Waking Up

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adversity, awake, Brian Johnson, COVID19, growth, living in the moment, Optimize, The Practicing Stoic, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Ward Farnsworth

I feel as if I have been in this state of “suspended animation” long enough. If you are floating along (as I have been), waiting for the pandemic to be over, you have perhaps reached the same point as I have. Some would call it like the adage “sink or swim.” The shift began yesterday when quotes from what I was reading in the morning—tidbits from the internet—came crashing through my brain one after another. I resisted because of Mother’s Day but hurriedly wrote some of what I read in a little notebook, in hopes that the energy of the words would keep until today. Some of it is still legible and comprehensible. It began with Brian Johnson’s Optimize.com. He was talking about stoicism. Listen: (from The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth).

Some adversity is NECESSARY for our growth. Indeed, the aim of the Stoic is something more: to accept reversal without shock and to make it grist for the creation of greater things. Nobody wants hardship in any particular case, but it is a necessary element in the formation of worthy people and worthy achievements that, in the long run, we do want. Stoics seek the value in whatever happens.

I have been hearing similar sentiments expressed in many conversations lately and can point to historical and present events that illustrate it. (Consider the rush to find a vaccine—or several—to match and conquer COVID 19.) It seems that necessity is often truly the mother of invention.

I’m going to spend some time today considering this concept and reality. I hope to shape the beginnings of a plan for living in this “moment” regardless of how long it lasts. Whether the plan is ever activated is not important; the planning itself is a worthy enterprise for now, I trust.

Are you already awake? What are you doing today?

Natural Beauty

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awake, beauty, dawn, God, gratitude, sunset, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I was driving home at sunset which seemed to me a ridiculously early time for it to happen. I noted the time as 4:20PM and then realized that we are less than a month away from the winter solstice! “How can that be?!” I thought. Those people who told me years ago that time goes more quickly as you age were certainly correct! It’s all about perception, however, as the atomic clock is still chugging along with just seconds of loss or gain over the years. But I digress – sort of.

I can never get enough of the color and design of the sunset on Route 81 as I drive south coming home. That’s where I get the longest view because as my car climbs the hills and dips down into the valleys it’s like playing “Hide and Seek” with the sky. (It is New York State, after all!) So yesterday, I watched this golden panorama sink and then rise for at least 30 miles, shifting slightly all the while but continuing to delight me as I consistently worked at keeping my eyes on the road.

This morning I had the opposite phenomenon to watch as dark turned to deep magenta – just a hint at first and then brighter and glorious behind the tree outside my window. Just for a moment and then it was gone, swallowed up in the light of day. It would have been so easy to miss this brief miracle. Just another five minutes of sleepiness…

The psalmist calls, “Awake! Awake! I will wake the dawn!” I know how that feels and am also bowed in gratitude for the slowness of every sunset. How kind of our God to have created such beauty – so many trees and birds and sunrises and sunsets…and you and me in the midst of it all!

Music to Greet the Dawn

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awake, dawn, hymn, King David, music, psalm 57, sacred song, sing, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, voice

Psalm 57 gives me pause this morning – specifically verses 8 and 9. As soon as I read: Awake, O my soul; awake lyre and harp, I am ready with the next line: I will wake the dawn! I have this image of King David standing on his balcony watching the light come and singing out God’s praise as loud and melodiously as anyone ever could, perhaps accompanying himself on the lyre.

I remember the first time I read that the psalm (which actually means sacred song or hymn) was always to be sung in liturgical rituals. I was so gratified because we Roman Catholics seemed to have lost touch with that practice (at least in my corner of the world) and what a difference it makes to our worship!

That thought got me started thinking about singing in general and how humans got started making music. Was it the example of the birds? The sound of water rushing over rocks in a stream or the waves lapping at the shore? The rain dripping on a stone that gave a rhythm to the sound? Or maybe the wind whistling through the trees sometimes? Speaking of that, who first put (or found) holes in a hollow reed and called it a flute?

I’m sure musicians know the answers to these questions and more but, for my part, I’m just glad it all happened since I can’t imagine the world without music – from the greatest compositions to the simplest children’s songs. And here’s a reminder of a response to people who say they can’t sing: “God gave you that voice. Your responsibility is to give it back!” I encourage us all to listen to some music today and praise God by singing along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signposts

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Alan Cohen, awake, breath, connected, conscious, destination, direction, Gandhi, journey, Meg Wheatley, reminders, slowing down, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wisdom

Today I am conscious – maybe just because it’s Monday – of the need to be aware of what surrounds me as I live today. There are already so many reminders and it isn’t yet 7:00AM!

