Learning to Thrive

September 30th, 2019 | 1 Comment

A couple of years ago when I was visiting a friend, I confessed my ineptitude with houseplants. I didn’t understand what they needed, and it seemed like too much trouble to learn. Yet I found myself longing for green and growing life to enjoy indoors.

“You can do this,” she told me, taking up a pair of scissors. She reached into the luscious greenery trailing across her kitchen counter and snipped the end of a branching vine bearing two leaves. “Just keep it in water,” she said as she filled a clear plastic cup. “It will root. That’s it.”  

On the long drive home I carried the little starter plant in the cup holder of my car, hoping that if those simple instructions sufficed we just might have a future together.

I kept that snippet of greenery with me as I moved several times over the following months, eventually transferring it to a substantial coffee mug that wouldn’t easily spill.

Along the way this hardy little plant produced a slender new cylinder of green, much like the pale stalk from which it grew, and within a couple of days a tender leaf unfurled. Rooted only in water, it was growing. Amazing.

Once, in an efficiency apartment with almost no counter space, the heat from a burner singed one of the leaves. I felt bad about that. For almost two years, seeing the dry, brown scar along its edge brought back those cramped quarters. This plant and I had a history.

But a few weeks ago the singed leaf turned yellow and dropped, as if the vine were letting go of an old wound. Why now, I wondered. The remaining leaves stretched toward the sunlight as always, their roots resting comfortably in the only nourishment they had ever known. And I finally understood that if this tenacious plant could live and grow on nothing but water, how much better it might fare with its roots in real soil.  

The vine is thriving now. Lovely as it was before, in recent weeks it has lengthened its reach and opened new leaves. It managed to get by for a long time, but the earthy nutrients it needed have brought an abundance of life. Perhaps it will grow as full and lush as the plant it came from. Certainly it can spare the snippet I cut for starting yet another new vine.

We’re made to survive, and we can live a long time—perhaps even a lifetime—on the watery nourishment that gets us through. But what about those times of knowing that life should feel more abundant?

Things change when we put down roots in the soil of our own true heart. When we meet whatever we find there, with gentleness and compassion, our presence transforms the part of ourselves that we encounter. We touch the ground of being that supports us all.

We don’t have to wait for circumstances to get better, for issues beyond our control to resolve. The nourishing love placed in the depths of our own true heart is available right now.

Where do you find the soil that allows you to flourish?

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In the Heart Space

August 1st, 2019 | Click to Comment

Sometimes the only writing I accomplish in a week happens with my writing group, when we spend a few minutes responding to a common prompt. Balance, Not About Me, and What’s Difficult were three of the possibilities to get us started last week. The writing is done quickly to get past the inner censor, and it’s infused with the energy of the conversation we’ve shared. This is what it sparked from me:

The Three of Swords from the Rider-Waite tarot deck

Not only is it not about me, I don’t even know where I am. So that’s an indication of my Enneagram type structure showing up. It means I need to go into the body, find what’s present there. And what I find is a heart that feels assaulted by the realities of this world and its leaders, by the ways people run over others, by the trauma each of us has lived through, endured, survived, and risen above. We move forward even if parts of ourselves were left behind in those devastating places, wounded and powerless, split off from the self that had to keep going.

I feel all of that as a sensation of weight and constriction in my heart. This sense of a heavy heart seems to be both for myself and for others. I asked for an open heart earlier this morning, and confessed in conversation that this is my work, my growing edge, the center of knowing I need to explore. But it hurts, and everything about me doesn’t want to hurt. I want to shut that pain down.

But I’m not able to just move on from it, and I don’t want to deaden it (mostly) because to do that is to deaden myself. So I sit here with this felt sense that sounds like a country song, like my heart was run over by a Mack truck. It brings to mind a song title, “You Done Tore My Heart Out and Stomped That Sucker Flat.” And somehow this, this makes me smile.

