T

Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.

                                                                                                May Sarton

Surrender

Powerlessness is not a modern virtue.  The people of our age—that is , we, are not easily obsequious, no matter who we are.  We take classlessness seriously; much as it does not really exist.  We are persons with some kind of power, we insist, however fanciful, however much a myth.  We seriously think we have rights and voice and place.  It’s a strange contradiction.  In this world of megacorporations and global networks and nuclear threat and invisible international links, the individual has never been so assertive—and never been so powerless.

Life is, for the most part, out of our control.  We boast about democratic participation and watch votes discarded in national elections at the whim and fancy of a few.  We glory in the impregnability of our national defense system and watch the economic center of the country go down in two minutes under the blow of two commercial airliners, our own, while we stand helplessly by.  We see rivers clog up and air go gray and land go to dust around us and there’s not a thing we can do about it. Then we turn on our television sets and realize that someone, in the name of justice and on our behalf, is now raining down another kind of terror on innocent people half a world away.

Then only surrender is possible.  But not the kind of surrender that gives over conscience and humanity to the inhumanity of others.  We must now surrender to the obligation to understand and to care.  We must surrender ourselves to becoming conscious, thinking members of the human race.  We must put down the temptation to powerlessness and surrender to the questions of the moment.

It is not a matter of changing what cannot be changed.  It is a matter of refusing to allow what ought to be changed to conform us to itself.  Perhaps there is nothing we can do but surrender ourselves to pursuing the question of why it is that now in this great and glorious world nothing can be done for those whose lives are dismally inglorious.  That alone would be an act of hope to many and a spark of hope in my own soul.  It would tell me that I am still alive, that my soul at least has not died at the hands of the culture of death around me.

                        Sr. Joan D. Chittister  Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope

The Buddhist tradition teaches that it is important to cultivate lovingkindness.  To do this, we change how we treat people, animals, and all things.  We direct love and compassion their way.  This means handling objects gently, avoiding loud speech, and refraining from roughness of all kinds.  Our spirit is in our hands.

“The practice of touching things deeply on the horizontal level gives us the capacity to touch God….We can touch the nomenal world by touching the phenomenal world deeply.”  Thich Nhat Hanh

Jon M. Sweeney   Praying with Our Hands

We must die to each moment and allow life to express itself through us.  Our lives may not turn out the way in which the ego has imagined, but when we surrender to the truth of what is, we will find freedom beyond measure, as surely as the river finds its way to the sea.

                                    Matthew Flickstein from Swallowing the River Ganges

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

On the Mystery of the Incarnation

It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dophin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of our compassion for our ugly failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother, the Word.

                        Denise Levertov from The Stream and the Sapphire

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

Your journey has blessed ours, Mary.
Your Yes dares us
to believe in the impossible,
to embrace the unknown,
and to expect the breaking through of mystery
onto our bleak and level horizons. 
The words you heard, Mary,
We will forever remember.
We will not be afraid,
for the life that you birthed
will not be extinguished in our souls.
And the journey you took in faithfulness,
we also take.
We the women, the midwives,
and the healers will also, like you Mary, soul sister,
Give birth to God
for our world.

                        Edwina Gately  from Soul Sisters

A Song of Christ’s Goodness

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.

Jesus, by your dying, we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness, we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.

Lord Jesus, in your mercy, heal us;
 in your love and tenderness, remake us.

In your compassion, bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us.

                        Anselm of Canterbury , Canticle Q from Enriching our Worship

A shade are you in the heat O God
A shelter are you in the cold.
Eyes are you to the blind O God
A staff are you to the weak.
An island are you at sea O God
A rock are you on land.
O my soul’s healer
Keep me at evening
Keep me at morning
Keep me at noon .
I am tired, astray and stumbling
Shield me from sin.
O my soul’s healer
Shield me from sin.

            A prayer in the Celtic tradition  Philip Newell in Each Day and Each Night

We awaken in Christ’s body
As Christ awakens our bodies
And my poor hand is Christ.
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand
Becomes Christ, becomes all of Him.
(for God is indivisibly whole, seamless in his Godhead.)

