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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Lining the Shelves

July 27th, 2018 | Click to Comment

The timing of a move this summer gave me a few days to ready the space before I moved into my new home. It was a chance to get to know the house itself, uncluttered with furniture or boxes, seeing how the light filled the rooms and changed throughout the day. I played a radio that echoed through the empty spaces while I prepared for my things to arrive.

One task was to put down clean shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Even before the boxes were moved in I was eager to get them unpacked and organized into a working kitchen, so I wanted all of the shelves ready to hold the things I needed.

It took forever, or at least it seemed to. Cutting the liner to the right dimensions made me aware of every inch of storage behind cabinet doors and drawer fronts. I allocated an evening for the job, but at the end of the evening I was so far from finished that I questioned the value of the whole enterprise. What had seemed like a good idea turned out to be more of an investment than I realized. But the shelves I had lined were clean and inviting, and I wanted all of them to feel that way. So I kept going.

The payoff showed up when I was unpacking boxes and working to put things in order. With that basic, foundational work done, the shelves were ready to hold what was needed.

Foundational work of any kind takes longer than we think. We underestimate what’s required to do it properly because in daily life the foundations aren’t obvious. Once the dishes are put away the shelf paper is practically invisible—unless it’s done badly, in which case it’s a continual vexation.

In spiritual life, the foundation is laid by cultivating the ability to be fully present and fully aware. It’s not until we’re able to notice what’s happening inside ourselves—our mental habits, our emotional patterns, our places of physical tension—that we become able to see clearly what’s going on in the world around us.

That practice of being present, of being awake and aware, is how we become receptive to the divine force that holds and guides us through life. Being present is how we become more loving; we can only love when we actually show up in this moment.

It’s easy to convince myself that I’m truly here because my body is. But my mind and heart go off on their own, wandering the same old paths, and lose connection with the body. If I’m not settled enough to feel my feet on the floor and the breath expanding my chest and belly, then I’m probably running my habitual patterns inside instead of truly showing up here and now. Not being in the body is a good clue that I’m not receptive to what life is offering right now.

Cultivating this practice takes even longer than putting down shelf liner. Preparing ourselves to receive the contents of whatever new box the day unpacks is the work of a lifetime. Yet when we are prepared to receive what comes, we’re better able to respond in freedom instead of from reflex. We’re more able to act from a place of love. The practice of mindfulness and meditation is something like laying down a clean lining for the shelving in our minds and hearts, and being conscious of what we will store there.

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Ash Wednesday – Finding Ourselves in the Dust

February 5th, 2018 | 2 Comments

Ash Wednesday will soon be upon us—literally, if we attend a service with the imposition of ashes. Receiving the mixture of oil and ash in the shape of a cross on one’s forehead comes with the reminder to “remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

These words are part of a ritual I have long found meaningful even as I resisted what I took to be its message. But my attitude toward the Ash Wednesday service, with its stark reminder of death, has evolved over the years. I’ve moved from rejection of what I perceived as a dark view of life and death, to acknowledgment of death’s inevitability, to appreciation of a ritual that honors the reality of our limited time on earth. But I’ve always thought of that return to dust as happening literally, at our physical death.

Last night I dreamed I was on my belly in a dusty yard, struggling to move forward without being able to raise myself up. I was without strength or power, in contact with the ground. I could see plants growing at eye level and I thought of the healing herbs I wanted to grow. Later in the dream I was walking, but cars zoomed by leaving me in the dust.

I woke from the dream with a sense of vulnerability, yet feeling oddly peaceful. As I worked with the images from the dream I felt a shift occur. My experience of dust in the dream opened a new way of understanding the dust proclaimed in the Ash Wednesday liturgy.

Returning to the dust doesn’t happen only at our death. We return to the dust over and over as life knocks us off our feet. It feels like a defeat, which it is: a de-feat (or even de-feet), not something we accomplish but something done to us, something we endure. Some power outside our control brings a new reality we wouldn’t have chosen. Our plans and expectations turn to dust, and life as we know it is over.

