Kathy AJ Hardy is a spiritual director,
retreat facilitator,
and founder of Soul Care, offering courses in
spiritual formation
and direction.
A facilitator of soul work for the past
2 decades, Kathy is also the author of
4 books,
Love Breathes With Me,
Walk With Me,
Love Breathes With Me 2,
and Paused,
A Year of Soulful
Meditation.
In addition to her passion for guiding others
in their spiritual growth,
Kathy is also a poet and award winning
singer songwriter.
Her most recent album released in 2021
called The Unfinished
Song.
Kathy is the proud mom of 2 adult
daughters,
and she lives in Mission, BC
among the mountains,
rivers, and forests.
More about Kathy at kathyajhardy.com
and soulcare.
Ca. Hi, this is Roy Salmon and welcome
to Soul Care Reflections.
We're here with Kathy Hardy
and in this episode, we're going to be
discussing her song,
Unfinished Song.
Welcome, Kathy. Hi. Thank you. I'm excited to
be here.
When I looked at the title of Unfinished
Song and I'm a record producer,
I just think of all the people that
have shown up in my studio
with songs that are
unfinished.
And they were hoping to finish them when
they got to the studio, but I don't
think this is what you're talking about.
So tell me about
the genesis
of this song.
A few years ago, there was a situation
that happened where I felt
criticized
and judged for
something that I had done. It wasn't a
big thing,
but I felt really embarrassed and ashamed.
And I could feel a judgment of another
person that I respected.
When I
had that experience,
my inclination was to make myself smaller
and to hide
and to remove myself so that I would
never be embarrassing
ever again for the rest of my life.
How silly is that?
But it's kind of
how the human psyche works. You know, when
we're seen sometimes with our flaws or foibles,
the shame can cause us to do certain
things.
So
in that moment, I recall that one of
my teachers in the spiritual direction training I
had done had said, don't you know? Don't
you know you're an unfinished song? Don't you
know you're unfinished symphony? I think was the
language that he used that your life is
a trajectory of music,
and you're living it.
And as I recalled his words,
I felt this
invitation
in my being. Kathy,
release perfection.
Allow yourself to be seen in the imperfection
and dare to live.
And
this song
flowed out of my being at that time.
So it was out of talking to this
person that said, you're an unfinished symphony. Your
life is a song. Yes. That you came
up with this idea. Yes.
So your first line
says, I was waiting for that last
perfect note.
Tell me what perfect note you were waiting
for.
You know, Roy, I grew up as a
little girl in a pastor's home,
and we lived on the church property. And
my mom often said that
it was like growing up in a glass
house. Everybody could see us. Everybody could see
our movement.
Everybody could take a look. And I think
I grew up with experiencing a lot of
that sense of the external looking in on,
am I perfect?
Am I good?
Am I acceptable as a pastor's daughter?
And so there was a lot of
inner judgment on any movement that I would
make that, is this acceptable?
Am I good?
So perfection
was about
goodness
and about doing the right thing all the
time.
Never disappointing anyone,
never letting anyone down,
never making a mistake. So was that the
perfect note? That's the perfect note
for me. For you to just be It
might be different for for another person, but
from me, it was to not let anyone
down. So you were conscious of everybody else
looking at you, and you felt like you
had measure up to their expectations.
Absolutely.
And so that was the perfect note. Yes.
Okay.
You go on to say you were waiting
for your heart to be healed.
Is this
a personal feeling about your heart? Or is
it a reflection, a larger reflection of the
human condition?
Do we look for our hearts to be
healed?
I think there was a sense that
if I would know the fullness of my
heart being healed, then I would be more
perfect.
And
So still looking for that perfect note. Still
looking for that perfect note in that if
I don't have a wound, then I'd be
perfect.
If I don't feel sad or if I
don't
have a place that still needs mending, well,
then I'll be okay.
There's a sense of when I've arrived,
then then I'll be acceptable, then I'll be
lovable.
And when I
contemplated the thought of
being an unfinished song, what if
what if there's perfection
in the beauty of living this journey
and allowing some of the mess of my
life
and saying,
it's beautiful
too.
It's interesting that you go, I was waiting,
I was yearning, and then you do this
pivot right at the end of the verse.
