Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda

Source: translated by Alistair Reid in Extravagaria

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Lent Madness: Basil about "Prayer"

This Lent, I am subscribing to daily emails from Lent Madness, in which 32 saints are place in competition to determine which one gets the “golden halo” at the end of Lent. Each day, two are offered with their biographies and votes are taken. Now we are down to 16 “winners” to vote for each day. (Surprisingly, yesterday John Wesley was defeated by his brother Charles!)

Today the vote is between Basil the Great and Antony of Egypt. I really liked a few quotes of Basil about prayer, which I am posting below:

How to Pray

"Prayer is a request for what is good, offered by the devout of God. But we do not restrict this request simply to what is stated in words. We should not express our prayer merely in syllables, but also through the attitude of our soul and in the virtuous actions we do in our life. This is how you pray continually — not by offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so that your life becomes one continuous and uninterrupted prayer."

Praying Daily

"When you sit down to eat, pray. When you eat bread, do so thanking God for being so generous to you. If you drink wine (or coffee), be mindful of God who has given it to you for your pleasure and as a relief in sickness. When you dress, thank God for His kindness in providing you with clothes. When you look at the sky and the beauty of the stars, throw yourself at God’s feet and adore Him who ordered things this way. When the sun goes down and when it rises, when you are asleep or awake, give thanks to God, who created and arranged all things for your benefit, to have you know, love and praise their Creator."

This was also posted for "Thursday Prayer" at RevGalBlogPals.

A Different Kind of Fasting

The beautiful sunshine outside distracts me from thoughts of Lent, but Christine Valters Paintner writes these words of reflection at this beginning of Lent:


"Alan Jones describes the desert relationship to death in this way:  'Facing death gives our loving force, clarity, and focus. . . even our despair is to be given up and seen as the ego-grasping device that it really is.  Despair about ourselves and our world is, perhaps, the ego’s last and, therefore, greatest attachment.'

"I have been sitting with Jones' words and the invitation to fast during Lent, one of the central practices we are called to take on. The first reading today from the prophet Joel summons us to 'return to God with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning.'

"But the kind of fast drawing me this season isn't leaving behind of treats like chocolate or other pleasures. This season I am being invited to fast from things like 'ego-grasping' and noticing when I so desperately want to be in control, and then yielding myself to a greater wisdom than my own.

"I am called to fast from being strong and always trying to hold it all together, and instead embrace the profound grace that comes through my vulnerability and tenderness, to allow a great softening this season.

"I am called to fast from anxiety and the endless torrent of thoughts which rise up in my mind to paralyze me with fear of the future, and enter into the radical trust in the abundance at the heart of things, rather than scarcity.

"I am called to fast from speed and rushing through my life, causing me to miss the grace shimmering right here in this holy pause.

"I am called to fast from multitasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness to any one thing, so that I get many things done, but none of them well, and none of them nourishing to me. Instead my practice will become a beholding of each thing, each person, each moment.

"I am called to fast from endless list-making and too many deadlines, and enter into the quiet and listen for what is ripening and unfolding, what is ready to be born.

"I am called to fast from certainty and trust in the great mystery of things.

"And then perhaps, I will arrive at Easter and realize those things from which I have fasted I no longer need to take back on again. I will experience a different kind of rising."

~Christine Valters Paintner

To read the entire article go here.

And if you would like to receive a weekly newsletter from Christine, you may subscribe by going here.

The Best Prayer

"The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God, 

knowing that that goodness can reach down 

to our lowest depths of need."

~Julian of Norwich

From Inward/Outward. Subscribe here.     

My Prayer

Give me the strength that waits upon you in silence and peace. Give me humility in which alone is rest, and deliver me from pride which is the heaviest of burdens. Possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love. Occupy my whole life with the one thought and the one desire of love, that I may love not for the sake of merit, not for the sake of perfection, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of sanctity, but for You alone. 

Thomas Merton
Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

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If Prayer Would Do It

If prayer would do it
I’d pray.

If reading esteemed thinkers would do it
I’d be halfway through the Patriarchs.

If discourse would do it
I’d be sitting with His Holiness
every moment he was free.

If contemplation would do it
I’d have translated the Periodic Table
to hermit poems, converting
matter to spirit.