This calls for the laughing barrel that Maya Angelou describes, leaning into the barrel to let loose with the laughter forbidden to slaves, the laughter that says this world is f*ing crazy, these circumstances are absurd, but here we are and we’re alive. Alive! And the life showing up in us is bigger than the rules, or the hurt.

There’s a power, a life force holding all of this. Something bigger is at work. And yet my life and yours, my pain and yours, are not less than any other part of it all. I matter. So do you. I’m not separate from the flow of all that is. I’m in it.

What was God thinking, making this world with so much energy unleashed in ways that allow people to hurt each other? It’s like giving a toddler a sharp knife. Who does that? And yet here we are with our knives and our wounds, the cuts we make and the cuts we bear, the scars where we have healed, marking what we’ve learned, the compassion it has taught us, and the tender places we protect.

Hendree—my priest, my friend—says Love is All. He dwells in the heart space and he is my teacher. Maybe all heart types are my teacher. It’s the knowing that feels farthest from me. Grief at the loss of connection drives that space on the map of the Enneagram. Earning back the connection in different ways is what happens there. In my space it’s impossible to believe I can earn that connection, but maybe I can invite it.

For me, opening the heart means being undefended, allowing what messes with my sense of peace and harmony. What makes that ok is remembering and trusting that I’m held, that we’re all held, by Love bigger than anything I can try to recreate on my own.

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I’mportant

June 29th, 2019 | Click to Comment

This morning I had coffee on my front porch—a rare pleasure that takes more time than I can usually afford. Or so I’ve long convinced myself. Apparently I believe there are more important things to do than taking in the abundance of an early summer morning. That belief has probably caused me to miss out on a lot of other good things as well.

There are so many things I can’t take time for, I tell myself all too often. I have important things to do. I’m portant. As if goodness and value is something I need to manufacture.  As if there were not something more vast and wise and powerful that wants to show up through me.

The sure sense of what’s important grows distorted when it becomes “I’m portant.” I’m portant says that that the quality of my life and of those around me is all about me—what I do, what I know, what I contribute. I’m portant is what happens when I lose connection with the source of life and instead believe everything hinges on the effort I make to be safe and worthy and loved.

“Portent” foreshadows what’s to come, and I think of “I’m portant” in that way, as if I’m the one determining what’s to come, as if I were in charge. When I’m trying to be the prime generator of my life, I lose touch with the greater reality. It’s like struggling to touch bottom when I could simply let the water hold me up. Or trading away my place in the magnificence of creation for a small world of my own making.

So I’m practicing creating some space between me and the day’s demands. I’m trying to discern the truly important priorities as opposed to the ego’s clamor of “I’m portant.” Pausing to enjoy the world helps me remember that a vast and powerful life force causes everything to unfold, including my life and work. I have a part to play, but I don’t have the job of making it happen by myself. In fact, when I act as if it’s all up to me—believing that I’m portant—I cut myself off from the flow of life that would carry me forward.

Of course, there’s the reality of everyday life to navigate. Showing up at work, getting kids to school, arriving for appointments on time is part of an orderly, responsible life. We can’t always sit on the porch. But making space within the calendars that drive us is part of a life well-lived.

We are more than our schedules and obligations. Every moment marked by the clock is also a moment that manifests what is timeless. There is a greater reality in which we live and move and have our being. In the moments when we can remember that, there is peace.

Those moments enjoying the lavender budding on new stalks, a wren hopping across the porch, and even the ubiquitous morning glory vines winding up in new places, feel a lot like vacation. I feel connected to a world that encompasses more than the current political climate, one that isn’t pitching me to buy anything.

But old patterns die hard. Part of me wants to focus on the weeds that need pulling. “I’m portant,” is the message when those weeds call to the self that is driven to be useful, to get things done, to make the place look good. Yes, there is a time for weeding. But that work can be held in a wider context, one that honors and appreciates the living, growing world.