But in the dust we’re back where we came from, supported by our connection with the earth. The word humble has the same root as humus (Latin for soil) and human. In the humility of experiencing our limitations, we find ourselves supported by a greater strength.  Being humble puts us in touch with what Paul Tillich called the Ground of Being. Our vulnerability brings us into contact with the real support life offers, as opposed to the illusory supports we try to create for ourselves.

Finding ourselves in the dust is a blow to the ego but growth for the soul. It grounds us and helps us remember who we are. On the ground we’re in the place where life is rooted and healing herbs grow. We experience the solidity of the earth upon which we walk. We remember our dependence on it, our oneness with it. And throughout our time in this world, the earth strengthens us as we regain our balance and rise again.

The ritual of Ash Wednesday’s imposition of ashes is a reminder of how brief our lives are. But it also speaks to the many times we find ourselves in the dust over the course of a lifetime. In those times the dust can be a place where we encounter the grounding and strength always supporting us. In the dust we encounter the essence of life and of ourselves. Ash Wednesday isn’t the dismal ritual I once thought it was. Rather, it points to how the heart of life is often hidden in the places where we least want to look.

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Out into the Weather

January 9th, 2018 | Click to Comment

I usually welcome the quiet routine that follows New Year’s Day. Early January brings a welcome balance after holiday indulgences. But this year’s unrelenting blast of arctic air made for a harsh transition back to everyday life. A car door handle, brittle from cold, snapped off in a friend’s hand. It was a tough start to the year.

I wanted the option to just hunker down against the weather—my favorite strategy for dealing with winter storms. I wouldn’t have minded hiding under the covers from the news, too, along with all the other uncertainty and difficulty life can bring. Yet as it turned out, it was during this coldest week I can remember that I had scheduled a change in office locations.

So despite the single-digit temperatures, I carted boxes and furnishings out of my former office and into my new one. One morning I was thwarted when my hatchback was frozen shut, even when I tried to thaw it with a hair dryer. Only the temperature rising to the teens that afternoon allowed it to open again. These are not the circumstances I would have chosen for a move, but they offered an interesting lesson.

With hat and gloves and layers I was able to work perfectly well in the cold. The physical work helped keep me warm. And being able to accomplish my task in spite of the difficult weather gave me a different way to see myself. Instead of being oppressed by the weather I felt an unexpected sense of vitality and empowerment. Meeting a challenge stirred some energy and excitement, feelings not available from my more usual approach of enduring and waiting for things to get better. I might not have chosen to go out and meet such weather, but I found that I could and that it wasn’t as bad as I might have feared.

Life urges us forward in different ways at different times. Fortunately, it also kindles in us a flame that fuels that movement. That life force will see us through if we can just remain connected to it. The circumstances of our lives sometimes include harsh weather I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. It can take courage just to step out the door and into the day’s demands. And sometimes storms come up that are more than anyone can navigate.

But whatever we face, we can be sure that life is more than our current circumstances. The weather will change. And when we have to contend with harsh weather, we can often find a source of strength that allows us to be stronger than we knew ourselves to be.

A friend recently shared this bit of Swedish wisdom: “There is no bad weather. You’re just wearing the wrong clothes.” Oh please, is one response. But actually there’s some truth in that saying, and it’s helpful when life requires being out in the weather. The right clothes are available, even if it means putting on a mindset we’ve never worn before. And the flame within is always there, a source of warmth and encouragement that never leaves.

 

 

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Longing for Hestia

November 27th, 2017 | Click to Comment

The holiday season doesn’t typically bring the pantheon of Greek gods to mind, but the goddess Hestia has something to teach us about the heart of our celebrations. Hestia isn’t as well known as the other Olympians, as we don’t have stories of her exploits, and she was rarely represented as a human figure.  Instead, she was identified with the hearth fire of a home or temple. When the fire was lit she was understood to be present, and tending her flame was a sacred duty.