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous?
Then open your heart to Him

And let yourself receive the One
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him
We take up inside Christ’s body

Where all our body, all over
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him.
And He makes us, utterly, real

And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably
Damaged, is in Him transformed.

And recognized as whole, as lovely
And radiant in His light;
We awaken as the Beloved
In every last part of our body.

                        Simeon the New Theologian (Greek Orthodox Abbot, 949-1022)

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:  Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.  Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.  Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.  Instead, fix your attention on God.  You’ll be changed from the inside out.  Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.  Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. 

I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you.  Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God.  No, God brings it all to you.  The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

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         

Suscipe Me: Accept me, O Lord, just as I am, in my frailty, in my inadequacy, my contradictions, my confusion. Accept me in my complexity. Help me to so live with what I am that what I am may become my way to you.

            Esther deWaal from Living with Contradictions

Teach your children

what we have taught our children---
that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. 
If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know.
The earth does not belong to us; we belong to the earth.
This we know.
All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life;
We are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do it to ourselves…

                        Chief Seattle

Share your love, your wisdom, and your wealth and serve each other as much as possible. Live in harmony with one another and be an example of peace, love, compassion and wisdom. Try to be happy in your practice, to be satisfied with your life. Be reasonable in the way you grow, and don’t ever think that it is too late. And don’t be afraid of death. Even if you are going to die tomorrow, at least for today keep yourself straight and clean-clear, and be a happy human being.

Lama Thubten Yeshe,  from The Bliss of Inner Fire

A Celtic style prayer for evening

Safeguard your faithful people in the sanctuary of your love O God.
Shelter them this night in the shelter of the saints.
God to enfold them
God to surround them
God in their watching
God in their hoping
God in their sleeping
God in their ever-living souls.

Since Thou Christ it was who didst buy the soul---

At the time of yielding the life,
At the time of pouring the sweat,
At the time of offering the clay,
At the time of shedding the blood,
At the time of balancing the beam,
At the time of shedding the blood,
At the time of severing the breath,
At the time of delivering the judgment,
Be its peace upon Thine own ingathering;
Jesus Christ Son of gentle Mary,
Be its peace upon Thine own ingathering.
            O Jesus!upon Thine own ingathering.

And may Michael white kindly,
High king of the holy angels,
Take possession of the beloved soul,
And shield it home to the Three of surpassing love,
            Oh! To the three of surpassing love.

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.

The Sky Gave me its Heart

The sky gave me its heart
because it knew mine was not large enough to care
for the earth the way it did.

Why is it we think of God so much? 
Why is there so much talk about love?

When an animal is wounded
no one has to tell it, “You need to heal”; so naturally it will nurse
itself the best it can.

My eye kept telling me, “Something is missing
from all I see.”  So it went in search of the cure.

The cure for me was His Beauty, the remedy—
for me was to love.

Rabia, 8^th c. Muslim woman

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

The sun
She
is setting
in the tall grass
beneath the pines

where the heart
beats
one with the land

where the mule deer
approach
their antlers raised
where with palms
upturned
we pray

            Charlie Mehrhoff

In His Sanity

If all the tenderness in this world could reflect from my eyes, would you accept that love?
If all the forgiveness the heavens have known could be offered from one face,
            would you accept that divine pardon?
In His sublime sanity—every moment God offers that to us:
            anything that might comfort.

The Supreme, radiant Being that dwells in our own consciousness cannot be attained by any amount of reasoning, for this Being is one and indivisible, beyond all duality. But by loving Him “with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our strength,” we can come to live in Him completely. When we learn to love Her more than we love ourselves, our consciousness is unified.

It is all very well to talk about the Ultimate Reality, the Great Void, but we cannot love a Void. Here it is that we need the Lord in an aspect we can love and understand—the Supreme Poet, the sustainer and protector of all, from whom we came into existence and to whom we shall return. We need a divine ideal like Sri Krishna, Jesus the Christ, the Compassionate Buddha, or the Divine Mother.

There is nothing abstract about this kind of love, nothing philosophical. Loving the Lord means loving the innermost Self in all those around us. We need only somehow to increase our capacity to love—because we do not live in what we think; we live in what we love.