I do better when I remember that I’m not so portant after all. My mind is clearer when I’m not trying so hard to think. My heart is more open when I bring awareness and compassion to my own limitations. I move through the world more graciously when I can relax and receive the sensory information all around.

Perhaps instead of portant, I can be present.

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Why I Work with the Enneagram

May 14th, 2019 | Click to Comment

When I began studying the Enneagram, it was to understand more about myself and others. The Enneagram is great for making sense of why we do what we do. But figuring out our type is only the beginning of what is possible. I continue working with the Enneagram because it offers a path toward transformation.

Diagram of the Enneagram

To briefly explain, the Enneagram (from the Greek ennea, meaning “nine”) names nine basic types of people, with nine different essential gifts and inherent challenges. We have access to all of these human traits, but our Enneagram type colors how we process our experience. Our type is the lens through which we view the world.

Understanding our Enneagram type makes possible a new level of self-awareness. Appreciating the basic human longings that motivate the nine Enneagram types naturally cultivates greater compassion for ourselves and others.

But it’s important to remember that our essential self has no Enneagram type. Our type is the coping mechanism we formulated long before we were conscious of what we were doing. Our type is the way we found to make our world ok when our essential well-being felt threatened. 

Our type structure helped us when we needed it. As life unfolds, the consciousness and self-awareness that makes us human also gives rise to a sense of self-doubt and disconnection. As we grow up, there comes a time when we lose our natural connection to the joy and vitality of being alive. Or to put it more poetically, we inevitably experience being expelled from the garden.

When that happens we work to overcome what we perceive as our shortcomings, and we do this in the nine basic ways named by the Enneagram. We reach for our strongest gift, believing it’s up to us to create or earn a sense of connection, safety, or worth.

Understanding our Enneagram type helps in those moments when those deeply ingrained automatic patterns show up. We begin to notice when habitual impulses try to take over, and we learn to pause. In the space created by that pause we can be more perceptive. We can consciously choose what to do. This is the path toward transcending our type structure and becoming free.  

In this way, noticing our type structure in action comes to serve as a bell of mindfulness. When we realize we’re being driven by old patterns, we can learn to respond differently. Instead of automatically following our habitual escape patterns, we cultivate the ability to stay present. In doing this we lay down new neural pathways and begin developing responses that we consciously and freely choose.

Working with our type patterns helps us to wake up. We learn to see more clearly and act more effectively. We experience how the divine life force sustains us. We learn to differentiate between our true self and our conditioned responses. We become less susceptible to toxic influences, whether in the form of external situations or internal patterns. Instead of relying on unconscious coping mechanisms we learn to be present to ourselves and to the situation as it is, and to act from a place of higher wisdom.

I haven’t mastered all of this, of course, but I’m grateful to be on the path. Working with the Enneagram has placed me into the flow of life in a way that brings a new level of beauty, meaning, and connection.

I’d love to serve as your companion as you make your own Enneagram journey. Write to me at susan@mildlymystical.com with your questions or to schedule an Enneagram typing interview. I’m happy to meet you at my office in Lexington, Kentucky or online via Zoom.

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Metanoia

April 6th, 2019 | 1 Comment

In Leonard Cohen’s dark lament for “The Future,” he returns again and again to the refrain:

When they said,

‘Repent! Repent!’

I wonder what they meant.

Cohen cared enough about language, history, religion, and culture, to understand the importance of that question. It’s a profound question, and the heart of Christianity turns on the answer.

The English word “repent” is a judgmental word. It’s a power word—an order. It wants to force us to our knees with all we’ve done wrong. It tries to bully us into submission to an outside authority—some person or institution claiming to speak for God. The word “gospel” means “good news,” but where is the good news in the demand to repent? “Repent” has sent people streaming away from that version of Christianity, often with good reason.

“Repent” is also a poor translation of the Greek word attributed to Jesus. The Greek word, rendered into a version we can read in English, is metanoia. It’s a combination of meta, meaning beyond or greater (as in metaphysics, which considers reality beyond or above physical/material existence) and a form of nous, meaning the mind. A better translation would be something like, “go into your higher mind.”