If even fighting would do it
I’d already be a black belt.

If anything other than love could do it
I’d have done it already
and left the hardest for last.

Stephen Levine
Source: Breaking the Drought

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We Build Walls

“We build walls around our hearts, around our homes, around our land, around our borders to keep out strangers, the different, the other; to protect ourselves from getting hurt or from having to share our space with others. We guard our hearts, our land, and our country with great vigilance until the very guarding obsesses us and we become so outwardly focused and defensive that we lose touch with ourselves and our humanity. In our efforts to protect and defend we become disconnected and fragmented.”

Edwina Gateley
Source: A Mystical Heart

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Prayer

Saint Teresa has the words for how I feel about prayer:

Prayer is an act of love, words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love.

St. Teresa of Avila
The Way of Perfection

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Good Friday: Inner Challenge

Lynn Jericho composed a set of questions to ask oneself today for the Inner Challenge of Good Friday:

As I wrote the questions below, I realized they ask you to experience yourself as a victim or a perpetrator.  A victim has a perpetrator, a perpetrator, a victim.

But the I-beyond-consciousness does not live in stories where there are victims or perpetrators.  Certainly, Christ Consciousness is not about victimhood, shame, guilt, hatred or other feelings, attitudes, or judgments that separate, divide, or kill the heart or soul of anyone, especially your own.

As you look at these questions, can you feel the pain without shame, guilt, hatred, any feeling that is not permeated with love.

False Witness
Do you lie about yourself to yourself, to others?

And when have you silently born false witness on another's soul? Why?

 If we don't offer the dark, selfish parts of ourselves compassion and forgiveness, will we ever be whole - resurrect into a new vital experience of I.

The Judging
Do you know the prejudiced judge in your own soul that accuses the part of you that longs to speak the truth, love freely, do powerful deeds?

Have you accused, judged, and condemned yourself or others?

Have you ever washed your hands of standing for the innocence of another or the strength of your own goodness?

The Flogging and Mocking
Have you had to suffer the pain of flogging and the humiliation of mockery?

 What is self-flogging? Is it your constant self-doubt, your food binging, your obsession with knowing everything, your inability to earn enough money? And self-mockery?

What do you do when you look in the mirror? Do you mock your body? Do you write from your heart and then rip it to shreds? Do you tell yourself you are unworthy and undeserving?

The Bearing of the Cross
Often the crosses we bear are the weight of our own defenses and identities we created to hide or avoid or survive.  What are the crosses that you bear?

Does anyone ever offer to help you carry them by listening to your stories, caring for your suffering, seeing the truth of your heart?

The Crucifixion and Death
So often our destiny requires that we suffer and die to ourselves. Each year on Good Friday we can ask ourselves have I died to myself so that I can live for others?

We don't need to say yes, but it is very good to ask ourselves the question and be willing to be surprised by the answer.

After Christmas

The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

 

~~Howard Thurman

• The Mood of Christmas

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Questions for 2012

Today being the last day of 2012, it is a time to look back upon the year and consider what I learned from its events. I liked the questions asked by Elizabeth O'Connor as quoted on Inward/Outward that are below. I numbered the questions in the arrangement that pleased me. You may want to choose one or two to ponder.

1. What took place in your home relations? Your work relations? Your church relations? What events in the larger community of city, country and world most captured your attention?

2. Who were the significant people in your life? What books and art instructed your mind and heart?

3. Did you create anything this year? Did you make any new discoveries about yourself? How were you gift last year to a person, a community or an institution?

 

4. What was your greatest joy in this year gone? What was your greatest sorrow? What caused you the most disappointment? What caused you the most sadness?

5. In what areas of your life did you grow? Were these areas related to your joy or your pain?

What are your regrets? How would you do things differently, if you could live the year again? What did you learn?

6. Did you have a recurring dream? What theme or themes ran through your year?

7. Did you grow in your capacity to be a person in community--to bear your own burdens, to let others bear theirs? Did you have sufficient time apart with yourself?

8. Did you root your life more firmly in Scripture? Did you grow in your understanding of yourself? What was your most important insight? Did God seem near or far off?