            Eknath Easwaren

Jack Kornfield writes, “The ground of love is found beyond judgment and blame.”  He goes on to quote Alexander Solzenitsyn:

If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere else insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were simply necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The Silk Worm

                        I stood before a silk worm one day.
                        And that night my heart said to me,

“I can do things like that, I can spin skies,
I can be woven into love that can bring warmth to people;
                        I can be soft against a crying face,
I can be wings that lift, and I can travel on my thousand feet
throughout the earth,
my sacks filled
with the
sacred.”

                        And I replied to my heart,
            “Dear, can you really do all those things?”

            And it just nodded, “Yes” in silence.

            So we began and will never cease.

            Rumi

Scripture is teaching us not to count anybody out. Scripture is telling us to be open to surprise. Scripture is telling us that every person we meet is a potential source of life for us if there is only enough heart in us to accept it.

Everyone we meet in life is on a mission to teach us something new. Surprise!

Brothers of the sea,
Look at the stars,
Look at the deep blue
And set the world free.
Our right is to live and be free;
Freedom will not come from outside.
It is only in ourselves united.

            Samar Fishermen’s Song, Philippines

I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. I am still pursued by a neurosis inherited from my father. A day where one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. No so!  The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room, not try to be or do anything whatever.

     May Sarton

The Song of St. Michael

Crossing over the deepest ford
O King of Patience, take their hand,
For fear of the blow of the great wave.
Mary, watch and don’t abandon them.

Peg Sayers from the Great Blasket Isle,
off the coast of Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland .

Supplication

O Being of Life!
O Being of peace!
O Being of time!
            O Being of eternity!
            O Being of eternity!

Keep me in good means,
Keep me in good intent,
Keep me in good estate,
            Better than I know to ask,
            Better than I know to ask!

Shepherd me this day,
Relieve my distress,
Enfold me this night,
            Pour upon me Thy grace,
            Pour upon me Thy grace!

Guard for me my speech,
Strengthen for me my love,
Illume for me the stream,
            Succour Thou me in death,
            Succour Thou me in death!

            From the Carmina Gadelica

The human heart can go the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now.  The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul [we humans] ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
What are you making for?  It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake?

Christopher Fry in A Sleep of Prisoners

i was cold/i was burning up/a child
 & endlessly weaving garments for the moon
 with my tears
I found god in myself
& i loved her/ i loved her fiercely

            Ntozake Shange

The Sacred Pipe

With this pipe you will be bound to all your relatives:
 your Grandfather and Father,
 your Grandmother and Mother.
This round rock,
which is made of the same red stone as the bowl of the pipe,
 your Father Wakan-Tanka has also given to you.
It is the Earth, your Grandmother and Mother,
 and it is where you will live and increase.
This Earth which he has given to you is red,
 and the two-leggeds who live upon the earth are red;
 and the Great Spirit has also given to you a red day,
 and a red road.
All of this is sacred and so do not forget!
Every dawn as it comes is a holy event,
 and every day is holy,
 for the light comes from your Father Wakan-Tanka;
and also you must always remember that the two-leggeds and all
 the other peoples who stand upon this earth are sacred
 and should be treated as such.

            Oglala Sioux Ritual

Grandfather Great Spirit
All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.
With tenderness they have come up out of the ground.
Look upon your children that they may face the winds
and walk the good road to the Day of Quiet.

Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill us with the Light.
Give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see.
Teach us to walk the soft Earth as relatives to all that live.

            Sioux Prayer

The most valuable learning is not about memorizing facts and figures. It is not about higher grade point averages and accumulating degrees. It is about life itself, and its impact is on the heart.

            Rodney Smith, Lessons from the Dying

Grandfather Great Spirit
All over the world the faces of living ones are alike.
With tenderness they have come up out of the ground.
Look upon your children that they may face the winds
 and walk the good road to the Day of Quiet.
Grandfather Great Spirit
Fill us with the Light.
Give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see.
Teach us to walk the soft Earth as relatives to all that live.