Jesus spoke Aramaic. The gospels were written in Greek. Latin was long the language of the church, which resulted in yet another translation removed from the original. All of which mean that English bibles are at best twice-removed from Jesus’ urgent message, and sometimes even more.

When Jesus returned from his forty days in the wilderness the first thing he wanted to tell people was to go into their greater mind and believe the good news. He was inviting people into a new approach to life. It doesn’t make sense that huge crowds of people would show up, curious about a message that berated them for their past shortcomings. Rather, it was his lived experience of metanoia and the possibilities it opened up that drew them to hear his teaching.

The perennial mistranslation of metanoia, persistent as dandelions in spring, was seeded into the Christian faith with the early Latin translations of the Bible. Those early church fathers rendered metanoia into the Latin paenitentia, having to do with penance. Jerome retained paenitentia in his definitive translation, leading to the English translation of “repent.”

In our time, a kinder and gentler approach to “repent” has been to see it as meaning “to turn.” The sense of “turning” comes from some of the passages of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, where the original Hebrew was translated into the Greek metanoia. But the meaning of metanoia in those passages means a change of mind, and not turning away from sin, unless the latter meaning is carried by the context.

So even the less punitive understanding of “repent” as meaning “turn” misses the point. Metanoia is not about what you’ve done in the past. It’s about opening your mind and living from a higher perspective.  

Whenever I see the word “repent” in connection with what we’re supposed to be doing to grow in spirit, I translate it this way: Go into your higher mind. Become more connected to your Higher Self. Live from the spark of the Divine within, the wisdom that is always with you. Believe the good news—that this life is so much more than the striving ego would have us believe.

Walking that path is what the spiritual journey is all about. Living into that perspective is what faith communities help us with. Finding practices that support the journey is what we need.

I’m grateful to Fr. Hendree Harrison, rector of The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, for introducing me to the work of Ron Rolheiser. Rolheiser addresses the mistranslation of metanoia in this video, the first part of which you can see here.

And he contrasts metanoia with paranoia here.

This article explores the translation issues.

And this gives an overview of the history of metanoia and its translations.

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Dream Wisdom in Waking Life

January 19th, 2019 | Click to Comment

I’ve seen two oddly parallel news stories recently. With the power of those things you can’t un-see, they have lingered with me for days.

These stories weren’t about the major upheavals in the headlines, but I believe they demonstrate how the tone set at the top filters down to individual encounters. One happened at a nail salon involving two women. The other occurred at a gas station, involving two men. Both were recorded by the distant eye of surveillance cameras, preserved amidst the drone of everyday transactions in the public arena.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Gustav Dore
Image from Victorian Web Art

In both cases, someone tried to pay with a stolen credit card. Both transactions involved a charge of around thirty dollars. When the charge was declined, they attempted to drive away without paying.

In both cases, the proprietor followed them and stood in front of their car to prevent them from leaving. Both images show, as if it were any other encounter, how the driver accelerated toward the person in front of their vehicle.

The broadcasts I saw mercifully stopped the video just before showing a vulnerable human body being run over. But just as the mind fills in the micro-moment gaps in such sketchy recordings, I can’t help but imagine in dismay how both of these people were hit and killed.

I have wrestled with these images for days as I try to find some meaning or some opening in which the presence of God might be known.

As I tried writing about them, all I could do was lament the state of our nation. I wanted to find some wisdom, or to talk about the kind of presence that can calm powerful emotions and scary confrontations. But anything I wrote sounded trite.

Eventually I remembered that I could engage with these scenes as if I were working a dream. I could look at these people as if they were characters created by my unconscious, representing a part of me outside my conscious awareness. When an event from waking life hooks us like this, approaching it as we approach a dream can be fruitful.

I asked what part of myself might be like the driver of the car. Is there an aspect of me driven by fear, determined to avoid facing some other shadowy part of myself? Can I find some way to identify with the driver of the car?

