New Beginnings

As we approach Easter, new life and new beginnings live strongly in my awareness. I wonder what new beginning is quietly forming within you, waiting for you to be ready for it to emerge?

May you find yourself able to hold space for it to emerge into fullness. And may you recognize how Spirit meets you there.

May the blessing below strengthen you on your journey.

Blessing for a New Beginning, by John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

 

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

 

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

 

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

 

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life’s desire.

 

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

* cross posted at fccdm.org

Looking for Life

I’ve been reflecting the past few days on the reality that we find what we look for in life.

If we look for the problems, then life becomes about weakness and gaps and difficulties. We find ourselves living through days that become about issues and troubles. We seek after solutions and fixes for all that is wrong.

And when we journey with this mindset, then what we most often notice is what is missing. We see the lack, the deficit, in each circumstance. And slowly, ever so slowly, we begin to live from a place of scarcity, without ever realizing it – there’s not enough, there’s never enough for whatever we need, whether it’s for ourselves or for our community or world.

We have a choice, instead, to journey through our days seeking to be attentive to the strengths that exist, in ourselves and in others, seeking to be attentive to all that empowers us to be who we truly are. And this journey, we find, leads us to see the good in ourselves and in others. It leads us to trust that good intentions lie behind hurtful words or harmful actions. We find, growing stronger within us, gratitude for what we have rather than worry or dissatisfaction over what we apparently lack.

When we look for life among our connectedness and worth, we don’t miss the issues and problems that abound in our communities and our relationships. The reality that they exist cannot be ignored. The hurt, the pain, the systemic injustice cannot be denied. Yet paying attention to the Divine that flows through all of life empowers us, emboldens us to seek a different response to the ills that surround us. Paying attention to each one’s connectedness, each one’s worth shows us the issues we deal with go beyond right/wrong, good/bad, win/lose – and we come to recognize other alternatives living in God’s abundance.

Where do you look for life this day?

*cross posted: fccdm.org

my selves, a rocky metaphor

While walking the beach on the shore of Lake Michigan, I was caught with wonder at the variety of rocks which formed the shore. The colors and shapes and sizes are beyond any ability to catalogue. How did they all get here, where did they all come from with their variety of texture and color, what storms of life have they lived through … ?

And then my eye was caught by this and this …

and I was caught by how like my ego-self these are. Caught by how much they resemble my put-together self as I do my best to make myself into the person the world affirms and values, when I fall asleep to who I truly am and live from habit and for external approval. I add to myself “yes” or “no” to be accepted by you when my authentic self says the other. I add to myself strength when I feel heartache because I am expected to be strong, because I am afraid to be vulnerable. … And others look and see only the rock, yet I see so much more. I see the patched and mended places, the parts forced to fit when they don’t fit at all. I see the places of restlessness and disconnect, and something within me knows this is not who I am meant to be, not who I truly am.

When I am able to live from my deepest place within, able to move beyond the habits formed by my ego to be successful or to survive and choose instead actions and thoughts which support this honest truth of who I am, I think we come to see our beauty in this … 

and this …

I see how the flow of life only serves to enhance and define the beauty of who we truly are. In the depths of color and shading my complex yet simple nature is revealed. In the lines and marks, striations and sparkles I see how life has enhanced yet left unchanged the essential nature of the stone. I see beauty and difference and oneness. 

And so again this moment, I choose to live a life that’s real and pure and free. I choose to surrender to the Life which flows in my very breath and is Oneness with you and with all.

“Through gentleness and grace,
     through awareness of what is happening within me and around me,
          through openness and relaxing into what is,
effort and striving-to-become cease,
     and I realize Life arises and finds expression from deep within me,
          and I understand my interconnectedness with all of created life,
and I know that who I am is good,
is enough.”

the paradox of the selves

... a few thoughts I have been journeying with on sabbatical ...

The mystical texts talk about the difference between my real self and my false self, between my personality or ego-self and the true essence of who I am. The reality that we each are a manifestation of the personality we developed in order to successfully navigate the tides and currents of society and family, the rising and falling of the relationships we have with others. It is not a bad thing, this personality, my false self. Yet all too often, for too much of life, my personality acts as the guiding force in living rather than it being one of many means to support my life choices. In some ways, it controls me rather than me controlling it - as the Apostle Paul wrote, "Why is it I so often do the things I do not want to do and yet do not do the things I want?" 

The world cultivates the false self and ignores the real one. The world cultivates and rewards the outer shell visible to the world as if that is the sum total of who I am. As if the way I look or dress or act, the way I speak, the foods I like, my abilities and skills, as if these things were the primary basis of who I am, the only basis of who I am - and in so doing ignores or gives little more than a nod to the deep essence which is truly me. Yet, that essence of divine life within is the only thing that gives meaning and substance to who I am. It is from this inner self, when I live and move from it, that I respond to and see the divine in all. It is from groundedness in this inner self that I am able to experience the Holy and truly experience Life. 

