I called through your door,
“The mystics are gathering
in the street.  Come out!”

“Leave me alone.
I’m sick.”

“I don’t care if you’re dead!”
Jesus is here and he wants
to resurrect somebody!”

Rumi

If we have developed the necessary mental discipline and are
sufficiently aware of what is happening inside us, there is no
reason why we cannot choose to express only those thoughts
that will bring happiness to ourselves and others.  The whole
world might rise against us, but if the ability to control our mind
were well developed, we could still view everyone as our friend
rather than cower with fear and hatred.

Dear God,

I give this day to You. 
May my mind stay centered on the things of spirit.

May I not be tempted to stray from love.
As I begin this day, I open to receive You.
Please enter where You already abide.

May my mind and heart be pure and true,
and may I not deviate from the things of goodness.

May I see the love and innocence in all mankind [sic],
behind the masks we all wear and the illusions of this worldly plane.

I surrender to You my doings this day.
I ask only that they serve You in the healing of the world.

May I bring Your love and goodness with me, to
give unto others wherever I go.

Make me the person You would have me be.
Direct my footsteps, and show me what You would have me do.

Make the world a safer, more beautiful place.
Bless all your creatures.

Heal us all, and use me, dear Lord, that I might know the joy of being used by You.

                                                                                                            Amen.

                                                                        Marianne Williamson from Illuminata

O Lord,

I am caught in that moment of half-light,
the breathless point of balance between sun and moon.
As I bid farewell to the cold purification of the night,
in that same movement, I fling wide my arms
to be embraced by the warmth and glory of the sun,
knowing that in due time I will bow to the receding light
and open my arms to darkness once again.

Thus, O Lord, You come into our lives,
in the blaze of splendour, the certainty of Your presence,
in the times of aridity and isolation, even to the point of despair.
Throughout this continuing journeying,
from the zenith of midday to the depths of midnight
and back to blinding noontide, we grow towards You,
the true light, that shines like the sun beyond darkness, forever.

                        ISHPRIYA R.S.C.J.

It’s not for us to know if Mary’s pain
Was dark or light, or how the labor went,
Or whether Joseph’s energies were spent
Evicting some reluctant beast to gain
A corner of a manger’s rich terrain
For purposes obstetric. Was he sent
To beggar, when the need was evident,
The help of women skilled in their domain?
It’s left to our imagining to square the rigors of the manger with the crèche,
To hear the muffled cry, to mark the stretch
And push a birthing God might bring to bear.
The image of the crèche is sweet and light,
But Lord, was there no blood and sweat that night?

                        Christopher Fitzgerald  from Sonnets to the Unseen

Loving others does not mean that we should forget ourselves.
                        His Holiness the Dalai Lama from Imagine all the People

Owning love is like trying to take possession of the air.
                       Rodney Smith, from Lessons from the Dying

When we trust God with our whole heart, we don’t fill our prayers with “Give me this” or “Take this from me.”  We don’t even think of ourselves when we pray.  At every moment we trust our Father in heaven, whose love infinitely surpasses the love of all earthly fathers and who gives us more than we ourselves could ask for or even imagine.

                        Isaac of Nineveh (6^th century)

I arise, facing East.
I am asking toward the light,
I am asking that my day
Shall be beautiful with light.
I am asking that the place
Where my feet are shall be light,
That as far as I can see
I shall follow it aright.
I am asking for the courage
To go forward through the shadow,
I am asking toward the light.

                                                  Mary Austin

I’m an Indian

I think about common things like this pot.
The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud.
It represents the sky.
The fire comes from the sun
which warms us all, men, (sic) animals, trees.
The meat stands for the four-legged creatures,
our animal brothers,
who gave of themselves so that we should live.
The steam is living breath.
It was water, now it goes up to the sky,
becomes a cloud again.
These things are sacred.
Looking at that pot full of good soup,
I am thinking how, in this simple manner,
The great Spirit takes care of me.

Dear God,
Please bless and protect this sacred jewel,
Our vulnerable planet so besieged.
May the rivers and the oceans and the sky and the land
All be repaired somehow, dear Lord.
May the barbarism end, which threatens to destroy our priceless treasure.
For surely the earth has been our home,
The home of our parents unto all generations.
For the sake of our children, Lord,
Save this earth.
Place in all our minds a greater awe before her mysteries.
Shield her and heal her wounds.
Restore her to her former glory.
Save her Lord, from us.
Amen.

                        Marianne Williamson  from Illuminata

I  Just Laugh

If I told you the truth about God,
you might think I was an
idiot.

If I lied to you about the Beautiful One
you might parade me through the streets shouting,
 “This guy is a genius!”

This world has its pants on backwards.

Most carry their values and knowledge in a jug
that has a big hole in it.

Thus having a clear grasp of the situation
if I am asked anything these days

                        I just laugh!

                        Kabir

If we divide into two camps—even into the violent and the nonviolent—and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace.  We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in ourselves.  We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.