And what about the proprietor who was killed? Is there a part of me trying to hold the line on fairness, on what I’m entitled to? A part insisting on acknowledgement yet being overrun in the process? Can I find some resonance with the person whose life was taken in my own life?

Holding both characters at once, with each perhaps symbolizing part of my own psyche, is there some aspect of myself running over another part of me?

In addition, as these are stories from the national news viewed by people throughout the country, how might they represent something about our collective experience? In what way might I be part of a group that operates like the driver? How might I belong to a group being run over?

Just like working a dream, these questions don’t yield an immediate or simple answer. They are, rather, an invitation to enter deeply into my experience and my true identity. These questions challenge me to consider myself with honesty and humility, knowing that I am part of the story unfolding in the world. They invite me to look at what I’d rather not see in myself, and wrestle with it much as Jacob wrestled with the angel.

So what did I learn from this experience?

Seeing the broadcasts of these angry and fearful encounters evoked those emotions in me as well. I remained caught in the anger and fear that created such terrible events until I looked within.

The release I found from being trapped in these emotions began as I paid attention to what was going on inside, and held my dismay with kindness toward myself. This made it possible to see from a different perspective. Looking within, as if looking at a dream, showed me the need for compassion—for myself and for all of humanity. It allowed me to consider the great suffering that exists in every life.

That perspective cultivates openness toward others, even those who seem very different from me. It doesn’t mean allowing someone else to run over me, but I can hold my boundaries with a clearer mind and heart.

Compassion is worth cultivating. It yields curiosity and kindness. It helps us treat ourselves and others more gently.

Compassion helps transcend the simplistic categories of me vs. not-me. I believe it changes our experience in the world. At the very least, it makes difficulties we already experience less painful.

Compassion allows our heart to break for the world without us falling apart. It breaks us open to love, and perhaps even to heal what is hurting in ourselves and others.

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Why Keep a Dream Journal

December 31st, 2018 | 2 Comments

You know what it’s like to wake from a dream with the feeling that it somehow matters, even though you have no idea what it means or how it’s connected to waking life.

The emotion that accompanies a dream is a clue to its importance, but our task-oriented mind loses patience with it. The analytical brain rejects what doesn’t make sense, and the dream fades to mist as our to-do list for the day takes over.

Our “crazy” dreams are actually trying to show us something. Every part of the dream represents some aspect of our lives. It brings some new perspective, something we’ve missed in waking life.

Dreams seem nonsensical because they communicate in a language of images. It’s a language we barely understand, but we can reconnect with this aspect of our human heritage. The more familiar we become with the language of image and symbol, the more readily we can engage with our dreams.

The first step is to keep a dream journal.

By writing down our dreams we strengthen the dialogue with the unconscious. We demonstrate that we are interested in what it wants to show us, and this helps in recalling our dreams. A dream journal and pen by the bed is like leaving the door to our dream world ajar.

Even the clearest dream can disappear if it isn’t captured in a dream journal. The more detail we can record, the better. But even a word or two scribbled in the middle of the night can often bring back the entire dream. Making sketches of the dream, or of a particular object or scene, is another way of bringing to mind more information about the dream.

Recording our dreams also helps with learning the unique language of our own psyche. For example, a particular setting may show up regularly, and the more we explore our associations with that setting the better we understand the context of the dreams that unfold there. For me, there’s a particular figure who shows up in times of transition. Our patterns are easier to notice when we keep a dream journal.

Writing down the dream provides the option of working on the dream in greater depth. Every element of the dream represents some aspect of our waking life experience. Exploring our associations with the dream’s places, people, objects, and actions helps connect the dream to what it’s about. Even if there’s not time to do this exploration right away, recording a dream allows you to return to it later. I generally record my dream on the right-hand page of my notebook and leave the left-hand page blank for making notes about my associations.

