lifetime, when I’ve wanted to be floating outside of it - above it, beyond it. This has happened in deep heartbreak, in a decade of loneliness, in the loss of my baby sister, in breast biopsies and surgeries, in the ache I have for my niece, in thyroid cancer…and most recently yet another round of medical surveillance.

Three weeks ago, on the day of my most recent biopsy, I picked the Dove card in Meggan’s deck. It says, “Spirit speaks through the body.”

The day before, I decided I would pick a card every day until the results came. I did this after a deep morning practice of promising that I would surrender all control and trust the outcome.

Just after making this promise I picked the Testimony card which says, “Love is stronger than death.”

The next day I added a bedtime practice of breathing into connecting to angel energy and asking for messages.

This is how my most recent mystical experiences began, with a promise of surrender and an opening to receive messages from angels.

Becoming the sanctuary.

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The cards I pulled over the next 13 days (yes, 13) told me a clear story, directly from the angels, and so succinctly that it still has me in awe. On the night that I guided a small circle into Sacré Cœur for our overnight prayers I picked The Eye of the Heart card which reads, “We contain the treasure.” There I was, standing below this magnificent mosaic of Jesus, in the dark candlelit space at 4:30am with the basilica nearly to myself, feeling the truth of this as Jesus stared down at me from above.

On my way home, I took the way through Rue des Rosiers (roses); an ancient street in Le Marais near my apartment. Just as I was turning onto the street something caught my attention in front of a big dark gray door that I walk past a million times. Out on the street, with other discarded things was an old wooden prie dieu, a chair for kneeling in prayer.

I picked it up and carried it home.

The next day: the Angel card, “I have never been alone.”

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The following day, I guided a circle of women through my Sacred Waters Walking Ritual and I took the long walk home from Luxembourg Garden back to Le Marais when we finished. As I slipped through one of my favorite little streets with a chanting church and the oldest good luck tree in Paris, I found myself passing a woman in a red dress who was placing the cover on her old typewriter. The typewriter was sitting on a custom wooden stand in front of her with a sign that read: “Ask me for a poem.”

I stopped.

“Are you just beginning? Or are you packing up?” I asked.

“Oh, I was packing up…would you like a poem?”

It was then that I noticed the typewriter case, which was also red. It had the words “May the daring step forward” painted on it.

Her name is Nina Sequoia, she was born in San Francisco to a French father. She lives in Paris and on this day, she typed a poem for me on the spot, in her red dress, on a Saturday in the center of Paris.

I told her she was the daring one.

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I arrived in Sainte Baume on the ninth day of waiting for results, after a long day of travel. I settled into my room with a view of Mary Magdalene’s cave on a clear day but it was raining when I arrived. I laid the angel story out on the floor in front of the window, an altar of cards, and I pulled the card for the day.

The Cave, “The sanctuary exists within.”

I stood there, silent tears streaming as I looked at the message from beyond in my human hand. Just then the sunlight made its way through the thick clouds and a perfect rainbow could be seen out my window.

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My pilgrimage guests arrived at the Saint Victor Abbey the following day, our first day rendezvous point. We descended to the crypt together and marveled at the light play in the basilica. Just before everyone was ready to leave I spotted a new replica of the precious Black Madonna in the gift shop and was swooning when one of my guests, a sister that has become a dear one to me, noticed. In an instant she offered to buy it for me as a thank you, and I felt my heart dilate to receive this perfect gift. This transaction caught the volunteers in charge of the gift shop at the time off guard, they anxiously searched for a box. We told them that we were in no rush and that we would return after lunch.

Post lunch we wandered back in to a change of the guard, but the volunteer now on duty had been informed and the boxed Madonna was waiting for us.

“Would you like the Madonna to be blessed,” he asked. “The priest is here if so,” he continued.

We looked at each other with a deep knowing of such divine timing and a felt sense of this grace, and we said yes - of course.

The priest arrived, charming and filled with humble but confident authority. He asked me for my name and then prayed over us, me and my new Madonna, asking her to protect me just before he placed his hands on my head with a final blessing.

He waved good-bye and slipped away, leaving us touched and a bit dazed in the ways humans are when grace smiles at them.

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On Friday the results arrived, and so did another perfect card. I pulled the Ascension card on the last day of our pilgrimage. This is the day we hike to the top of the mountain where the angels carried Mary seven times a day to pray. The card says, “Farther up is further in.”

“Ascension according to the Gospel of Mary is more accurately a descent into the heart; so farther up is actually further in.” - Meggan Watterson

Thirteen days of promised surrender and opening to the mystical. Fifty-five years of descending into the heart over and over and over again.

In this body that is the sanctuary.

The sanctuary that holds the most precious treasure of all, the Holy of the Holies.

I don’t know any better way to celebrate my birthday than with an absolute knowing that we are Love. I am knowing this with a full embrace of grace and humility in this human body that I am so grateful for. The fingers that allow me to type these words, the lips that allow me to speak love, and the heart…the very human, beating heart that can break into a million pieces and still beat, that has the capacity beyond my wildest imagination to love and be Love.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me…your with-ness is a beautiful gift today and always.

With all the Love that I am,