Tag Archives: spirituality

Beautiful words from Joanna Macy and Matthew Fox

Posted on February 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe…. All is registered in the “boundless heart” of the bodhisattva. Through our deepest and innermost responses to our world – to hunger and torture and the threat of annihilation – we touch that boundless heart…

Experience the pain. Let us not fear its impact on ourselves or others. We will not shatter, for we are not objects that can break. Nor will we get stuck in this pain for it is dynamic, it flows through us. Drop our defenses, let us stay present to its flow, express it – in words, movements and sounds.” (Joanna Macy)

The Cosmic Christ is present wherever there is pain. The Cosmic Christ unites all this pain in the one divine heart, in the one divine – but wounded – body of the Christ which is the body of the universe. The Cosmic Christ is the crucified and suffering one in every creature, just as much as the Cosmic Christ is the radiant one, the divine mirror glistening and glittering in every creature. Divinity is not spared suffering – that is the lesson of the Cosmic Christ who suffers. (Matthew Fox)

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Reflections on a wedding and pain

Posted on February 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

Here’s a little something from a wedding I attended in August of ’06. The mystery is indeed mystery and such joyful experiences contain much paradox when we pay attention.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Brian told me at the reception that “weddings are emotional times.” I think he said this in passing without really understanding the depth of the emotion that was existent in the lives of those involved. There was more to it than a situational display of feeling.

As I looked across at that the faces of his family while Chris proposed a toast to his missing brother of two years, I saw it well up and overflow. Pain. Pain that is always there, not simply there because of the wedding. I saw a wince, a cringing. I saw a bowed head, a covered face. A quivering lip accompanying eyes filled with tears. I, myself, recoiled with a painful gasp for air as I knew, and felt, what feelings emerge from such memories.

Weddings are to be joyful times, I thought. Indeed, to celebrate the end of years of struggling through singleness of my brother, Chris, was more joyful and exciting than anything we had celebrated as yet. Everyone was happy for him, especially his family and those of us closest to him. But I am realizing that to truly experience the joy, one must also understand and feel the pain. The tension caused by the mutual existence of the two gives life to the real and true intensity of the feelings. In the midst of this joy, there was such great pain. And I felt it deeply… raw and burning. Never, never will I make light of it or deny its existence.

For every new life and new growth comes a dying and death of the old. The transition of a close friend into the world of marriage leaves me knowing that things cannot be the same. Chris’ role in my life is significantly altered. The very real distance and pain of Scott processing the change alone, not knowing the pain I feel in his withdrawal. The wounds uncovered as my need for his friendship is denied.. The knowledge of change and transition of my life into a future that is beyond what I can possibly envision. Where am I going to live? What kind of job am I going to have? How is this man, being himself a steady and self-aware man, going to bring his being to a completely new and different environment? How long do I wait?

The questions go on as the days pass… every new morning is a gift, taken with joy, as I experience it new. The joy with the pain, and the death with the life. It is the way of things and I feel these tensions. I feel them so deep… they are in my breathing, in my getting up and lying down, in my working and in my rest.

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Did I really write that?

Posted on February 5, 2012 | Leave a comment

It makes sense to me, I suppose. The first half of life is about self. The second half, giveaway. But, I wonder where those words came from, back in 2006, 2007… at the beginning of the shadowland. It was the beginning of the wilderness, the beginning of the darkness. I had just come out of seminary, three vigorous years of work that went far faster than I ever could have imagined. I was trying to figure out what spirit wanted for my life… never thought I would be here, doing this. I had space, time, mystery. A good cocktail for a mystic.

Yesterday, I was going through my documents on the computer, organizing arranging slimming down and I found writings that have left me puzzled and thrown for a loop really. Have I gotten dumber since then? Probably not, as I never would have imagined I would be giving and doing what I am now.

So I want to post a few things back in the day. A short one for this morning… more for later.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Anne Lamott writes in her book, Traveling Mercies, about a man in her church who was dying of aids and is taken up during a hymn by an elderly black lady. They hold each other and cry together… a moment of beautiful reconciliation. She concludes:

I can’t imagine anything but music that could have brought about this alchemy. Maybe it’s because music is about as physical as it gets: your essential rhythm is your heartbeat; your essential sound, the breath. We’re walking temples of noise, and when you add tender hearts to this mix, it somehow lets us meet in places we couldn’t get to any other way.

This music, this living, is what we begin to experience as we pay attention to the world around us. It is what makes us created beings, not “gods” who control our own existence. See how the birds sing, listen to how the wind whispers. It is us. We are a part of this. We always have been, from the moment that God put us here to be with his other creation. That’s really what it comes down to I think. Being with…

I am with the birds, I am with the wind, I am with the grass and the trees and the sun. I am with you, and you are with me. And in and through it all, God himself is with… His with-ness, though, is deeper and more profound. His with-ness is what gives life its existence. He is what makes things real.

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The earth shall teach us

Posted on January 7, 2012 | 2 Comments

The earth herself and the created order most purely reveal the truth of the divine. It is as things were created to be that we find the absence of the influence of human will, which so often leads to disorder, control, and abuse as much as it leads to love and unity. Without the human will, we find wildness, and where we find wildness, we find truth, wholeness, and perfection.

Could the soaring eagle be more perfect?
Could the howling wolf be more perfect?
Could the blossoming cherry tree or the emerging daffodil be more perfect?
What about the new-fallen snow, the song of the robin, the rising sun, the flowing creek, or the lush undergrowth in the forest?

Could any of these things be better or more right than they are in their wildness and freedom? We do well to learn our lesson from our mother, the earth, and our brothers and sisters that rest upon and walk along her belly. She will teach us how to be ourselves, as we were created to be. She is in the Christ as the Christ is in her.

In Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and invisible… Before anything was created, Christ existed, and Christ holds all things in unity. (Colossians 1:15-17)

Whatever name we give, whatever image works best, there is a unity and a creating at work for all time. It is love and it is beauty and it is rightness. It is wild and free.

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Supported by the universe… Immensely!

Posted on January 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s funny. I had this post in mind, that was entirely focused on little Brendan’s peaceful slumber in my arms. Of course, at my intended time of writing, what did the little guy decide to express to me but quite the opposite. After some holding and talking, he once again set the example for me as to what peace looks like.

Yesterday, the two of us got to sit in on Kat’s lunch time yoga class. It being her first regular class back, she wanted to have a little experiment to see how he would do in an hour long yoga class. So Brendan and I sat in the back and we danced. He spent some time on his belly, on his back, on his feet, flying in the air, swinging, and being held. He didn’t cry once. He did, however, smile and laugh and giggle and groove. After a while, he began rubbing his eyes so I held him till he fell asleep. Deeply. There he was, resting in my arms in as deep a sleep as a baby can be. Arms hanging. Legs limp. Head and neck relaxed.

It was then I was reminded what it means to be supported by the universe. Our natural state of being. At peace. At-one-ness. Not a care in the world because we are being held by the great being of infinite love. There is nothing more beautiful.

Our lives get so complicated with apparent dilemma after dilemma. We get rushed and hurried and hustled and harried. Our breath, our most basic body instincts, is completely forgotten and ignored. Our bodies hold on to every up and down we feel. We get sick, tired, and worried. This is not the human condition. This is not what God wants for us. I take my reminders from my child and the spirit speaks through him.

As he slept, I kissed his feet. My guru.

 

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