It’s not uncommon to look back through previous entries and come across dreams we hardly recognize as our own. Yet this sense of being outside the dream is often helpful at gaining perspective on it and exploring its message. The meaning of our dreams is sometimes easier to see in looking back at them.

Finally, a dream journal helps us share our dream with others. Talking about our dreams with another person or in a dream group is a further way of honoring the dream and gaining insight from the conversation. Notes in a dream journal allow us to relate a dream that might otherwise evaporate before we have the opportunity to share it.

Do you keep a dream journal? I’d love to hear what works for you!

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Changing the Conversation

October 20th, 2018 | 2 Comments

Given the state of our society at this moment, we all need a time out—a chance to get quiet and restore our battered psyches. At this point in our collective history, our minds are working against us. We cannot think our way out of this mess.

 

 

We need to reconnect with goodness and wisdom individually if we’re to access the strength for healing our communities. Taking a walk in the woods, or listening to music, or creating something beautiful can help us gain perspective on what passes for today’s civil discourse.

The more we continue with our attention anchored in the politics and polarities of our time, the more we’re awash in a sea of animosity. We need a higher wisdom, a North Star shining in the darkness that helps us navigate these turbulent days.

That clear sense of direction and guidance is available to each of us when we listen to the still, small voice within. There are many ways to stay attuned to wisdom and to keep its light in front of us. If you have a way that works for you, I’d love to hear about it.

One simple and effective daily practice I’ve found to help orient towards what is good and true is called “Metta” or Loving-Kindness Meditation.

I first learned this practice years ago and recently experienced its power again over several days in an Enneagram learning community. There are four lines to the meditation, or prayer, repeated with different people in mind.

Sit quietly and begin by saying it for yourself:

May I be happy.

May I be healthy.

May I be safe.

May I be peaceful and at ease.

Then picture someone you love and say it for them:

May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you be safe.

May you be peaceful and at ease.

Then say it for a teacher or someone else who has benefited you.

Then for someone neutral, about whom you have no strong feelings either positive or negative.

Then for someone in your life who is difficult in some way or who brings up tension.

Finally, say the meditation for all beings, a prayer for all the world:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be healthy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be peaceful and at ease.

Don’t take my word for it—repeat this daily meditation every day for a week and see what it offers you. Notice how it colors your experience, and consider how the state of being it invites ripples out into the world. I’d love to hear how it goes.

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Ritual for Blessing a House

August 29th, 2018 | Click to Comment

My new house feels even more fully like home since a group of friends came over for a ritual cleansing and house blessing. I hadn’t known how to do a blessing for a home, but after some research on rituals for blessing a house and the practice of burning sage, or smudging, to purify a space, I designed the ritual we performed. Episcopal liturgy found in The Book of Occasional Services was helpful, as was the New Zealand prayer book.

Some parts of the ritual I wrote myself. I found no blessing of a basement, for example, and I know from Jungian thought and my own dreams the importance of a basement and all it symbolizes.

To begin, I lit a candle and filled a bowl with water. We each held the bowl in turn, offering a blessing for the house and the life lived within it, and touching the water with our fingertips. The water was set apart, made holy, in this way. One friend read “Blessing for a New House” by John O’Donohue, from his wonderful book, To Bless the Space Between Us. Another lit the bundle of sage, a tendril of smoke rising as she carried it into every corner of the house, the purifying smoke curling into every drawer, every cabinet, into the fireplace, closets, and cushions, all through the house. Yet another friend followed with the bowl of lustral water and used a sprig of greenery from a shrub out front to sprinkle it into every corner, bringing all the love and blessing held in that water to fill the purified spaces.

From the basement to the attic and circling the outside of the house, we read blessings for each space and supported those tending the sage and the water, all in a spirit of friendship and conversation and laughter. In this act of community we enacted a powerful ritual of purification—banishing any unclean spirits, cleansing any negative energy, dispelling any darkness lingering from the past. I’m grateful for this circle of friends who meet monthly in group spiritual direction, and I felt our circle become stronger through performing this ritual. Enacting it together made this ceremony of blessing deeply meaningful.

