T

After Annunciation

This is the irrational season
when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
there’d have been no room for the child.

                                    Madeleine L’Engle  from A Cry Like a Bell

A Christmas Blessing

May the hope of this sacred season settle in your soul. May it be a foundation of courage for you when times of distress occupy your inner land….

May you daily open the gift of your life and be grateful for the hidden treasures it contains…..

May you go often to the Bethlehem of your heart and visit the One who offers you peace. May you bring this peace into our world.

                                    Joyce Rupp from Out of the Ordinary

A hundred thousand elephants,
A hundred thousand horses,
A hundred thousand mule-drawn chariots,
Are not worth a single step forward.

Miracles …
rest not so much
upon faces or voices
or healing power
coming from afar off,
but on our perceptions
being made finer,
so that for a moment
our eyes can see
and our ears can hear
what is there about us
always.

MORNING PRAYER

Gracious God, thank you for the gift of today.

Refresh me, invite me to discover your presence
in each person I meet and in every event I encounter.

Teach me when to speak and when to listen,
when to ponder, when to share my thoughts.

In moments of challenge and decision,
attune my heart to the whisperings of your wisdom.

As I undertake ordinary tasks, give me the gift of simple joy.

When the day goes well, may I rejoice.
When it grows difficult and dark, surprise me with new possibilities.

When life seems overwhelming,
call me to Sabbath moments to restore peace and harmony to my soul.

May my living today reveal your goodness. 
Lord, bless me as I am today.
Bless what I do.
Incline my heart and hands into your ways of love.

                                                SSJ  from “150 A Celebration of Faith”          

Come, Holy Spirit, to enkindle in my heart the fire of your love.
Transform all that is fearful into boldness of heart.
Inspire your servant with wonder and awe at the mystery of your presence.

Confirm your friend in compassion and forgiveness.
Whisper discernment in the midst of confusion; be wisdom in time of trouble.

Instill within me reverence in the face of diversity, patience with the unfolding of life.

And forever anoint your messenger with joy.           Amen.

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space. Your world seems less solid, more roomy and spacious. The burden lightens. In the beginning it might feel like sadness or a shaky feeling, accompanied by a lot of fear, but your willingness to feel the fear, to make fear your companion, is growing. You’re willing to get to know yourself at this deep level. After awhile this same feeling begins to turn into a longing to raze all the walls, a longing to be fully human and to live in your world without always having to shut down and close off when certain things come along. It begins to turn into a longing to be there for your friends when they’re in trouble, to be of real help to this poor, aching planet. Curiously enough, along with this longing and this sadness and this tenderness, there’s an immense sense of well-being, unconditional well-being, which doesn’t have anything to do with pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, hope or fear, disgrace or fame. It’s something that simply comes to you when you feel that you can keep your heart open.

I thank you God for most this
amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits
of trees
and a blue true dream of sky, and
for everything
which is natural which is infinite
which is yes

(I who have died am alive again
today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this
is the birth
day of life and love and wings;
and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching
hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely
being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake
and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Sacred space and sacred time and something joyous to do is all we need.  Almost anything then becomes a continuous and increasing joy.

What you have to do,
you do with play.

I think a good way to conceive of sacred space is as a playground.  If what you’re doing seems like play, you are in it.  But you can’t play with my toys, you have to have your own.  Your life should have yielded some.  Older people play with life experiences and realizations or with thoughts they like to entertain.  In my case I have books I like to read that don’t lead anywhere.

One great thing about growing old
is that nothing
is going to lead to anything.
Everything is of the moment.

When Jung decided to try to discover the myth by which he was living, he asked himself, “What was the game I enjoyed when I was a child?” His answer was making little towns and streets out of stones.  So, he bought some property and, as a way of playing, began to build a house.  It was a lot of work, utterly unnecessary for he already had a house, but an appropriate way to create sacred space.  It was sheer play.

  What did you do as a child
 that created timelessness,
 that made your forget time?
 There lies the myth to live by.