You go,
but
I am an unfinished song. So it's like
I wanted this. I was yearning for this.
I was looking for this.
However,
and this is where reality showed up,
you had an awareness that went,
if I go down this route
of looking for perfection,
what did it say to you when you
asked yourself, if I go this route of
perfection, I am in trouble? I am squashed?
I am intimidated? What?
Well, I think when I'm waiting,
then I will stop living.
So, I remember even needing to facilitate a
meeting
and
the sense of, can I dare to show
up fully knowing that I'm not perfect?
Can I dare to share my heart? Can
I dare to sing my songs?
Brother Roger, who's been a tremendous inspiration for
my life, he would use these words, dare.
Dare to trust. Dare to love.
And there's something about, can you even dare
to
live your song,
even when you know that
there's parts of you that are still healing.
There's parts of
me that
are
in process. So there was a dare
I think what happened that but is, but
I'm still gonna show up.
And I'm not going to be ashamed and
hide in the corner
and hide myself.
I'm still going to show up with
dignity and passion
and
enthusiasm.
I'm going to show up without shame
about who I am, even though I'm in
process.
That was huge for me.
Where did that shame
come from?
That's a really big question.
Shame is in insidious.
And
it can be inherited from our family systems.
I believe I inherited some elements of shame
that
came
through my beloved ancestors. I
developed shame through
my own childhood and life.
And I think it came from this huge
desire to be good,
to belong.
And Which is a healthy desire. It is.
And yet,
it's only met through grace,
not through trying harder.
It says you're talking about waiting for the
perfect note, the yearning for your heart, then
it's talking about your blemishes and your wounds
would be gone. Did you feel like life
would be better
or more livable or you would be happier
if all these were gone?
I am beloved
as I am in process that my being
in itself is so
loved.
That became then the essence of this song.
This reminds me of your
book pause.
Yes, your
yearly soulful meditations.
And you talk about being a friend to
your soul
being loved
with your imperfections
as you just said, yes.
Sounds like
having a friendship
with your soul.
So much. I love that you brought those
two things together.
I'm not gonna cover
my wounds.
I'm not gonna be ashamed of my wounds.
I'm gonna hold them tenderly
and also know that I'm so profoundly
loved and celebrated, and I can show up
without shame.
Like, shame is not only about, like, maybe
the wounds are
for me, it was I'm a passionate being.
I have a lot of passion for life.
So one story that maybe
I can share with you that would describe
this
is I live close to the Westminster
Abbey, the Benedictine Monastery here in Mission.
And one day, I went in there, and
they have beautiful
stained glass
windows that surround the church that are like
the fullness of the day. So that goes
from muted colors to all the colors of
the day. And as I looked to one
wall, there was it was all muted tones
of stained glass, but there was one
red
square in the middle of this huge
wall of muted colors.
And I said to the divine,
that's me. That's that red little square. Why
did you make me so passionate?
And so there was a shame of, it's
too much. It'd be way better if I
could just be muted and normal.
And I hate it. I hate being so
passionate and so intense.
Why did you make me like this? So,
there was also shame about
my beingness.
And a month later, I returned to the
Abbey.
But this time, I sat in a different
side of the church
and I journaled. And as I looked up,
I was shocked. The sun was coming through
the wall that I was facing. It was
a different wall, and that wall was
all red.
I I held myself with this sense of
shock, and I I felt these words come
to me. You think you're red, honey?
I'm all red. I'm all color of all
the colors, but I'm all flame. And if
you're red, you come from me. Why be
ashamed of who you are?
It was such an incredible moment of,
Kathy, live. Live the color that you are
without shame. And so even in this unfinished
song,
to not be ashamed of the color that
I am.
Yeah. I'm gonna ask you an interesting question.
It's not written down in our notes, and
we haven't even discussed this. And it came
to mind as I'm listening to you.
You're talking about the imperfect phrases and broken
pieces
of our life that this is your unfinished
song.
Yes. Is there ever such a thing as
a wound
that is sacred because by keeping it open,
it reminds us
of our need for each other, our need
for grace,
our need for redemption.
I love this question, Roy.
I believe our work is to integrate our
wounds
and to
to What do you mean by that integrate
our wounds?