            Sioux Prayer

We must die to each moment and allow life to express itself through us. Our lives may not turn out the way in which the ego has imagined, but when we surrender to the truth of what is, we will find freedom beyond measure, as surely as the river finds its way to the sea.

Matthew Flickstein in Swallowing the River Ganges

Those first century Christians, pursued and persecuted, scorned and beleaguered as they were because of their insight, were right: the secret of the first advent is the consolation of the second advent. The message in both advents is political. It celebrates the assurance that in the coming of Jesus Christ the nations and the rulers of the nations are judged in the Word of God, which is at the same time, to announce that in the Lordship of Christ they are rendered accountable to human life and to that of the whole creation… If some have put aside the expectation, it is not because Christ is tardy and not because God has postponed the next advent, but because the consciousness of imminence has been confused or lost. I regard the situation of contemporary Christians as much the same as that of our early predecessors in the faith so far as anticipation of the Second coming matters. We expect the event at any moment. We hope for it in every moment. We live in the imminence of the Eschaton. That is the only way, for the time being, to live humanly.

            William Stringfellow

O bless this people, Lord, who seek their own face
Under the mask and can hardly recognize it…

O bless this people that breaks its bond…

And with then, all the peoples of Europe ,
All the peoples of Asia ,
All the peoples of Africa ,
All the peoples of America ,
Who sweat blood and sufferings.

And see, in the midst of these millions of waves
The sea swell of the heads of my people.
And grant to their warm hands that they may clasp
The earth in a girdle of brotherly hands,
Beneath the rainbow of thy peace.

            Leopold Sedar Senghor

Verbum Bonum

Let us sound out the world pure and sweet,
That Ave, through which the virgin, a mother’s daughter,
Became the chamber of Christ.
That Ave, mother of the true Solomon, fleece of Gideon,
Whose childbirth the magi praised with three gifts.
Ave, you who bore Daylight;
Ave, you brought forth an offspring into a fallen world
You brought life and order.
Ave, bride of the highest Word,
Safe harbour from the sea
Sign in the thornbush
Source of fragrant incense, mistress of angels,
Amend us we plea
And amended, commend us to your son
That we might have eternal joy.

Codex Las Huelgas, 14^th c. tr. Mary H. Stewart

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

To be of the Earth is to know
     the restlessness of being a seed
     the darkness of being planted          
     the struggle toward the light
     the pain of growth into the light
     the joy of bursting and bearing fruit
     the love of being food for someone
     the scattering of your seeds
     the decay of the seasons
     the mystery of death
     and the miracle of birth.

            John Soos

God stir the soil,
Run the ploughshare deep,
Cut the furrows round and round,
Overturn the hard, dry ground,
Spare no strength nor toil,
Even though I weep.
In the loose, fresh mangled earth
Sow new seed.
Free of withered vine and weed
Bring fair flowers to birth.

            Prayer from Singapore, Church Missionary Society

 (This was written specifically for women, but much of it could apply to men, too.)

            Women are receptive to therapy, I think because of their attention to the emotional aspects and need to be heard. I’m always amazed when women don’t try, or haven’t tried, therapy. Who else will listen so raptly to you?

            Ideally we would all be assigned some kind of spiritual advisor at birth. We could turn to this person all through our lives for perspective, guidance, and free advice. Some of us already have this in a parent or grandparent. The rest of us could have an “internal grandmother.”

            There is still a stigma about “going to therapy,” as though there is something wrong with you, or it is self-indulgent to pay someone to help you with psychological work. Yet we pay our car mechanics, our gynecologists, or gardeners. This is curious. What is more important than our psychological health?

            I watch women repeating patterns, acting unconsciously, or lost in depression and wonder why they don’t seek help. Of ten women will say, “I don’t know any good therapists.” Perhaps not, but other women do. Ask them. Therapy can be the acceleration out of a stagnant pattern, the support needed for an important change, the guidance for rebuilding self-esteem.

            Friends can also provide some of these things, but it’s not their profession. A dedicated therapist’s only professional purpose is your psychological health.