            Joseph Campbell

To live content with small means,
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion,
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich,
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly,
to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart,
to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely,
await occasions,
hurry never—
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

            William Ellery Channing

To hold something in your heart and ponder upon it is meditation. To hold someone in your heart without possessiveness, is also. As we grow older, the list of people who have died that we remember grows longer. In meditative moments, we can hold them tenderly in our hearts—in that place in the center of our chest, where we instinctively place our hands, one over the other, as a gesture that says, “ I feel for you” or “I love you.”  Heartfulness and meditation come together in the instant we really see and appreciate something beautiful, and in this moment send the equivalent of a prayer as a postcard thank-you, as we let the beauty in.

            Jean Shinoda Bolen  Crones Don’t Whine

Inner life was meant to grow in importance as we grow older. We explore the world with our senses in earlier years, which are directed outward toward what we can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste, all of which usually become less acute as the years pass. As we grow older, we can draw from what we have already experienced….

Understanding comes when we take time to notice pat terns and can see events in a more detached way than when we were in the midst of them. Through such insight our store of wisdom grows. When we take time for moments f reflection, we see the importance of character rather than surface appearance and realize that when people do what they do, it is more about them than it is about us.

            Jean Shinoda Bolen Crones Don’t Whine

Only If You Join Me

One more song tonight, okay, but only if you join me.
Once, when I was sad, I said to a kind old priest, “Have you learned any secrets to unburden the heart?”
And he responded,
“Hum a favorite melody; wine will always rise to the top of oil.”

Catherine of Siena

WHEN SOMEONE I LOVE IS NEAR

I know the vows the sun and moon took;
they are in love but they don’t
     touch.

But why should I not let my face become
lit before this
     earth

  when someone I love
      is near?

Catherine of Siena

Everywhere is the green of new growth,
The amazing sight of the renewal of the earth.
We watch the grass once again emerging from the ground.
We notice the bright green atop the dark green on the pine, the fir, the hemlock, the spruce, the cedar.
The alder is already in leaf.
The old plum trees still blossom, leaf and give forth fruit.
The locust is late as always.
Everywhere and always the song of birds… bees raiding the orchard, raccoon prowling at night fall, the earthworm tunneling the garden, chickens and rabbits pecking and nibbling, the goats tugging to reach new delights… all are the ubiquitous energies of life.

O Lord,
May we today be touched by grace, fascinated and moved by this your creation,
energized by the power of new growth at work in your world.
May we move beyond viewing this life only through a frame; but touch it and be touched by it, know it and be known by it, love it and be loved by it.

May our bodies, our minds, our spirits, learn a new rhythm paced by the rhythmic pulse of the whole created order.
May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in us.
May we forge a new friendship with the natural world and discover a new affinity with beauty, with life, and with the Cosmic Christ in whom all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities… for all things were created through him and for him.

In his name.
Amen.

            Chinook Psalter

Cead Mile Failte!

A hundred thousand
Welcomes to everyone!
Ever since Judas left—
Empty space at the holy table—
There is always room for more
Coming through our doors.

Sit down angel friends.
Sit down Cana couple.
Sit down Martha and Mary.
Sit down Patrick and “Bride.”
Sit down guest and stranger.
Sit down poor and homeless.

Jesus comes to wash our feet.
Jesus comes to dry them well.
Jesus comes to pour our wine.
Jesus comes to break our bread.
Jesus comes to heal our wounds.
Jesus comes to lead our song.

A thin place tween living and dead.
A thin place tween love and hate.
A thin place tween friend and stranger.
A thin place tween young and old.
A thin place tween home and altar.
A thin place tween now and heaven.

A thin time! A thin place! Tween the
 “Holy Banquet,
in which Christ is received,
the soul is filled with grace,
and there is given to us
a pledge of future glory!”

Material in quotes is from O Sacrum Convivium by Thomas Aquinas, “Bride” refers to St. Bridget, and the poem is by William John Fitzgerald.

