witness

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.
~ Witness, by Denise Levertov

This poem touches me deep in the core of who I am coming to understand I am. It nudges

me to confess how often I lose sight of how I desire to live attentive to the Witnessing Presence. How often I allow myself to simply exist when what I truly desire is to live deeply into the moments of my days, to see the mountain even when it is hidden from me in veils of cloud. 

Yet, most often it is me hidden from the mountain in veils of inattention, veils of apathy. Hidden from the mountain when I forget to or refuse to go just those few steps which reaffirm within me the Presence of the One who is never truly hidden.

How easy it is to distract myself away from what is most important to me. How simple yet how difficult it is to stay attentive to my deepest desires. How easy it is in the midst of my doing to forget who I am, to forget that the truth of my Self emerges best when doing flows from being. 

It is a moment by moment choice to live unveiled, a moment by moment choice to choose the action that would reconfirm the witnessing presence. A moment by moment choice to live deeply into my days.

thoughts on life's journey

A group I belong to recently put out this request: We are in graduation season around the country. What words would you share with folks entering the field of educational ministry in 2015?

Here are the thoughts I shared. They are words I try to live by. Ideals which I believe are true regardless of any vocation.

Make your own health and inner life a priority. Tend to it first and often. It is true you cannot share deeply from the well of your own soul when your well is running dry. Learn what helps you touch the place where the Holy dwells within you and then commit to doing that on a regular basis. Find what helps your soul rest in the Holy when life is chaotic and do it daily, for this will enable you to live centered in God in the moments of your days. This will enable you to share grace and love, mercy and peace with others. This will help you see the image of God in the face of the other.

Don't neglect your service to the world. If your life circumstances inhibit you serving from your deepest passion in your vocational setting, then make time to do so elsewhere. When our passion and giftedness touch the world, healing is found, new life happens - in the world and within ourselves.

Make time for creative activities, whether painting or music, decorating or gardening, fiber arts or ... We are creative beings, all of us. Be open to trying new things, for in them you open yourself to God in new ways. In them you uncover parts of yourself, changing how you understand God and how you see the world.

Living this way, connected to the space where the inner and outer worlds intertwine, will teach of God's love and grace more profoundly than any program or ministry you will create.

What would you share? What ideals do you strive to live by?

love in the particulars

I used the book A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton as a guide for my time of silent retreat recently. In it Merton reminds me what I have been slow to live into faith. Namely, that love for God must lead into love for others, and this love must reveal itself in my actions. As surely as night follows day, so too must my love for God grow into love for others. They are inseparable. And, in reality, I reveal my love for God in the way in which I love others. 

Yet I find this all too easy to say. Love for others is easy in the abstract. All to easy in the general. It is when it is love in the particulars that it becomes harder for me. Perhaps this is typical of humanity, this difficulty to love unconditionally in all individuals. But that doesn’t make my sorrow over it any less keen. My heart aches with awareness of the times I turn aside, the times I pass by. I am all too aware of the times I treat someone with less than the respect they are due as children of God, the times I think of them in disrespectful ways, think them lesser or strange simply because they are different from me or from what I expect.

And I realize that is the point, our differentness. In the ways of the world, we are different, unique. But in the ways of Spirit, of Soul we are One - of incalculable worth created in the image of God, joined in love, grace, mercy, compassion. And our differentness serves our oneness in revealing the fullness of God and in bringing healing to all of created life. Yet how easy, all too easy, it is to slip into seeing with the eyes of the world rather than with the eyes faith has given me. 

I have learned, for me, the need is to find ways to pause and touch that still center within me when interacting with someone, with anyone, with anything. For when I connect with that place and then move, then respond from there I move from a place of deeper connection to our oneness, a place more deeply grounded in grace. 

When I stand in that pause, I remember that you, too, are created in God’s image and treating you with that respect becomes easier, and I am able to look for glimpses of God's image as it might be revealed in you. 

in the pause

No matter which road I take, 
     you are there. 
Even after so many wrong turns 
     I know you are with me still. 
And when I pause to consider, 
     pause to reach deep inside 
          and find the place of quiet inner knowing, 
when I do this I know again I am safe 
     for you have been there all along, 
          journeying with me, 
               encouraging me 
and waiting for me to hear, 
     to listen 
          and recognize your voice. 
It is in the moments of pause in walking life's journey 
     when I feel you 
          and carry you on with me. 

Yet all of life can be lived in the pause, 
     in the space between resting and doing. 
It is in the pause where my deepest soul 
     connects with you and with the world. 
In the pause I find, nay, I know 
     not just you but myself also.

Ah, but how to live in the pause? 
Not just in scattered moments, 
     but to live and move from there, 
          that is what I am learning. 
That is what I will spend my lifetime learning.

Solitude

What I needed was the solitude to expand in breadth and depth and to be simplified out under the gaze of God more or less the way a plant spreads out its leaves in the sun.
                                                                                         ~ Thomas Merton

And that is what I need, what I yearn for, too - solitude.