            SARK

Committing your ways unto the Lord seems very difficult to most people. It means, of course, to follow intuition, for intuition is the magic path, the beeline to your demonstration. Intuition is a Spiritual faculty above the intellect. It is the “still small voice” commonly called a hunch, which says, “this is the way, walk ye in it.”

Florence Scovel Shinn

The tiniest story in your life can deeply touch another.
You cannot know the effect your story can have.
    (Please let your stories be heard.)

            Sark

Desert spirituality understood that healthy grief is dynamic and transformative: it moves.  Grief can help us to touch our well of compassion and extend it toward ourselves and others. Grief can also be an opportunity to allow ourselves to rest deeply in God’s compassion.

Grief that feeds inner turmoil and refuses resolution, that moves us toward death rather than life, that leads us away from our truest selves, must be rooted out or healed. A spiritual director, mentor, or other professional can help us look at ways to let go of our grief issues and move on. This amma (mother) can help us discover resurrection in our grief.

Laura Swan writing about Amma Theodora

This is from a commentary on one of the Desert Mothers, Amma Theodora.

            Humility is honest, accepting, and loving self-knowledge and self-awareness of ourselves as fully human, created and gifted by God, balanced with a keen awareness of God’s grace and awesome presence in our life. Humility strengthens rather than diminishes our sense of self-worth.

From The Forgotten Desert Mothers by Laura Swan

It is Doubt (so often experienced initially as weakness) that changes things. When a man (sic) feels unsteady; when he falters, when hard-won knowledge evaporates before his eyes, he’s on the verge of growth. The subtle or violent reconciliation of the outer person and the inner core often seems at first like a mistake, like you’ve gone the wrong way and you’re lost. But this is just emotion longing for the familiar. Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind. Doubt is nothing less than an opportunity to reenter the Present.

            John Patrick Shanley from the introduction to “Doubt”

Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite—it is a passionate exercise. You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty.  There is no last word.  That’s the silence under the chatter of our time.

            John Patrick Shanley from the introduction to “Doubt.”

The larger the island of knowledge
The greater the shoreline of wonder.

            Huston Smith

…love is the work of a thousand tiny things. Yet often, we become so distracted by the tedium and boredom of our chores or our everyday grind that we forget the “bigger picture” we are creating through the labor of our lives and the care of our loved ones.

One way to offset that is to imagine every task in your life as a stitch in a rare and exquisite tapestry. You may not be able to see it, but when you are washing dishes, gardening, driving the car pool, sitting in a school meeting, or having a difficult conversation with a stubborn teenager, imagine to yourself that you are taking part in a masterpiece of needlework that will ultimately result in something everlasting. Like a thousands-year-old rug, the work of love you are creating will long outlive you. Indeed, it will continue to exist in the generations and generations of those who take up the needle and thread of life and love, adding their own design to yours.

            Pythia Peay from Soul Sisters

Silent God

This is my prayer—
That, thou I may not see,
I be aware
Of the Silent God
Who stands by me.
That, though I may not feel,
I be aware
Of the Mighty Love
Which doggedly follows me.
That, though I may not respond,
I be aware
That God—my Silent, Mighty God,
Waits each day.
Quietly, hopefully, persistently,
Waits each day
And through each night
For me,
For me—alone.

Edwina Gately    

Surrender

Into your hands, God,
This solitude.
Into your hands, God,
This emptiness.
Into your hands, God,
This loneliness.
Into your hands—
This all,
Into your hands, O God,
This grief.
Into your hands—
This sleeping fear.

Into your hands, O God—
What is left,
What is left,
Of me.

            Edwina Gately

O God, of peace and love,
Companion in solitude,
Protector in exile,
You inhabit the shadows of our communities
Show us the way to stand against injustice
To protect and nurture life, to live nonviolently.

Help us to embrace simplicity,
To be mindful of the value of all things,
To care tenderly for others.

Teach us to conserve
And preserve the natural gifts of this world
Help us to take time and to be present
To one another.

Increase among us the spirit of tolerance
And good will.
Bring us to the quiet still place of healing
And transform our souls into a reflection
Of your love and compassion.

            Amen.