The paradox of the selves is that our outer self is made by us, added to and bolstered up by our conscious choices and actions to be or do certain things. In a very real sense, whether I am aware of it or not, I am the “maker” of my false self. The American mottos “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “a self-made man” are oriented to this reality. Yet the inner self, the Essence of who I truly am, existed from my first breath. It is not something I can make or change, it is not something I need to “improve”, just as it is not something I can “work” to make appear. All striving to grow or change or improve becomes just another link in my ego-self asserting control. In and of itself, our Essence is enough - it doesn’t need to be improved upon or added to or made better, it simply needs to be allowed to unfold and it will blossom in marvelous and wonder-filled ways.

The great irony of our existence is that the more we make of ourselves, the less we actually exist. 

Through gentleness and grace, 

     through awareness of what is happening within me and around me, 

          through openness and relaxing into what is, 

effort and striving-to-become cease, 

     and I realize Life arises and finds expression from deep within me,

          and I understand my interconnectedness with all of created life,

and I know that who I am is good,

is enough.

life in the fullness

I have been reading some of Thomas Merton's writings while on sabbatical, and I have come across often his insistence that we live in the fullness of time. We don’t have to rush after it, what we seek is already here and if we give it time it will make itself known to us. 

In contrast, Wayne Muller in Sabbath gives an accurate description of the world as I’ve experienced it up to this point. He names (in “Hurtling Toward the Eschaton”) that we, the Western world, act as if progress is our new messianic eschatology. We live as if coming to the end of progress will bring about bounty, and mastery of nature, and health & wholeness for all. There is no time to rest because we are on an important mission. ‘We never rest on our laurels, we never rest at all. Every moment is a necessary investment in the divinely ordained and completely unquestioned goal of progress. What we are building for the future is infinitely more important than whatever we have right now.’ We cannot rest because ‘the sooner we get into the good and perfect future - the only place we will ever be truly happy and at peace - the better off we will all be.’ Yet every time we reach the future, it vanishes into the present.

This theology of progress tells us that when we get to the end then, and only then, can we lie down in green pastures, and allow our soul to be restored. 

Oh my. Muller’s description of life in the West seems all too familiar. It is the lived experience of so much of my adult life. 

Yet it is Merton’s description of life that resounds and echoes within the recesses of my soul. The promised land is here, now. If I live connected to the rhythms of life, of birth and growth and death and new life, of rest and dormancy, if I live in ways that honor the sacredness of all of life and am open to seeing the Divine in the world wherever it chooses to be found, then I find that the present is more expansive than I can hope to understand. I find health and wholeness and abundant living. 

And I find that all the way to heaven is heaven, every moment full and ripe with experience of the Divine.

what do I seek

In the first chapter of my devotional reading (Sitting Still, by Patricia Hart Clifford), the author poses the question: What do you seek? ... What do I seek in the practice of centering prayer? What do I seek within myself and the world in the way I am living and moving and being? What do I seek in my relationship with God? What do I seek from the me within? What do I seek for the me within?

What do I seek? Peace within myself. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find peace, what I really long for is to see, to know, and to be present with what is.

What do I seek? Depth and grounding. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find depth and grounding, what I really long for is being a space of healing, for others and for the world.

What do I seek? Health in my body. ... Yet it doesn't interest me if I find health in my body, what I really long for is feeling strength in my body and connectedness to the Holy in it, knowing that body and spirit are truly one.

What do I seek? 

A way of being in the world,

   which brings healing, 

      reveals wholeness, 

         restores hope, 

            glimpses the Holy in all, 

               and honors the divinity within.

What is it you seek?

the air we breathe

“By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit we are all one.
 The air that is my breath is the air that you are breathing.
 And the air that is your breath is the air that I am breathing.
 …
 By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit we are all one.”
        ~ Sara Tomsen

This is the song clip that was running through my mind as I walked this morning.

we are all one … the air we breathe contains the breaths of each other … we are one

After my experiences in this place last month it’s not surprising that being here I would feel this deep sense of connectedness to the world. Truly, when I am present in the moment, which brings quiet within, I recognize it has never left me, journeyed with me wherever I am, vibrates within me to the song of the eternal. 

We are one. Not just you and I, but all of created life. We are, of course, made of the dust of stars. Yet even more I believe that in the very act of creation something of Divine essence was imparted to each rock and tree, each drop of water and ray of light, every seed and matter of humanity. Something of substance lives and flows within and between all of it. And in our moments of paying attention, being deeply aware of what is around us, we may feel a glimpse of that Essence. 

Perhaps that is why so many of us are drawn to nature, find being in nature renewing and restful. In a place where Divine essence flows naturally, our striving can cease. The masks can fall away. Like the trees, we learn to rest simply in who we are, not striving to be something else, something other, something more. When we connect to this essence around us and stop to rest in harmony with what is, we remember we were created as one. We remember, at least for a moment, that who we are is enough. We remember that we are one part of something so much larger than ourselves that it is beyond our comprehension, yet not beyond our experience. 

And all too easily we forget the truth of this. All too easily we we see only our differences and deny our oneness. All too easily we cast someone as “other”, for their behavior or actions or words or beliefs, and don’t see the divisiveness of our own behavior or actions or words or beliefs. 

Am I able to look within and admit there are times when I am so afraid I’d be willing to kill to keep the world from changing? Am I able to look within and admit the places where I dismiss others as lesser than because they don’t agree with my beliefs or because their actions hurt another? Am I able to see the moments when I wage peace as if I am at war with those with whom I disagree? Am I?

by breath, by blood, by body, by spirit … we are all one