                        Ayya Khema   Be An Island

Thinking of human beings alone is a bit narrow.  To consider that all sentient beings in the universe have been our mother at some point in time opens a space of compassion.

I pray, O Lord, that today I may know with keener awareness that I am in thy hands; well or ill, happy or sad, at work or at play, with others or alone, may I become increasingly conscious that I dwell within thy purposeful providence.

Illness does not mean punishment or thy disfavour.  Fun is not “secular.”  The trifles of my life do not forfeit thine interest in me.

Grant me the sense of thy presence, born of thine indwelling and of thine enfolding love, and let me increasingly pause to recollect that , in every circumstance, I live within thy life and am always the object of thy care.

I bathe my face
In the nine rays of the sun,
As Mary bathed her Son
   In the rich fermented milk.

Honey be in my mouth,
Affection be in my face;
The love that Mary gave her Son
   Be in the heart of all flesh for me.

In the slaughterhouse of love, they kill
only the best, none of the weak or deformed. 
Don’t run away from this dying.
Whoever’s not killed for love is dead meat.

                                    Rumi

Act as if everything depended on you;
            Trust as if everything depended on God.

So many of our problems arise because we always feel cut off from something we need.  We do not feel whole and therefore turn expectantly toward other people for the qualities we imagine missing in ourselves.  All of the problems of the world, from one person’s anxiety to warfare between nations, can be traced to this feeling of not being whole.

                        Lama Thubten Yeshe from Introduction to Tantra         

I, the blazing life of divine wisdom,
I set alight the beauty of the plains,
I radiate the waters,
I glow in the Sun and the Moon and the stars.

I beautify the Earth.

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that makes the fields laugh with the pleasure of life.

I call up tears, the perfume of holy work.
I am the yearning for good.

I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.  

            Rumi

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

It Was Like This

It was neither the Herod in me
nor the Pilate that spoke, it was
the mob’s mocking voice, no wonder
you cried out as if a spear tipped
with anger touched love’s flesh
this autumn day.  How dare I call
for the judgment?  After three weary
days (who breaks faith lives with
guilt), the bright spirit hid in the
crypt, you mourned as Martha but as
the angel rolled the stone away and
love rose up in time for me to ask
forgiveness.

Immersion

There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder,
because of God’s silence.  But how naïve,
to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves,
English, Urdu, Tagalog, the French of Tours ,

     the French of Haiti …
     Yes, that was one way omnipotence chose
     to address us—Hebrew, Aramaic, or whatever the patriarchs
     chose in their turn to call what they heard.  Moses
     demanded the word, spoken and written.  But perfect freedom
     assured other ways of speech.  God is surely
     patiently trying to immerse us in a different language,
     events of grace, horrifying scrolls of history
     and the unearned retrieval of blessings lost for ever,
     the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent. 

God’s abstention is only from human dialects.  The holy voice
utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents. 
Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and to answer.

            Denise Levertov

It is not so much work that tires us, but ego-driven work. When we are selfishly involved, we cannot help worrying; we cannot help getting overly concerned about our success of failure. It is the preoccupation with results that makes us tense. Our very anxiety exhausts us.
           For the majority of us, uncertainty is worse than disaster: disaster comes to us only rarely; worry depletes us often. We never know whether we are going to get a brick or a bouquet. If we knew for certain a brick was on its way, there would be no anxiety. We would just say, “Throw it and be done with it.”
         We should learn how to handle both bricks and bouquets, praise and censure, success and defeat. When we can say, “Whatever disasters come, we will not be afraid because the Lord is within us,” this resoluteness and faith will enable us to work free from tension, agitation and fear of defeat. The person who works with this attitude is always at pace, because eh or she is not anxious about the results.

I am of the family of the universe, and with all of us together I do not fear being alone; I can reach out and touch a rock or a hand or dip my feet in water. Always there is some body close by, and when I speak I am answered by a plane’s roar or the bird’s whistling or the voices of others in conversation far apart from me. When I life down to sleep, I am in the company of the dark and the stars. 

            Breathe to me, sheep in the meadow. Sun and moon, my father and my father’s brother, kiss me on the brow with your light. My sister, earth, holds me up to be kissed. Sun and moon, I smile at you both and spread my arms in affection and lay myself down at full length for the earth to know I love it too and am never to be separated from it. In no way shall death part us.

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)

And I thought over again
My small adventures
As with a shore-wind I drifted out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger,

My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:
To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.

Imperfect Servant
            (for those who want to change the world…)

Give up perfection for just one day.
Feel yourself a creature of flesh and bone,
walk around in the cold, wind chafing
your face, joints jarring as your warn
soles pound concrete.

Keep walking till you face
your deepest failure—not
with clenched fists, not blinded

by shame, but with a detached
curiosity that opens to
compassion. Finger

the glazed wound tenderly
as you would caress the gash
in Christ’s side.  Wear it lightly
as God’s fingerprints.  You see
one doesn’t have to travel far

to know suffering, though you
may carry it to the ends of the desert
before you discover it’s yours.
Before you discover the light
failure lets into the darkness

of the private soul.  Polished
by forgiveness, our failures
are the only possible windows
through which to truly see
another human being.