            Anonymous from A String and a Prayer

Desert ascetics believed that the greatest enemies of the inner journey were hurry, crowds, and noise. The desert was a place for quieting the inner noise that kept them from hearing the whispers of God. In the desert, spiritual testing and transformation was expected and engaged. The lack of comforts and material distractions, and isolation from the complexity of human society led to growth in spiritual insight.

            Laura Swan from The Desert Mothers

            Desert ascetics faced suffering with determination and courage. They understood that suffering was grounded in their attachments to attitudes, thoughts, motives, relationships, and reputation. Suffering was the avenue toward freedom and detachment, toward maturity and humility. Suffering remained until they “let go.” A deep capacity for compassion often resulted.

            Compassion brought the ascetics to deep understanding of the struggles of others, enabled them to see themselves in the lives of others, and removed any sense of distance or distinction. Desert ascetics vigorously rejected any judgmental or critical attitude; they teach us that awareness of our weaknesses gives us an opportunity to deepen our compassion for the weaknesses of others. As we cultivate a tender, vulnerable, expansive heart that embraces the humanity of all, we see with new eyes… the eyes and heart of Christ.

            Laura Swan in The Desert Mothers

Entering into silence is not easy. To risk encountering our fullest and truest self, and to meet God as God is requires courage and the freedom to risk. Silence invites us to meet and discover our truest selves — with masks, illusions, and public personae removed. Self-image is stripped and realigned: We begin to put on the mind of Christ. Silence, therefore, invites us to change, to grow toward the fullness of life. Silence helps us cultivate a healthy detachment from reputation, thwarted desires and plans, and anything that keeps us distracted from God.

            Laura Swan from The Forgotten Desert Mothers

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

My work as an artist is a reflection of God’s work of creation in our society and in the world. Sound and resonance—which is music—is a key that unlocks people’s hearts.  Music makes people become aware that the most precious possession they can own is an open heart and that the most important weapon they can be is an instrument of peace. Sound reminds the listener that we come from light and return to light, which is God himself.

Music is about compassion, harmony, joy, love, and peace—all the beautiful things you cannot by in a store. You can only go within and identify with it.

The voice of God is a sincere melody and song. The eyes of God are the sincere smiles of children laughing with you.

My work reflects God’s work by bringing harmony, peace, joy, and love. Let us all listen to music—soulful, heart-sincere music. And let us bathe in liquid light.

Carlos Santana   
Chosen to say thank you to all the musicians who shared their gift during Holy Week.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down thy head upon my breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was, so weary, worn and said;
I found in him a resting place, and he has made me glad.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I freely give
the living water; thirsty one, stoop down, and drink and live.”
I came to Jesus and I drank of that life-giving stream;
my thirst was quenched, my soul revived, and now I live in him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “I am this dark world’s light;
look unto me, thy morn shall rise, and all they days be bright.”
I looked to Jesus, and I found in him my star, my sun;
and in that light of life I’ll walk, till trav’ling days are done.

From Southern Harmony

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

            David Whyte

In the temple of my inner being,
in the temple of my body,
in the temple of earth, sea and sky,
in the great temple of the universe
I look for the light that was in the beginning,
the mighty fire that blazes still from the heart of life,
glowing in the whiteness of the moon,
glistening in night stars,
hidden in the black earth,
concealed in unknown depths of my soul. 
In the darkness of the night,
in the shadows of my being, O God,
let me glimpse the eternal.
In both the light and the shadows of my being
let me glimpse the glow of the eternal.

J. Philip Newell from "Sounds of the Eternal: A Celtic Psalter"

Song of the Faces of God

I am a crystal jug filled with Living Water.
I am a sponge ever squeezing out water to wipe the surfaces of life clean,
            Soaking up, squeezing out,
            Life-giving, Living Water.
I am the metamorphosis that transforms your life.
I was at the beginning
            And I will be forever And Beyond…

Glory to you who fills,
Glory to you who squeezes,
Glory to you who transforms.

Jane Richardson Jensen and Patricia Harris-Watkins

Be at Peace.

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life; rather look to them with full hope as they arise.  God, whose very own you are, will deliver you from out of them.  He has kept you hitherto, and He will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand it, God will bury you in His arms.  Do not fear what will happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you then and everyday.  He will either shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it. 