Call to Say Yes

We are called to say Yes
That the Kingdom might break through
To renew and transform
Our dark and groping world.

We stutter and we stammer
To the lone God who calls
And pleads a New Jerusalem
In the bloodied Sinai Straits.

We are called to say yes
That honeysuckle may twine
And twist its smelling leaves
Over the graves of nuclear arms,

We are called to say yes
That children might play
On the soil of Vietnam where the tanks
Belched blood and death.

We are called to say yes
That black may sing with white
And pledge peace and healing
For the hatred of the past.

We are called to say yes
So that nations might gather and dance one great movement
For the joy of humankind.

We are called to say yes
So that rich and poor embrace
And become equal in their poverty
Through the silent tears that fall.

We are called to say yes
That the whisper of our God
Might be heard through our sirens
And the screams of our bombs.

We are called to say yes
To a God who still holds fast
To the vision of the Kingdom
For a trembling world of pain.

We are called to say yes
To this God who reaches out
And asks us to share
This amazing dream of love.

            Edwina Gately

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them to what is deepest in themselves.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, humankind will have discovered fire.

Stillness is what
    creates Love
Movement is what
   creates Life
To be still
Yet still moving—
      That is
    everything.

            Do Hyun Choe

I contend that in a divided Christianity, instead of reading the Bible to assure that we are right, we would do better to read it to discover where we have not been listening… Then the Bible would be doing for us what Jesus did in his time, namely, convincing those who have ears to hear that all is not right, for God is asking of them more than they thought.

Raymond Brown from The Churches the Apostles Left Behind

It is now harder to pay attention to any one thing and there is more to pay attention to. We are easily diverted and more easily distracted. We are continuously bombarded with information, appeals, deadlines, communications. Things come at us fast and furious, relentlessly. And almost all of it is man-made; it has thought behind it, and more often than not, an appeal to our greed or our fears. These assaults on our nervous system continually stimulate and foster desire and agitation rather than contentedness and calmness. They foster reaction rather than communion, discord rather than accord or concord, acquisitiveness rather than feeling whole and complete as we are. And above all, if we are not careful, they rob us of time, of our moments. We are continually being squeezed or projected into the future as our present moments are assaulted and consumed in the fires of endless urgency.

            Jon Kabot-Zinn from Coming to our Senses

We are all called, ultimately, to wholeness and holiness, and that insistent urge for fullness resides within each one of us. We cannot, however, become whole whilst we experience ourselves as separate (physically, mentally, or emotionally) from the anawim — the poor and the disenfranchised. Although many people have an opportunity to live on the margins through their work with the marginalized, it is those who allow themselves to be transformed by them who are truly the icon of a new interconnected vision of the world. The very survival of our planet is dependent on such transformation and vision.

            Edwina Gately in Christ in the Margins

1.Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

This wheel: if it could slow and stop, and then reverse,
if we could jet backwards, visit once again our crossroads,
catch ourselves in mid-divorce, in
mid-slap, before we
betrayed, and armed,
with what we know now, arrest the act,
we could undo it!
We could un-die. We could
un-kill. We’d un-enlist, un-strike.
But the wheel turns.
There is no brake.
We pick up speed toward ruin
that we ourselves precisely planned, yet don’t expect.
It is our way.
Ashamed, we pick through what remains,
and salvage what we can,
from wreckage we have made.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