 

 

Hestia offers wisdom for creating and maintaining the social structures of family, community, and state that sustain human life. The sense of warmth and comfort we feel at a fireside is her gift. On a larger scale, her influence yields a society that provides peace and security for its members. Hestia’s presence is quiet; Hestia’s absence is devastating.

We’re in the midst of a season when the longing for Hestia colors the activity all around us. The Greeks showed restraint from trying to define her in terms of human characteristics, but our culture doesn’t hesitate to offer specific images for capturing her spirit in our individual lives. Advertisements encourage us to invoke Hestia’s presence not by kindling her fire in the hearth, but by presenting gifts or meals or décor or events. All of these things can be lovely, but when we believe they are necessary—or worse, that they are sufficient for a joyful holiday, we are misled.

The holiday season places home and family at the heart of what we celebrate, idealize, and long for. Over the next few weeks we’ll be subject to thousands of images promising to satisfy our desire for peace and connection. But a longing as deep as the one we bring to the season isn’t met by anything out there in the world, or even by the home and family that can be such blessings.

Addressing the longing for Hestia happens in our own hearts. Her hearth fire is kindled inside, with loving acceptance of ourselves and of life as it is. From that centered place we can lovingly embrace others, bring out the best in them, and create an environment in which to flourish. Invoking the presence of Hestia brings a different kind of perfection, joyful and satisfying. And in the warmth of her light, everything else we bring to the holidays glows as well.

 

 

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Becoming Peacemakers

August 13th, 2017 | Click to Comment

I’ve been re-cultivating the discipline of push-ups against the door frame lately. Fifteen was a challenge to start with, and now I can do thirty. I’m stronger, but it wasn’t entirely my doing.

I did stick with the activity, remembered to take time most days, persevered in pressing my weight away from the door frame until my muscles complained, endured the sense of weakness as I reached my limit. That much I could do.

But the getting stronger part is a mystery. It happens quite independently of anything I can direct. The body’s own wisdom and intelligence is knit into how we’re made.  It repairs the tiny fissures in the muscles in a way that leaves them more powerful. I invite that repair by exercising enough to stress the muscles without overstraining them. But the growing strength is the body’s own doing. That potential is built into the design of this miraculous embodied experience.

We do our work—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual—in co-operation with the universe. Hopefully over time we learn to make space for the greater wisdom and power available to us. Into that space enters a transformative life force beyond anything we can put there. Trusting that process is what faith means. We aren’t alone; it’s never up to us alone.

Just before I fall asleep at night I know I’m being carried and I can let go. In fact, only if I let go can I sleep. Such a mystery, this space that opens up when I step back from thinking, planning, reviewing, worrying. In that space is an unnameable reality more real, more enduring, than all the plans and work and details that pass away. In that space is the experience of safety, wholeness, and love.

We’re part of the magnificent flow of life. We do our best to do our part, whatever that may be. Whether we’re in the calm before the storm or the storm before the calm, we’re carried by something bigger.

Making space to connect with that source of wisdom can change our perspective. As we rest from our labors, it knits us together stronger. And when we take up our tasks again, the strengthened source of wisdom within helps us offer the peacemaking presence that this world sorely needs.

 

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What We Learn and What We Perceive

June 7th, 2017 | Click to Comment

One of the intriguing ideas I encountered at the recent Dream & Spirituality Conference is that we are able to perceive only what we have learned. The more I think about this idea, the more I find it to be true.

Physicist Doug Bennett offered the example of bird watching to make the point. I don’t know much about birds. For me, a walk through the woods might mean seeing a few indistinct brown birds, and that’s if I’m paying attention. But a birder who has learned to recognize and identify details of shape, size, color, and behavior will notice distinct species that I simply do not perceive.  I would have to learn a lot more about birds even to see them.

Similarly, until I’ve learned to identify types of trees, the woods are simply an undifferentiated expanse of foliage. Insects are just bugs, stones are only rocks, and a foreign tongue is merely babble if I haven’t learned to discern the meaning in the details.