Be at Peace and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.

Francis de Sales, thanks to Theresa Anderson

Sidqi of Turkey, Sufi Poet, Mystic, Celibate 1703

HOLY MYSTERY,  we praise you for your daughter Sidqi. Her love of you is still thrilling, even three centuries after she lived. We thank you that her love poetry to you has been preserved and translated, blessing countless people with its beauty. Sidqi’s spiritual love affair with you excites us to enter into a fuller relationship with the Divine.

We pray in the name of our Compassionate, Merciful Lover, Amen.

            “She Who Prays”

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.

St. Michael and All Angels, Daniel 10

            FATHERLY MOTHER, on the very first day Daniel cried out for help, you responded by sending Michael and another angel to him. When we are afraid and impatient, remind us that it took the angels twenty-one days to get to Daniel because they were fighting spiritual forces that were beyond his knowledge or experience. Michael’s persistence in coming to Daniel’s aid reminds us that you have hard our pleas and responded immediately. We ask for patience as we wait for your angels to reach us. Help us recognize the angels you send and to respond to their messages from you. We thank you for their perceptiveness and willingness to say over and over throughout the ages, “Do not be afraid. God sent me to you.”  Open our eyes so that, like your angels, we may see the fear in our neighbors’ hearts and alleviate it with your love, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Two stanzas:  The Eucharist

Annie Dillard speaks of Christ
corked in a bottle: carrying the wine
to Communion in a pack on her back,
she feels him lambent, lighting
the hidden valleys through the spaces
between her ribs. Nor can we
contain him in a cup. He is always
poured out for our congregation.
And see how he spills, hot, light,
his oceans glowing like wine,
flooding all the fjords among
the bones of our continents.

Annie Dillard once asked:  How
in the world can we remember God?
(Death forgets and we all die.)
But truly, reminders are God’s
business. He will see to it,
flashing his parts, now,
then, past our cut in the rock.
His metaphors are many, among them
the provided feast by which
our teeth and tongues and throats
hint to our hearts of God’s body,
giving us the why of Incarnation,
the how of remembrance.

            Luci Shaw, 2006  from ACCOMPANIED BY ANGELS

a prayer to the god who fell from heaven

If you had stayed 
tightfisted in the sky
and watched us thrash
   with all the patience of a pipe smoker,
            I would pray
like a golden bullet
aimed at your heart.
But the story says
you cried
and so heavy was the tear
you fell with it to earth
where like a baritone in a bar
it is never time to go home.
So you move among us
twisting every straight line
into Picasso,
stealing kisses from pinched lips,
holding our hand in the dark.
So now when I pray
I sit and turn my mind
like a television knob
till you are there
with your large open hands
spreading my life before me
like a Sunday tablecloth
and pulling up a chair yourself;
for by now
the secret is out.
You are home.

John Shea

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God—

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe

            Mary Oliver

I reverently speak in the presence of the Great Parent
God:  I pray that this day, the whole day, as a child of
God, I may not be taken hold of by my own desire, but
show forth the divine glory by living a life of creativeness,
which shows forth the true individual.

            Shinto, date unknown, in “Prayers for Healing”

There are moments when wellness escapes us,
moments when pain and suffering
are not dim possibilities
but all too agonizing realities.
At such moments we must open ourselves to healing.

Much we can do for ourselves;
and what we can do
we must do—
healing, no less than illness,
is participatory.

But even when we do all we can do
there is,
often,
still much left to be done.
And so we turn as well to our healers
seeking their skill to aid in our struggle for wellness.

But even when they do all they can do
there is,
often,
still much left too be done.
And so we turn to Life,
to the vast Power of Being that animates the universe
as the ocean animates the wave,
seeking to let go of that which blocks our healing.

May those
whose lives are gripped in the palm of suffering
open
even now
to the Wonder of Life.
May they let go of the hurt
and Meet the True Self beyond pain,
the Uncarved Block
that is our joyous Unity with Holiness.