II. Today, you shall be with me in Paradise.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

III. Mother, this is your son.

This is not my son.
You are my son.
This is my son’s friend. He is about your age.
He is strong and vital, as you were
just this morning, before they began to do
what they are doing to you now;
Before they drove nails into your hands
as if they were blocks of wood,
before this happened to my baby.
Now we stand and watch,
your best friend and I. I cannot bear to see,
but neither can I bear to leave.
And neither can he. And so, I do love him.
I love him for staying.
So I will not argue with you now about this.
I won’t allow our last talk
to be an argument.
I want so much to help you get through this
it tastes like blood in my mouth.
And there isn’t anything else I can do to help you since
they won’t let me come near you,
let alone touch you.
They won’t even let me give you a drink.
I can’t even brush your hair out of your eyes.
You are going quickly now.
This cannot last much longer.
So all right. When this is over, it will be John and I.
I will love him, because he will remember you.
And you will be all I’ll want to talk about,
for a long time after this is over, long after most people think it’s time I got over it.
But there was a time you lived in me:
I held you safe right here,
under my heart, in the place where you have an open wound.
You were part of my body then.
I would be part of yours now.
I would leap
to take your place up there.
I would laugh if they drove nails into my hands
instead of into yours.
I would look down at you
looking up and I would see your chest
heave with your crying and mine would
heave with my failing breathing and I would
shout, “He lives!” and send my last breath to the sky,
Thanksgiving.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

IV. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.

No one will let me despair.
They assume that they’ve misheard.
“He meant to call Elijah.”
“He’s quoting from the psalms.”
When they are old, they will tell each other stories of today.
They tell stories of me already. They’ve told them for years:
embellishing my childhood manners, my
boundless patience, superhuman wit.
Already they sell me, paint me
so far beyond themselves they need not seek to follow.
But I am truly man,
and truly, terror holds me in its razor teeth.
I an not an actor.
And this is not a play.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

IV.  I thirst.

He tries holding very still.
He tries not to move his tongue.
His tongue is thick and dry, a log.
He tries to hold his mind still, too, tries not to think of water.
But it fills with pools.
In thought, he kneels and laps up puddles like a dog.
He hears water pouring into a cup,
sees the cup coming toward his lips,
opens his lips, but it is not water.
When he was little, he and his mother went to the well every morning,
with other children and their mothers.
He had a tiny yoke of wood his father made him.
From it, he could carry two leather bags of water all the way home.
Mary had a yoke, too,
a larger one and larger leather water bags,
for she was young and strong in those days.
He would follow her up the dusty steps of the dusty streets;
her brown legs climbed easily under her heavy load, his little feet
traced her footsteps. Usually, he made a game:
he must step exactly where she stepped,
and not miss even one.
He supposes that little yoke is in the house somewhere, still.
It has been years since he saw it.
They used to make the trip twice, two bags apiece.
That was the water for the day.
Here there are no children with their mothers.
This is no place for a child.
And there is no water here.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

VI. It is finished.

Latin words are much more dignified than ours.
They satisfy the speaker more, they feel
important on the tongue.
I’ll speak “humiliatem” not “affliction,”
and of “furore,” not of “wrath.”
I’ll say “insipiens” when I mean “fool,”
and I will feel less foolish.
And I’ll have Jesus say “Consummatum est”
in Latin, just like that,
a stately word, so calm and unperturbed.
That is complete, it says.
All now is accomplished and all is well.
Like a consummate artist,
a consummate professional,
like a consummated marriage,
we’ll have a consummate crucifixion,
with all the blood cleaned up,
and Christ, serene, will hang so lightly
on his sweet cross for our assurance.
We might be more concerned,
if we thought it concerned him.
So let us polychrome this whole event
and make it lovely
and hang those lovely Latin words
on dying lips.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

IV.  Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.

He can just lay it down.
He can just stop.
He has only just now realized,
in the lengthening spaces between ragged breaths,
that he can just not draw the next one.
He is almost there already;
the wall between the worlds is very thin.
Now he sees it’s simple to go on from here: just stop the breath,
and let his spirit slip on home.
In every way, this death is ours:
the same fear becoming the same intentness,
the same directional change.
He has always said this, but we did not believe it.
We thought exception would be made for him
because we hope exception will be made for us.
But there are no exceptions.
We can lay it down or have it
wrested from us.
We are almost there already.