Yet, while I enjoy time apart, I know for me solitude is also about a way of being, a way of inhabiting the very moments of my days. It's being intentional in thought and in deed. It's paying attention and connecting what is within with what is with out. It's living the truth that all of life is sacred and seeking to connect, as often as possible in as many ways as possible, with the sacred in this moment.

In that I know myself to expand in breadth by touching our connectedness, and in depth by touching the Holy within, and find that all of living and being becomes simplified to the grace of Love under the gaze of God. Solitude is simply a return to the center.

Yet this is not to deny that I need time alone, time apart to re-collect, to re-connect with my own center. For it is only through my center that I can truly connect with others and with God.

Solitude, that is, time apart by its very nature is part of the cycle of Sabbath rest. Essential for a life fully lived, yet one thread of the fabric of our existence.

Solitude, as time apart, provides me a place to, once again, re-connect the various parts of myself into the center of who I am. It allows me to, once again, see and name as whole that which society sees as, treats as, demands as parts. For in this time all of me is laid bare to myself. The illusions of the world fall away, and in my vulnerability I find the acceptance of God's mercy and grace once again.

Perhaps in the end it simply amounts to becoming aware, to being totally present in this moment, to being ready to listen. It is all given. It is all waiting. It is available to us all the time.
                                              ~ Esther de Waal

the echo

Contemplation is this echo-response to the Holy One.
It is the deep resonance in the inmost center of our spirit
in which our very life loses its separate voice

and resounds with the majesty and the mercy
of the Hidden and Living One.
                            ~ Thomas Merton

I love this quote.

Life, my life is an echo of the Holy. Separate, yet not apart. Called out into being by the voice of the One who has no voice yet speaks everything into being.

Even as the echo somehow contains the voice of the one, so I too somehow contain the essence of God, the majesty and the mercy. And so do you. And so does all of created life. Echoes of the holy.
And it is in the resounding of the echo, the response of my life, that I find I am not separate. In the echo of my life I hear the whisper of Your voice calling into being life and love, truth and mercy, grace and wonder. And in the resounding echo that is my life I too call these things to be in the world.

Oh, how I desire to be that echo, always. To live from that natural place, that authentic response within. Yet everything is given already. So all I need is simply to experience what I already have. To accept myself where I find myself, and be open to God and to myself in this moment where, together, we dwell.

For, you see, what I already have, what is already given is God's love and acceptance of me. This is the root of my being. And when I fail to see the signs of the presence of the Holy One in everything around me, then I know I am missing my deepest truth, the Voice that calls forth the the echo of my being.

rooted deeply together

I sit here outside my apartment (at Creighton University Retreat Center) listening to the soughing of the wind in the trees. I am at once thrilled I can hear it with my current hearing aids, when there was a time I no longer could, and simultaneously amazed at the beauty of the sound. Such melodious song as the wind whispers and roars its changeableness, yet always singing of things just beyond our awareness unless we stop and listen.

I am just as amazed at the ability of these mighty ones to dip and sway in tune with the great song of living. 30-feet tall or more, yet they dance gracefully with the wind. 

It is counter intuitive to our nature. The world teaches us: to be mighty, we must stand tall and firm; that is the way to be strong like the oaks. Yet the oaks and elms know the great truth: to be strong, plant your roots deeply together in the soil of the One, only this will give you the freedom to dance with the eternal song in the winds of life. 

We are, each of us, made in divine essence, created in the image of the Holy One. And we are, each of us, fully human. And when we are rooted in God, grounded deeply in the center of our being, then our humanity dances gloriously to the eternal song of life. The foibles and fancies of our humanness become graceful steps in the dance of life’s journey. 

Rooted deep, I am finally free to hold the vulnerability of the dance within the embrace of grace. Rooted deep, I am finally free to see my human foibles with the heart of Love. Rooted deep, I am finally free to unfold into the truth within me. Rooted deeply together, we sustain one another when the winds of life are strong, and we listen with one another when the song of life is a mere whisper in our soul. 

I sit here outside my apartment listening to the song of joy in the trees, knowing you abide with me here.

in this moment

This quote from John Philip Newell, found in my reading recently, struck me and stayed with me, resounding in the recesses of my heart:

Early in the morning I seek your presence, O God,

not because you are ever absent from me

but because often I am absent from you

at the heart of each moment

where you forever dwell.

I seek your presence, Holy One, not because you are absent from me, but because I am absent from you. Absent because all too often I live my life thinking about, planning for, wondering on what is ahead, what is next. And you, well, you dwell in the heart of this moment, here, now. You dwell in the quiet between the beats of my heart while I hardly even notice my heart is beating.

Yet truly, this moment is all that is real. This moment is where my hopes and dreams take form and substance. So don’t let me live occupied with the moments ahead or the ones left behind and miss the only one that is real, the only one in which you deeply dwell. Your voice calls me back to this moment again and again. Your voice, in the colors of spring and the beauty of each new day. Your voice, in the whisper of the wind through the prairie grass and the twitter of birds beckoning to each other.

In this moment life is real. In this moment I am present to you and to myself, to your gentle nudges and to my soul’s longing. In this moment I know peace and the passion of intimate connectedness.

Continue to awaken me, I pray, to the Mystery of you in this moment, the only place in which you dwell.