9. How do you want to create the new year? What kind of commitment do you want to make to yourself? Your community? To the oppressed people of the world? How do the questions about commitment make you feel? Angry? Challenged? Hopeful?

10. Who are the people with whom you would like to deepen your relationships in the year to come? Do you have relationships that need to be healed? What can you do to heal your own heart? What can others do to assist in your healing?

11. Is there a special piece of inward work that you would like to accomplish? Is there a special outward work? 

12. What are the goals that seem important to you? What are your hopes? What are your fears? What are the immediate first steps that you can take toward the goals that seem important to you?

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"Consent" by Denise Levertov

This was the minute no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.

She did not cry, "I cannot, I am not worthy,"
nor, "I have not the strength."
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.
Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.

~~Denise Levertov

Source: "Annunication" in Breathing the Water

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By e.e.cummings

I have always loved poems by e.e.cummings. I keep being surprised by his faith.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~ e.e.cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

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Prayer I Need to Pray Everyday

Lord, help me now to unclutter my life,
to organize myself in the direction of simplicity.
Lord, teach me to listen to my heart;
teach me to welcome change, instead of fearing it.
Lord, I give You these stirrings inside me,
I give you my discontent,
I give you my restlessness,
I give you my doubt,
I give you my despair,
I give you all the longings I hold inside.
Help me to listen to these signs of change, of growth;
to listen seriously and follow where they lead
through the breathtaking empty space of an open door.

Source: unknown

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Have a Good Day!

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage is sweet."

(Annie Dillard, 1945 - )

 

Thanks to my friend Daryl, I found another beneficial email subscription of quotes. This is by Rev. Galen Guengerich of  the Unitarian Church of All Souls in  New York City. To subscribe to this daily blessing, go here.  

Have a good day!

God's Curriculum

Everybody is unique. 

Do not compare yourself with anybody else 

lest you spoil God's curriculum.

Baal Shem Tov

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Need for Imagination

My friend Daryl forwarded this meditation to me today, for which I am grateful:

"I become more and more certain, as the years go by, that wherever friendship is destroyed, or homes are broken, or precious ties are severed, there is a failure of imagination. Someone is too intent on justifying himself, or herself, never venturing out to imagine the way things seem to the other person. Imagination is shut off and sympathy dies. If we know what it is that makes other people speak or act as they do, if we know it vividly by carefully imagining all that may lie behind it, we might not quarrel. We might understand. Often we could heal the wounds."

(A. Powell Davies, 1902 – 1957)

From All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City. Go here to subscribe and to see the site.

And here is a quote I found on A. Powell Davies' website:

The world is now too dangerous for
anything but the truth, too small
for anything but brotherhood.  

True religion, like our founding
principles, requires that the rights of the
disbeliever be equally acknowledged with
those of the believer. 

How Spiritual Disciplines Work

Eknath Eaaswaran wrote:
I once asked my grandmother, “Why shouldn’t we go after pleasant things, Granny? It’s only human. And what’s wrong with wanting to stay away from unpleasant things?” She didn’t argue with me. She just told me to eat an amla fruit.

It was easier said than done. The fruit was so sour that I wanted to spit it out, but she stopped me. “Don’t give up. Keep chewing.” Out of love for her, I did, and the sourness left. The fruit began to taste sweeter and sweeter. “Granny, this is delicious,” I said.

“But you didn’t like it at the outset. You wanted to spit it out.” That is how it is with spiritual disciplines.

by Eknath Easwaran (1910-1999)

The Thought for the Day is today's entry from Eknath Easwaran's Words to Live By.
(Copyright 1999 and 2005 by The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation.)
Select the Thought for the Day for any day of the year.

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Why Wonder?

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
and the felt ferocity of that love
and the felt necessity of that love,
the fish explode into the many.
Imagine him, speaking,
and don't worry about what is reality,
or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it was all those things.
Eat, drink, be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
spoken with love.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Why I Wake Early)

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Seen the moon lately?

Has the moon been up there
All these nights
And I never noticed?

A whole week with my nose
To the ground, to the grind.

And the beloved faithfully
Returning each evening
As the moon.

Where have I been?
Who has abandoned whom?

~ Gregory Orr ~

(How Beautiful the Beloved)

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