            Barbara Crafton, The Seven Last Words of Christ

THE CUP OF GRIEF

Drink deeply of the cup of grief
     that comes from the darkness of the well.
Drink deeply of the suffering water;
     taste the bitterness of your own small hell.

But drink steadily and more deeply still:
     find the others in the bottom of the chalice.
Taste now the compassion and the love;
     discover a unity that is peace, without malice.

What started out as only yours
     has become all of ours.
The grief, the joy are both down there;
     drink deeply of their healing powers.

Control

Perhaps, if I tread quietly,
the shadows will not see me,
and I shall creep around them__
soul screaming for the light.

If open wide I keep my eyes,
the night will not absorb me,
and I shall lock the sun
in my unblinking gaze.

If I chant out loud my litanies,
the silence will not seize me,
and I will hear the comfort
of my own proud song.

If I grasp my treasures tightly—
filling every little space—
there’ll be no room for me to make
an empty place for God.

            Edwina Gately

Campfires

Day turns to night,
light to dark,
and I wonder…

Shouldn’t we all build a campfire in our backyard?
Shouldn’t we all slow down at the end of our day,
release our restless spirits,
and tend a fire?
Lay kindling tenderly.
Feel the textures of thin, twisted twigs
that will soon become energy and light.
They will become fire,
and as they do…

We should stand silently for a time
transfixed by the dancing light of a backyard campfire.

There in the glow of the unfettered light
we should remain
until our skin,
our spirits
are warmed and lifted as a spark…
or was that a firefly that now carries the
weight of my day
and raises my eyes Heavenward?

From the fire of this darkened earth,
through air and space,
to stars in a darkened galaxy…

Are we not called
to the light,
to create light,
to become light?

Perhaps if each of us could just
build a campfire at the end of our day,
and sleep for a night to the sound
of its crackling
and the stars twinkling…

And if we could
witness with our own eyes,
the rising of light out of darkness
the next morning…

We, like kindling, could become fire,
could become warmth,
could become light.

And somehow another living being might find
a spark of hope through us…

And somewhere another handful of kindling
might be laid,
and fireflies might be witnessed
soaring upward into the night.

            Kathy Fuller Guiswite

St. Clare, Abbess at Assisi, Founder of the Poor Clares, 1253
And St. Mary, the Mother of Jesus,

HOLY GOD, we praise you for Clare and Mary, one single, one a mother.  When faced with your call, both said yes to you, the God of love.  Whether we are called like Clare, to be single and childless, or like Mary, to be mothers [or fathers], help us live our lives lovingly and faithfully.  Empower us to respond yes to your call so your love may abound in this world and the next, in the name of Jesus, Mary’s son, and the power of the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary and empowered Clare.  Amen.

Christ

It happens:
the Creator loves
Creation so much
and finds it so
wonderful that
like a passionate
mother or lover
desire overtakes Her—
She finds a way
to enter it,
to experience it
as completely
as possible,
limitations and all.

            Alla Renee Bozarth

O God, animate us to cheerfulness. May we have a joyful sense of our blessings, learn to look on the bright circumstances of out lot, and maintain a perpetual contentedness. Preserve us from despondency and from yielding to dejection. Teach us that nothing can hurt us if, with true loyalty of affection, we keep Thy commandments and take refuge in Thee.

            William E. Channing

Prayer for Taking Out the Garbage

Creator God, declaring all things good in their right time and relation, you know also the toxicity of things that have been too long in the refrigerator, on the kitchen counter, in our hearts’ cupboards. Bless and cheer us as we peer reluctantly into our covered dishes and saucepans. Grant us discernment and resolve as we dump our trash and carry our foul scraps to the transforming compost of your universe. All our needs we present to you in the renewing hope of your Spirit and the healing purity of your Son our Savior. Amen.