In a time when so many beliefs no longer serve us, and when so many structures that were supposed to preserve meaning and value have failed us, ritual itself holds meaning. A ritual is an outward, ceremonial act that expresses an inner, spiritual reality. The actions themselves connect us to what is true, to what endures, to the ways we are held by something larger than ourselves. We can trust a solid ritual, because it connects us to what we recognize as true at a level deeper than words.

A home doesn’t have to be new to benefit from a ritual cleansing and blessing. Clearing out clutter, creating space for new activities or new projects, undertaking new efforts within your space, are all occasions that might invite a ritual of cleansing and blessing. Perhaps this deep need is part of the continual interest in redecorating and refreshing our spaces.

If you try your own version of a blessing for a home, let me know how it goes! A New Zealand Prayer Book’s “Blessing of a Home” is here. Here’s a link to both the old and new Book of Occasional Services, shown side-by-side. The “Celebration of a Home” is on page 166 in the new book and page 146 in the old.  And if you can use some ideas for how to bless a particular space in your home not mentioned in these resources, I’m including a few of the blessings I wrote below.

Peace be with you.

 

FOR THE BASEMENT

Holy One, the ground of all life, make firm the foundation of this home and the lives of those who dwell here. Bestow your guidance and strength, we ask, in the work of bringing all the layers of ourselves into the light of your love. Be with us as we encounter the depths of ourselves and of our life in you.

 

FOR THE FRONT ENTRYWAY

Peace to this house and to all who enter. May this home be a haven for those who dwell here, and a place of welcome and refreshment to those who visit.

 

FOR THE MASTER BATHROOM

May each new day begin with a spirit cleansed and renewed, fresh as morning dew, ready to receive the day’s offering.

 

FOR THE ATTIC

Just as the roof shelters your home, may you feel God’s love and protection guarding you throughout life’s storms.

 

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Blessing of the Backpacks

August 14th, 2018 | 1 Comment

The children of Good Shepherd brought their backpacks to church this week. During the service they were invited to the front of the sanctuary to receive a blessing for the start of the new school year. Boys and girls filled the space in front of the pews and into the center aisle, and adults who work in the schools bookended the group.

“Are you excited about the start of school?” the priest asked the assembled students. After a lackluster response he smiled and said, “Let’s try this again.” With heightened energy he repeated the question, and received a rousing “Yes!” balanced with an equally emphatic “No!” from a couple of voices.

The priest reminded them that it’s as important to ask the right question as it is to give the right answer. I felt grateful that such uncommon and important wisdom was offered not only to them but to the entire congregation. He said a prayer, dipped a branch of greenery into a bowl, and flung sprinkles of holy water over the gathering he blessed the backpacks, the children, and the school year about to begin and the learning they will do.

I can still see one girl, about eight years old, standing square-shouldered in her sundress, curly blond hair in a short ponytail above the pink flowered pack on her back. She stood at rapt attention, receiving the entire ritual with dignity and reverence.

The priest asked the children to turn around and see all the people in the congregation who were praying for them as they start the school year, which made some of their eyes grow wide. Their response was a reminder to me of the power of such a gathering, and the energy of shared and fervent prayer offered in a sacred space.

May that prayer multiply and enfold all children as this school year begins:

May each child feel welcomed in their classroom.

May their teachers be centered in the value of their calling, and upheld by their community.

May each child feel loved.

May they make new friends.

May they learn patience with themselves when the lessons are difficult, and celebrate when the lessons are learned.

May they help one another and learn from one another.

May they be safe.

May they be healthy.

May their creativity be encouraged.

May their curiosity be affirmed.

May they delight in the joy of learning.

May they have the support they need.

May they be known and recognized for the unique and beautiful person they are.

And may all of us surround and enfold teachers, students, and schools with our love and care.

 

 

 

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