Certainly we are able to learn, and we do this by relating new things to what we already know. Is a new bird bigger or smaller than a robin? Is the leaf of a new tree pointed like a maple, or rounded like a sassafras?

When new learning breaks into our consciousness, it wraps itself in the form of what we already know so that we can take it in. That’s why Mr. Miyagi gave the Karate Kid his tiresome “wax on” and “wax off” chores when he first asked for lessons. The familiarity of that task readied him to counter a punch with a martial arts move like the circular motion of waxing a car.

For any of us to recognize a new possibility, it has to show up connected to something we’re familiar with. Einstein’s mind-bending ideas of space and time began with his imagining himself riding on a beam of light. Facebook was conceived as something like an electronic version of a class yearbook.

Likewise, if we’re able to recognize the suffering of another person, it’s because we can connect something about their experience to what we know. Whether it’s from hurts we’ve experienced, or from taking in another person’s story, what we’ve learned is part of what prepares us to be compassionate.

Our learning predisposes us to see, or to not see. What we learn matters. What we don’t learn has consequences. The information and ideas we take in have a direct effect not just on what we think about the world around us, but on what we are actually able to see of the world. Our choices of media have moral consequences.

If we can’t see what we haven’t learned, then there is all the more reason to look at the world together and share our perceptions. I need to know what I’ve missed, and the only way that is possible is if you’ll share with me what you see.

When we put our two perspectives together, perhaps we can both acquire a more three-dimensional view of reality. If we can see the world more clearly, perhaps a way to tackle its challenges will become more clear as well.

 

 

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Cynthia Bourgeault and Practicing Presence

April 25th, 2017 | Click to Comment

When Cynthia Bourgeault introduced the contemplative practice of centering prayer at the Festival of Faiths in Louisville last week, she spoke of different practices and traditions as being like colors of the rainbow. Each color is part of the one light, a unique and beautiful aspect that informs our understanding of the light.

I was eager to attend Bourgeault’s talks because her book, The Wisdom Jesus, has been so important in opening my reading of scripture. She is tiny, a package of concentrated energy. Calm and unassuming, with a delightful sense of humor, she bristles with life as she teaches.

Meditation is like putting a stick into the spokes of the monkey mind, she said. It’s all about noticing our thoughts, seeing our patterns of thinking, and letting them go.

Whether we call this practice meditation, centering prayer, or something else, it’s a practice of making ourselves available to a higher mind. It’s an intention to move beyond the machinations of our calculating ego.  As Bourgeault puts it, centering prayer is a practice of returning to God whenever we notice a thought arising. How does one let go of a thought? She demonstrated by standing onstage with her arms outstretched, holding a stick in one hand. She opened her hand and allowed the stick to fall to the floor. Just like that. Let go.

This inner action of letting go becomes the outer action of letting be, she told the audience. It’s hard to value this spiritual practice at first. What can it possibly accomplish? What’s the point when there are so many other things that need doing?

But in this practice of gently releasing the mind’s tyranny, we open ourselves to another way of perceiving. We practice another way of being. For a brief time we allow a higher wisdom to move through us, and slowly learn to permit that flow in more and more aspects of life. We get beyond how the ego thinks things should be, and learn to be present to what is.

Bourgeault describes this as putting the mind in the heart, yielding a new way of perceiving. She calls it the key to practicing compassion. This deep sense of compassion, beyond what she terms ego and activism and do-goodism, is putting on the mind of Christ. From this place true transformation happens.

As we practice this way of being, we place ourselves in the presence of God. As we get out of the way we allow God to flow through us. As we let go of our ego’s agenda we become available to the flow of our authentic life and experience our connection to others.

The energy in the room was palpable as Bourgeault led us in a silent session of centering prayer. I understood for the first time where the phrase “tugged at my heartstring” comes from as I experienced just such a tangible sensation.

Sitting in meditation it looks like nothing is happening. But there’s more to our lives than what meets the eye.

 

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