Lois Clark (Creek), Teacher, Author, Instrumental in Establishing Saint’s Day for David Oakerhater, 1985

JESUS, you broke the conventions of your day to affirm faith when you saw it.  We praise you for the life of Lois Clark, a teacher and author, who followed your example and persistently exhorted the National Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. to establish a feast day for David Pendleton Oakerhater.  Thank you for giving this petite woman such a dynamic spirit and so strong a sense of the need to proclaim David Oakerhater’s witness in our churches.  We here and now also proclaim Lois’s witness to you and to the Episcopal Church.  Help us to speak the truth lovingly, yet firmly, when we are called to do so.  We pray in your name, Jesus.  Amen.

THINKING ABOUT PAUL CELAN

Saint Celan,
stretched on the cross
of survival,

pray for us. You
at last could endure
no more. But we

live and live,
blithe in a world
where children kill children.

We shake off
the weight of
our own exemption,

we flourish, we exceed
our allotted days.

Saint Celan,
pray for us
that we receive
at least a bruise,
blue, blue, unfading,
we who accept survival.

Denise Levertov

The creative operation of
God does not simply mold us like soft clay.
It is a Fire that animates all it touches,
a spirit that gives life.
So it is in living
that we should give ourselves to that creative action,
imitate it, and
identify with it.

Teilhard de Chardin

Matter was not ultra-materialized
as I would at first have believed,
but was instead metamorphosed into Psyche.
Spirit was by no means the enemy
on the opposite pole of the Tangibility
which it was seeking to attain:
rather it was its very heart.

Matter and Spirit:
These were no longer two things
but two states
or two aspects of one and the same cosmic Stuff,
according to whether it was looked at
or carried further in the direction
in which it is becoming itself
or in the direction in which it is disintegrating.
            Matter is the Matrix of Spirit.
            Spirit is the higher state of Matter.

            Teilhard de Chardin

For the past century
(and more recently, during the wars)
there have been many points
on which there has been failure on our part
to understand the anxieties and desires of the Earth;
by not sharing in the great instinctive currents
that control the direction of natural Life,
we have found ourselves
obliged to fall back on the academic counsels
of “human prudence.”

            Teilhard de Chardin

Except in some exceptional cases
the “other” usually appears to be the worst danger
that our personality meets in the whole course
of its development.
The other is a nuisance.
The other must be got out of the way.
The persons in the street get in my way
because I collide with them as possible rivals.
I shall like them
as soon as I see them as partners
in the struggle.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Still lost in a crowd of our kind,
we turn away from a plurality which disturbs us.
We cannot love millions of strangers.
By revealing to each one
that a part of ourselves exist in all the rest,
the sense of the Earth is now bringing into sight
a new principle of universal affection
among the mass of human beings:
            the devoted liking of one element for another
within a single world in progress.

Teilhard de Chardin

Human units grow closer together,
not merely under the pressure of external forces
or solely by the performance of material acts,
but directly,
center to center through internal attraction.
Not through coercion, or enslavement to a common task
but through unanimity in a common spirit.

In order to unify ourselves
or to unite with others,
we must change,
   renounce,
        give ourselves;
and this violence to ourselves partakes of pain.
Every advance in personalization must be paid for:
   so much union,
      so much suffering.

            Teilhard de Chardin

What a vast ocean of human suffering
spreads over the entire Earth at every moment!
Of what is this mass formed?
Of blackness, gaps and rejections?
No, let me repeat, of potential energy.
In suffering, the ascending force of the world
is concealed in a very intense form.
The whole question is how to liberate it and give it a consciousness of its significance
 and potentialities.
The world would leap high towards God
if all the sick together were to turn their pain into
a common desire that the kingdom of God
should come to
rapid fruition through the conquest
and organization of the Earth.
May all the sufferers of the Earth
join their sufferings,
so that the world’s pain
might become a great and unique act of consciousness,
elevation,
    and union.

Do not brace yourself against suffering.
Try to close your eyes and surrender yourself,
as if to a great loving energy.
This attitude is neither weak nor absurd.
It is the only one that cannot lead us astray.
Try to “sleep,” with that active sleep of confidence
which is that of the seed in the fields of the winter.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Judging by my own case, I would say
that the great temptation of this century is
(and will increasingly be)
that we find the World of nature,
of life, and of humankind greater,
closer,
more mysterious,
more alive,
than the God of Scripture.