To turn towards our wounds with great, great
compassion
and tenderness
and kindness.
And when we do that,
there's a healing that happens within the psyche.
We may carry the scars of those wounds
for the rest of our lives, but
my sense is that
they do become sacred when we have integrated
them.
We've learned
to hold them with kindness. So, the places
of our greatest suffering,
they hold the alchemy of our greatest
service to another. If I think about
even the scriptures that say he was familiar
with grief,
there's elements of our lives that when we
are familiar with grief,
that
others recognize that in us. You become a
safe place for others to hold their human
story.
And so I think our wounds can be
incredibly sacred
when we learn how to turn towards them
with compassion and profound love. Mhmm.
Great answer.
So, Kathy,
if someone is conscious of their wounds
and whether they're sacred
or whether they're turning towards them as you
say, integrating them. Mhmm.
Is there ever a danger
of us being proud
to be broken?
Absolutely.
I think any of us who have
suffered, we can easily become
identified with our suffering.
What's the bigger story of my life?
The wound is a part of my story.
Uh-huh. It's a note in the unfinished song.
It's a note in the unfinished song, but
what's the big trajectory? And can I let
go? Like, if you think of a big,
big oak tree, and you know how you've
seen trees, you can see where the storm
hit.
And so, sometimes there's a a knob or
a knot on the side of the tree
where you can see where there was a
disease or something happened.
And if the tree only talked about that
one little spot,
you know, Wow. We're missing something. Look at
this tree. Look at the root system. Look
at the leaves. Look at the nuts or
the fruit.
And so, we often do that with our
own story. And so, it's it's a great
temptation,
but I believe that we're invited to let
go.
Well, Hafiz, who's a Sufi mystic, says the
words we speak become the house we live
in.
And so it's something to notice in oneself,
or what are the words that I use
to describe my life?
And it can be a great way to
examine ourselves and to listen.
What are the words we use, and how
can we see our lives in a in
a big picture?
One teacher taught me, like, how can I
tell my story even through the lens of
nature?
And that can be a really interesting exercise
to Tell me more.
Well, so for example,
if I tell my story as an acorn,
I might say that the acorn needed to
go into a time of darkness into the
ground. It needed to be crushed. The shell
needed to shatter.
But when the acorn yielded
to a period of darkness,
a period of unknown,
a period of not being able to see
or to manage, to let go of an
exterior shell that had kept it safe for
a long time and yielded to a process,
this incredible thing happened. These roots developed, and
this
one day, it shot out of the ground
and experienced light for the first time.
And it expanded into being, and it discovered
that it's an oak tree.
What if that's the story?
I am an oak tree.
Great illustration.
That's wonderful.
You say here
in the 3rd verse,
there's no shame in my weakness, but only
love,
which again reinforces your idea facing our weakness
and integrating it into our life. And then
you say,
And nothing can take me
apart.
Yes.
Why do we have an inherent fear
of being unfinished? Why are we always trying
to finish ourselves
prematurely
to feel like we've arrived?
There's so much pressure in in our culture
to look a certain way, to be a
certain thing.
There's just so much pressure,
especially now even with social media. This is
what it looks like to have arrived, to
have success,
to have letters behind your name, to have
a certain salary,
to have a certain kind of relationship,
then you'll be happy.
Happiness doesn't come from any of those things.
But why do people believe that? Those are
the messages that we hear
over and over and over again externally.
And so the whole work of soul care
is to learn an internal landscape,
the internal song of our soul, because that
is where we hear a very, very different
message.
It's a different message than what our culture
is telling us, than what many institutions are
telling us, that we are loved and
and celebrated if we have blah blah blah.
The internal message of the soul
is so
exciting,
Roy. It's just
I I just can't get enough of it.
It holds this song.
There's a preciousness to your life,
and that there's nothing that can take you
apart from that reality.
It's there. It's inherent to our being that
you are loved, that you are cherished, that
your life matters,
that you are beautiful.
This is what we discover when we reconnect
with the truth of our being.
You have in your chorus
of this song
and love smiles and whispers and calls me
to sing, to sing out my life from
my heart.
But you wrote down love with a capital
l.