All else is mirrors
and an endless craving
for reflection of our own worthiness.
Remember Christ was wounded
so he could be like you.

            Ann Hostetler

            In All Things

            It was easy to love God in all that
                        was beautiful.

The lessons of deeper knowledge, though, instructed me
            to embrace God in all
                        things.

            Francis of Assisi

IF IT HAD NOT BELIEVED

Would any seed take root if it had not believed
            His promise, when God said,

“Dears, I will rain. I will help you.  I will turn into
            warmth and effulgence.

            I will be the Mother I am
                        and let you draw from
                                     My body

                                     and rise, and
                                                 rise.”

            Thomas Aquinas

Normal Day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taught, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.

I WOULD CEASE TO BE

God
dissolved
my mind — my separation.

I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him.
How dependent is your body’s life on water and food and air?

I said to God, “I will always be unless you cease to Be,”
and my Beloved replied, “And I
would cease to Be
if you
died.”

            Teresa of Avila

And now I wish to pray and perform
 a ritual of my devotion to the sun.
I will bow and sing beneath my breath,
then perform the dance of farewell
and my confidence in the sun’s return.

All is dance; the sun glides along the horizon;
 now the leaves sway;
now the earth spins.

            David Ignatow

Act as if everything depended upon you.
Trust as if everything depended upon God.

            Saint Ignatius

I HAVE COME INTO THIS WORLD TO SEE THIS

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His—the Christ’s our Beloved’s.

I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as
we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way
to even a greater being of soul,
a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play with Him.

I have come into this world to hear this:
every song the earth has song since it was conceived in
the Divine’s womb and began spinning from His wish,

every song by wing and fin and hoof,
every song by hill and field and tree and woman and child,
every song of stream and rock,

every song of tool and lyre and flute,
every song of gold and emerald and fire,
every song the heart should cry with magnificent dignity to know itself as God;

For all other knowledge will leave us again in want and aching—
only imbibing the glorious Sun will complete us.

I have come into the world to experience this:
            men so true to love
they would rather die before speaking an unkind word,

men so true their lives are His covenant—the promise of hope.

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men’s hands even at the height of their arc of rage

because we have finally realized there is just one flesh

we can wound.

            Hafiz

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.  Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

            Washington Irving from “The Sketchbook”

Introspection

Thanksgiving to you, Sister Bear, for calling me to introspective hibernation.  I am grateful for a time of rest, a time of rejuvenation, a time of return to Mother Earth for replenishing and recharging.  Thank you for the fallow times that precede creativity and growth, for the generative quiet and gentle darkness that precede the bursting forth of new life.  Thank you for the tranquil places where nurture provides new direction and new inspiration.  Thank you for plentiful times of relaxation and recreation so that I might have the insight and the stamina to realize the dreams that call to me in the night.  Thank you, my relative, for taking my message of gratitude to Great Spirit this day for all the blessings of this life.  I have spoken.

Invocation

All you powers
All holies,
All things come alive,
All spirits of play,
All ancient sources

Of wisdom and song,
All creatures’
Choirs invoke you

God of Living Things
God of words alive
In our flesh,

Today we call you down:
Touch us with tongues
That leap into flame.
Today we call you up:
Circle and center
Among us,
Teach us
The Dance,

Teach us the magic
Deep Reality that
Renews our spirits
Transforming the face
Of the Earth.

Come up from within us
Come out from among us
Poets of the dance
Of colors and clay
Of cloth and food
Of animal joy
And labor of bones,

All graces
All dreams
All somber
And sillinesses
We offer,

The Wisdom of Poetry,
The Playmate of God.

Alla Renee Bozarth

IMMERSION

There is anger abroad in the world, a numb thunder,
because of God’s silence. But how naïve,
to keep wanting words we could speak ourselves,
English, Urdu, Tagalog, the French of Tours,
the French of Haiti…

                        Yes, that was one way omnipotence chose
to address us—Hebrew, Aramaic, or whatever the patriarchs
chose in their turn to call what they heard. Moses
demanded the word, spoken and written. But perfect freedom
assured other ways of speech. God is surely
patiently trying to immerse us in a different language,
events of grace, horrifying scrolls of history
and the unearned retrieval of blessings lost for ever,
the poor grass returning after drought, timid, persistent.
God’s abstention is only from human dialects. The holy voice
utters its woe and glory in myriad musics, in signs and portents.
Our own words are for us to speak, a way to ask and to answer.

            Denise Levertov

Spiritual direction for our future is informed by spiritual reconciliation with our past.  Who we are, what we are, however it is we’ve gotten to be where we are, God knows, God lures, God loves.  I would call this God’s “conditional love.”  Life is inescapably full of conditions and circumstances, changes and chances, and God’s love for us is there and present in it all.

Curtis G. Almquist, SSJE from “God’s Conditional Love: The Inner Work of Reconciliation” in I Have Called You Friends