I am afraid too,
like all my fellow humans,
of the future too heavy with mystery
and too wholly new,
towards which time is driving me.

            Teilhard de Chardin

What I want, my God,
is that by a reversal of focus
which you alone can bring about,
my terror in the face of nameless changes
destined to renew my being
may be turned into an overflowing joy
at being transformed into you.

Christianity
does not ask us to live in the shadow of the Cross
but in the fire of its creative action.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Chosenness

I REALLY LIKE the idea of chosenness because it is sort of one degree beyond acceptance.  We’re all accepted, but more than that, we are chosen, and that gives us a role we have to discover and carry out—a responsibility.  It also gives us, if we can experience being chosen, the sense that we were wanted.  Our lives are not accidental.

            We can disappoint God.  God can weep over us, you know.

            The wonderful parable of the prodigal son is a great image of God.  With all that the father did, he could not stop the son from saying, “To hell with you, Dad.  I’m leaving!”  But whatever the son did, he could not destroy the love of the father.  And that’s a remarkable image of God.  I always like to remember that it was Jesus who told that parable—Jesus who knew more than anybody else what God was like.

            Verna Dozier

By virtue of the Creation
and, still more of the Incarnation,
nothing here below is profane for those
who know how to see.

            Teilhard de Chardin

The powers
that we have released
could not possibly be absorbed
 by the narrow system of individual or national units
which the architects of the human Earth have hitherto used.
The age of nations has passed.
Now unless we wish to perish
      we must shake off our old prejudices
and build the Earth.

Teilhard de Chardin

Theoretically,
this transformation of love is quite possible.
What paralyzes life is failure to believe
and failure to dare.
The day will come when,
after harnessing space,
   the winds,
the tides,
   and gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of love.
And, on that day, for the second time
in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Up until now,
to adore has meant
to prefer God to things by referring them to God
and by sacrificing them to God.
Now adoration means
the giving of our body and soul to creative activity,
joining that activity to God
to bring the world to fulfillment
     by effort
and intellectual exploration.

            Teilhard de Chardin

It is
first by the Incarnation
and next by the Eucharist
that Christ organizes us for himself
and imposes himself upon us.
By his incarnation
he inserted himself not just into humanity
  but into the universe which supports humanity.

            Teilhard de Chardin

It seems to be that in a sense
the true substance to be consecrated each day
is the world’s development during that day—
the bread
symbolizing appropriately
what creation succeeds in producing,
the wine (blood)
what creation causes to be lost
in exhaustion and suffering
  in the course of its effort.

I will make the whole Earth my altar
and on it will offer You all the labors
and sufferings of the world.

            Teilhard de Chardin

Over every living
thing which is to spring up,
   to grow,
to flower,

to ripen during this day,
say again the words; This is my Body.
And over every death-force
which awaits in readiness to corrode,
to wither,
   to cut down,
speak again your commanding words
which express the supreme mystery of faith:
            This is my Blood.

                        Teilhard de Chardin

For you, there is only one road
that can lead to God and this is fidelity
   to remain constantly true to yourself,
to what you feel is highest in you.
The road will open before you as you go.

            Teilhard de Chardin

The future is more beautiful than all the pasts.

A fresh kind of life is starting.

