22 Nov
On Returning
Today is the time of returning. After three days set aside for retreat, I’m back home, picking up the routine, getting ready for next week’s work and holiday.
I’m going into this week feeling a little more comfortable and relaxed about living a life that is both contemplative and active – about how to flow with and from Presence with more ease.
You know those moments when you “get it”…when you hear something a little differently, or when words or thoughts go a little deeper within, and a light goes on in both your heart and your mind? All at once: A Ha! Yes! Illumination and delight!
Many A Ha! and Yes! moments lit me up as I listened to Jane Vennard talk about prayer during the retreat. From my notes:
- Wake up. Pay attention to all of your senses and to where and how you can sense the presence of God around you.
- The things you don’t like? – This too speaks of God.
- When you pray for another (intercessory prayer), start with where your heart is.
- In your prayers, you are asking God to lower the threshold in the person for whom you’re praying, so that God’s abiding love can be experienced.
- You are also asking that God lower the threshold in yourself, so that you can access God’s love and know better how to help.
- God answers prayers:
- God intervenes.
- God interacts.
- God is present.
- Discernment is not a verb. It is a noun. It is a gift. It comes in God’s timing and in God’s grace.
- We do not empty ourselves; we do not center ourselves: we are emptied; we are centered.
- Apophatic Prayer (and intimacy and union with God) comes by grace.
- Some kind of order (a rule of life) reminds us of the depth of spiritual reality.
- A rule of life is a trellis. It is a guide, and it also has space.
- A rule of life has to be made in the midst of your own life.
- Be realistic.
- Be gentle.
- Be flexible.
- Commiting to doing something every day is a set up to fail. (An example of a flexible rule, spend quality time with God every day.)
- Be careful about “shoulds.”
- Are the things that guide your life (your rule) helpful? Consider adding and subtracting. What can you let go of?
- Always start over. Begin again each day.
- Our purpose is to return – to move from that deep place of intimacy and union with God – and to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world.
12 Nov
Trust the Path
We brought our gratitude to The Labyrinth at Audubon Park to hold and to share as we walked together. Before the walking meditation, I sat and let the words Trust the Path settle deep in my heart.
I’m learning to walk that way – yielded; giving attention to the lifting of my foot and setting it down. Intending only that step, releasing myself into it, letting it happen. I am not moving with long, decisive strides, but taking one step and waiting – hearing the whisper of Presence and taking another.
On Saturday morning, as I walked and carried Trust the Path within, the symbolism seemed particularly rich. Part of the labyrinth sparkled in the morning light and part was in shadow; the stones were rough beneath my feet and the breeze gentle on my face; there was the noise of the city wrapped around the silence of the path; we came together and walked alone….
The labyrinth holds all of that together. The journey is the whole of it – light and shadow; ease and hardship; together and apart and, somehow, never apart; God Within and Without; One. I cannot name the turns. I no longer try to mark progress. With each step, I simply move in or away from center and give myself to the path.
17 Oct
On Change
The weather has cooled here; after days of rain, the skies were blue and cloudless all day. We worked in the yard this morning - blowing leaves, trimming away summer overgrowth, cleaning out the garden and, most of all, enjoying this change of seasons.
Thinking about the changes we see and feel; the changes through which we have come; and the changes that we know are coming, I’m reminded that this moment is a gift.
And it is also opportunity. I like the perspective these words, written by Michael Shillingford and posted by Gary O’Connor at The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West, offer on change:
Change
The nature of our world is transitory-always has been, always will be. Change occurs every second. Breathe it in, then breathe it out. But despite the interconnectedness of everything, we still have a say on how we handle the weave of the fabric. We can let the status quo confine us to a narrow thread, or we can cut through that fabric to see our true nature. Our lessons cannot be learned if the sun is shining every day. And on rainy days, we might share our umbrella with another.
15 Oct
The Wisdom of Nondualism
On Monday evening, Jane emailed this quote:
“It’s not revolutions and upheavals that clear the road to newer days, but revelations, lavishness and torments of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze.” ~ Boris Pasternak
The quote found a place in my heart as I’ve continued to ponder both the inward journey of this contemplative life and the outward manifestations of that journey. Is there a conflict between the interior and exterior life? Do we listen and serve? Listen or serve? Does stillness meet physical needs or overturn injustice? Does action without awareness meet the spiritual needs that underpin injustice?
This morning I shared thoughts about this with some friends in the community :
“There seems to me to be some kind of tension…requiring some kind of balance, but, in which the ‘right’ balance can only be known through the interior work – the ‘lavishness and torments of someone’s soul, inspired and ablaze’….I’m seeing this isn’t really an oppositional tension as much as a creative tension – a place of where Spirit flows through individual and community, interior stillness and inspired action; a place where even the energy of balance helps our hearts stretch and unfold in new ways….”
Then this afternoon, I picked up a book I bought last week – Jean-Yves Leloup’s text and commentary on The Gospel of Thomas - and my heart sang with an answer from Logion 3:
“Yeshua said:
If those who guide you say: Look,
the Kingdom is in the sky,
then the birds are closer than you.
If they say: Look,
it is in the sea,
then the fish already know it.
The Kingdom is inside you,
and it is outside you.”
In the commentary Leloup writes:
“If it had simply said, ‘The kingdom is within you,’ it would give one-sided privilege to inner experiences and meditations. This would encourage us to flee the world, to disregard what is going on around us. Happiness would be only spiritual and we would be separate from our carnal half. The world, others, and matter itself would be reduced to temptations and threats prowling around our inner being.”
“If the gospel had said, ‘The kingdom is outside you,’ then we would be encouraged to transform the world and convert others at all costs, and it would be selfishness to sit in silence and listen to the song of the Living One in our heart.”
“This gospel is a cure for our schizophrenia of outside vs. inside, for it tells us that the Kingdom includes both. There is no opposition, because outer and inner realities come together in the Kingdom. This can transform our way of seeing things….This attitude cultivates a special kind of wakefulness in everyday life….” (68)
“So we see that to work for the coming of the Kingdom implies a twofold movement: toward the inwardness of all things, spiritualizing matter; and toward the outwardness of things, manifesting the Spirit, incarnating it fully within the space, time, society, and situations that are ours….” (69)