May they discover through grace and torment
the strength to live with grace and humor.
May they discover through doubt and anguish
the strength to live with dignity and holiness.
May they discover through suffering and fear
the strength to move toward healing.

            Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

Sacajawea, Guide with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1884

GREAT SPIRIT, we praise you for the fearless hospitality with which this Shoshonean woman and her village befriended the two American explorers.  Sacajawea’s knowledge of the terrain and territory was invaluable.  We thank you that she was strong enough to undertake such a journey when she was pregnant.  Her fortitude in giving birth along the way and then carrying on is remarkable.  Be with all women travelers, especially those who are pregnant.  Surround them with your loving strength and comfort when their babies are born.  For we pray in the name of Jesus, whose pregnant mother traveled to Bethlehem and gave birth to him there in a manger.  Amen.

            From “She Who Prays”

O our Father, the Sky,
     hear us and make us strong.
O our Mother the Earth,
     hear us and give us support.
O Spirit of the East,
     send us your Wisdom.
O Spirit of the South,
     may we tread your path of life.
O Spirit of the West,
     may we always be ready for the long journey.
O Spirit of the North,
     purify us with your cleansing winds.

            Sioux prayer from “Prayers for Healing”

As no one desires the slightest suffering nor ever has enough of happiness, there is no difference between myself and others, so let me make others joyfully happy.

May those feeble with cold find warmth, and may those oppressed with heat be cooled by the boundless waters that pour forth from the great clouds of the Bodhisattvas.

May the rains of lava, blazing stones and weapons from now on become a rain of flowers, and may all battling with weapons from now on be a playful exchange of flowers.

May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food; may the thirsty find water and delicious drinks.

May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed; may the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting one another.

For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.

Santideva from “Prayers for Healing”

The Rainbow of Thy Peace

O bless this people, Lord, who seek their own face
under the mask and can hardly recognize it….

O bless this people that breaks its bond…

And with them, all the peoples of Europe,
Al the peoples of Asia,
All the peoples of Africa,
All the peoples of America,
Who sweat blood and sufferings.

And see, in the midst of these million waves,
The sea swell of the heads of my people.
And grant to their warm hands that they may clasp
The earth in a girdle of brotherly hands,
Beneath the rainbow of thy peace.

Leopold Sedar Senghor, a noted French poet and essayist was president of Senegal, West Africa, in the 1960’s, from “An African Prayerbook”

For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.”There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.

            E quindi uscinmo a riveder le stele.

            And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.

THE SILENT SELF              

Stray Moments

We used to ask—remember?  We said,
 “…our daily bread.”  And it came.
Now we want more, and security too:
“You can’t be too sure.”  And,
“Why should we trust?—Who says?”
And Old-Who doesn’t speak any more.

They used to have Thunder talk, or
The Rivers, or Leaves, or Birds.  It’s all
“Cheep, cheep” now.  It’s a long time
since a cloud said anything helpful.
But last night a prophet was talking,
disguised as a clerk at the check-out stand:

“Gee,it’s been a good day!”
And we talked for awhile and I felt
that I wasn’t such a bad guy.
We stood there looking out at the evening,
And maybe what we said, in its way, was
Thanks for our daily bread.

            William Stafford

Something You Should Know

They bring racing pigeons from everywhere
and set them loose at timed intervals from Little
America, out in Wyoming; every bird
circles high, sets a course, and banks
away toward its right place, the course for home.

I’ve watched them come, swift in the evening, wings
flashing in the last of the sun, diving steeply
down from the sky into some one ranch in the junipers
lost to the world but centered for that pigeon’s
life, the soul’s direction sure.  Like yours.

Like mine.

            William Stafford

A Story I Have to Tell You

They made a wolf out of sheet iron
and planted it where it inherited rust
in all weathers on a cliff in the wilderness.

I found it there and heard a strange howl
from its hollow mouth when the wind blew
reveille, as a gift from the North for us.

Is it only air when a sound comes?
Maybe The Great Meaning begins
to stir within the commonest things.

Maybe I shouldn’t have listened.  Maybe
that howl was only for me.  Forgive me,
friends—but it was iron, it was cold.

And I was there.

            William Stafford