            Teilhard de Chardin

A thoughtful piece for consideration in Lent

            We are wont to vilify particularly egregious emergences of ignorance as evil.  This allows us to assert categorically our own identification with goodness in contradistinction.  It is a gross and ultimately unhelpful gloss, even if there are elements of truth in it.  Both views, of others as evil and of ourselves as good, may be better characterized as ignorant.  For both ignore the fundamental disease, the one that manifests in human beings when we fall prey to unawareness of the preciousness of life, and wantonly or witlessly harm others in seeking pleasure and power for ourselves.  In the Book of Psalms, evil is often referred to as “wickedness” but perhaps a better rendering would be “heedlessness,” an inattention to the full spectrum of the inner and outer landscape of our experience.  This inattention allows us to artificially separate self from other, the “I” from the “Thou,” to de-sacralize the world and thus make it predicated on division, on artificial separation and boundaries.  We forget or never recognize a deeper underlying unity that allows for greater possibility, for the emergence of new degrees of freedom and greater latitude in our maneuverability and conduct, both in our interior lives and within the vast diversity which is the world.

Beloved God,
Show me the truth about this.
I now surrender all fears, doubts, and judgments, and
invite the light of perfect consciousness to
illuminate my path.
Pure love is present here and now, as God lives in
every person I meet.
I send love and appreciation to all my associates,
knowing with perfect confidence that he or she
is guided by the same Great Spirit that guides me.
I am not separate from my brothers and sisters, but
one with them.
I trust that my highest good is unfolding before me,
and I accept the very best that love and life have to offer.
I am worthy of living in the kingdom of Heaven, even
as I walk the earth.  I claim it now.
Thank you, God, for loving me infinitely, and opening
all doors for the highest good of all concerned.
I receive Your love, and magnify it.
And so it is.

            Alan Cohen in “Prayers for Healing”

You carry the cure within you.
Everything that comes your way is blessed.
The Creator gives you one more day.
Stand on the neck of Fearful Mind.

Do not wait to open your heart.
Let yourself go into the Mystery.
Sometimes the threads have no weave.
The price of not loving yourself is high.

            Jim Cohn in ‘Prayers for Healing”

A Communion of Sinners

The church…remains the church of the baptized and, therefore, a communion of sinners.  All baptized persons belong to it, no matter what their works may seem to be.  Renunciation of its claims to “purity” leads the church back to its solidarity with the sinful world.  Through courageous acknowledgment of its being world, the church is perfectly free from the world to become Christian.  It has no more respect for the “shrines” of the world.  Fact to face with outcasts, it is as free as the nobility.  It has as its place not only with the poor but also with the rich; not only with the pious, but also with the Godless.  All are world.  It faces both groups with the same impartiality.  There is no sphere from which it distances itself out of anxiety over going astray.  Faith has completely conquered the world both for the outcast and for the rich.  Only this kind of church is wholly free, the church that confesses its secularity and thereby claims to be an ecclesia perfecta, or perfect church.

A Child of Luck

Once I feel bad, it takes chocolate
or maybe a trumpet gone silver
in the air to redeem the time,
but always till now some coin
flips, and the chance is mine.

Remember when Mother died?—
the birds wouldn’t stop calling
their names, and a redbird sang
autumn to flame.  My ears
opened; they drank that song.

Every street in our town, every farm
on the way to forever, gladdens
my life.  Listen—how loud
all conspires:  I hear
the days coming, that chocolate sound.

            William Stafford in “Even in Quiet Places”

The deeply buried feminine in those whose concern is the unbroken connection of all growing things is in passionate revolt against the stultifying, life-destroying anonymous machine of the civilization that we have built.

When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);
when the ill that is to diminish me
or carry me off strikes from without
or is born within me;
when the painful moment comes in which I suddenly waken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;
and above all at the last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive in the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;
in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibers of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance
and bear me away within yourself.

            Teilhard de Chardin from “Prayer for Healing”

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again

            Judy Chicago from “Life’s Prayers”

Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain.  We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top.

At the peak we have transcended all pain.  The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind—our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister, our tormented animals and friends.  Their suffering continues, unrelieved by our personal escape.

In the process of discovering our true nature, the journey goes down, not up.  It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.  Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt.  We jump into it.  We slide into it.  We tiptoe into it.  We move toward it however we can.  We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.  If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we will let it be as it is.  At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down.  With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear.  At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of compassion.  Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.