And now I don't want to be too
spiritual,
and I don't want to get you into
trouble,
but I'd be curious
what the love with a capital l is.
Is it a life force? Is it a
spirit of hope? Is it
someone or something inside us or outside of
us?
When I was on a 8 day silent
retreat on Bowen Island a number of years
ago,
there's not a lot to do on a
silent retreat, Roy. You you are silent, and
you get very excited for the next meal
because food becomes something to look forward to.
So I was lying on bench waiting for
the next meal
and having a memory of feeling ashamed.
And in that moment,
there was a sense of loving energy that
surrounded me.
We call it the God reality,
the sacred reality,
the ground of all being.
There's been no language to fully explain
this reality.
I grew up saying that's God.
After that moment,
I called that reality
Love
with a capital
l because it was an experience
of such profound,
tender grace.
And in that experience was a deep awareness
that there was no shame in my weakness,
but only
love,
and that I was invited
to know this at the depths of my
being
and to dare to sing from that place.
And
and that was life transforming
for me. Wow.
Lastly, you talk about all exposed
and revealed in the mercy of love.
We've just talked about the mercy of
that
divinity
that is around us. Yes. That that otherness,
that
mystical sense of love permeating
all things
Is exposed and revealed an ongoing process, or
is it something we discover once and try
to live in the light of that? Or
is it
an aching back and forth?
Well,
my own experience is that this is the
trajectory of life,
to walk in this place of humility,
of of being exposed, of allowing
my fears, my anxieties,
my struggles to be exposed, but to know
that
there's no shame and to turn tenderly towards
them, to know that
this mystery
of the sacred reality is also
holding a tender posture
towards me, within me,
so that there's no shame
and that's a continual journey for the rest
of my my life.
That's very exciting to me.
There's a quote.
We're not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Yes.
Have you heard that before? Yes. I have.
It reminded me when you said we're just
having a human experience. You sense there's something
deep in us
that is
eternal Yes. Which I think you allude to
in your book, pause Yeah. And especially in
that chapter, Friendship of the Soul Yes. That
our humanity gets in the way of a
larger
reconciliation.
Well, one spiritual director
said, we haven't actually explored the fullness of
what our humanity
can be.
When we reconcile
with this part of us that is eternal,
there's something that
expands our human experience. It makes us more
alive,
more aware, more awake.
But it is true, as you say, that
in our human experience, there are these places
where we get hooked,
where we get anxious, where we feel that
place of disconnection.
One of the ideas that comes out of
Celtic spirituality
is of being encircled.
And I think our western mind is more
linear,
this trajectory of a straight line. But the
Celtic mind was more circular. There was a
sense of always being held, always being encircled,
always being
enfolded.
Is that like the, behind me, before me,
above me, below me? Yes. I think that's
Saint Patrick. Yes. And that comes out of
a deep
way of being that's embedded in in the
Celtic thought. The sense of being encircled, being
held, that is
a deep part of what my experience has
been with this sense of this presence of
love that that nothing can take us apart
from
that reality
when we become aware of it.
Before we play the song at the end
of this episode,
do you have any last thoughts that you
wanna say about the song that we haven't
covered?
Well, I think the line that's really sticking
out to me as we talk is this
line and calls me to sing.
I I think we all have a song
to sing. Uh-huh. I think we all have
something to bring to the world. It may
be very, very simple,
but it's to dare
to live
the life that we've been called to live.
And I wanna invite each of us to
dare to live.
Thank you so much
for your thoughtful
comments on the song and now we're gonna
play Kathy Hardy's
unfinished song.
I was waiting
for
the last
perfect
note,
a sweet melody
to sing along.
I was
yearning for
my heart to be here,
but
I am an
unfinished
song. I had thought
my blemishes
would be normal.
I thought
my wounds would
be gone.
I did not
understand
the beauty
of this
of my unknown
fish
song.
How strange
it is that the shadow
shadowed in me.
Smells like a rose is to love's due
heart.
No shame in my weakness,
but only
I'm Roy Salmon, and thank you for listening
to another episode
of Soul Care
Reflections
with
Kathy
AJ Hardy.
If you want to know more about her
and her work,
please go to kathyaghardy.com
and to soulcare.
Dotca.
Thanks for listening.