• For at least the fifth day in succession there has been dense fog in the morning which could be mistaken for cloudiness portending rain later. Only if I am awake will I not be taken by surprise when the sun comes blazing out from under the mist.
• Alan Cohen’s morning reflection is entitled “Enjoy the Journey” and is peppered with reminders of the wisdom of slowing down so as not to miss what is just ahead of us. For example, he begins with a quote from Gandhi which wisely states that there must be more to life than increasing its speed, and from his own musings on creating a bumper sticker: Going nowhere faster will not get you somewhere.
• From Meg Wheatley: If you can’t get destination, go for direction.
• And most simply, when I wanted to access our website to write this: You’re not connected.

So I take a deep breath and jump into the depths of the day…

 

 

 

 

 

All Things Automatic

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Advent, automatic pilot, awake, consciousness, habit, Incarnation, reveal, semi-consciousness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Recently I changed the password that is sometimes the first necessarily conscious moment for me in the morning. There is an element of semi-consciousness in getting out of bed these days especially if dawn has yet to arrive. I need to be aware of whether I left my bedroom door open when I went to bed or whether there is anything in the hall that I might trip over in passing, and then there is the staircase toward coffee that I need to negotiate…but all those repetitious actions have been wired into my brain long ago so as to require the achievement of only a marginal level of consciousness.

Today, as I turned on my computer, this all came to me in a flash with the sentence: “It takes 29 days to develop a new habit.” Not only do I have to remember the first letter of my new password  – which then leads to automatic pilot – but if I forget that there’s an asterisk somewhere, the whole thing is erased and I have to start over, paying real attention this time. I don’t know who decided that the magic moment for success is 29 days but I am thinking that once a month I ought to consider changing how I do things so I get out of the habit of taking things for granted or living on automatic pilot all the time. Think about it. We have remote controls for our televisions so we never have to get off the couch. Some of us now have a “rhumba” that zooms around our carpets and floors so that we don’t need to vacuum any more. Pretty soon we will have cars that drive themselves so we can relax more – and maybe multi-task (more?) – as we travel. Don’t get me wrong. All of these things that I have mentioned have excellent reasons for use. My concern is only if we come to depend on them so much that we are able to go through life in a state of semi-consciousness because we keep adding inventions that keep us “asleep.”

As we move toward the last week of Advent I hear the lyrics of a song I used to sing with the elementary school children in religious education classes. It urged us to “stay awake! Get ready! You do not know the hour when the Lord is coming. Stay awake! Get ready! The Lord is coming soon!” It started with a clap after each of the first two commands (so as to wake us up, I suppose) and then took off like a train going faster and faster so that by the time it got to the word soon everyone was, indeed, awake.

How close am I to being ready for whatever God will reveal this time as I celebrate the feast of the Incarnation? How can I be sure I will be awake? And what about you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving Toward…

Tags

Advent, awake, awareness, Christmas, darkness, heart, Isaiah, joy, path, preparation, prophet, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today begins the season of Advent for Christians. The word itself is composed of the verb to come and the preposition meaning to. The prophet Isaiah speaks in the first reading for liturgy of his vision of all nations streaming toward the mountain of the Lord (IS 2:1-5) to be instructed in God’s ways and to learn to walk on God’s paths, beating their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, never again to train for war. In all that follows, we are urged to wake up in order to be ready to join in that day when God’s kingdom will appear. St. Paul tells us that we know what time it is; we know the need to wake up and “throw off the works of darkness,” conducting ourselves “properly as in the day.” (ROM 13:11-14) Matthew isn’t so sure about our awareness. He says that we don’t know the day that the Lord will come. “Therefore”, he says, “stay awake!”(MT 24:37-44)

To us, Advent is the time of waiting – of coming toward Christmas. We know when it’s coming; we’ve been told for awhile now how many shopping days remain before it arrives and millions of people have been very busy over the past few days feverishly preparing by spending billions, yes billions, of dollars to be ready for the big event. I apologize if I seem jaded about it all, but it becomes clearer and clearer to me as I age that the best gifts for Christmas are those of the heart, not the pocketbook. While it is true that the giving of material gifts to our loved ones can be a precious moment of exchange and meaning, it seems necessary as well to find a balance in our preparation. It is, after all, the Christ event, the Incarnation, that is the reason for all our preparation.

Today as I reflect on the readings and the world in which we now live, the questions that arise for me are the following. What do I hope we are “coming to” personally and corporately in our home, our country, our Church and our world? What am I doing to move toward the reign of God that Jesus came to reveal? Am I awake to what is really happening? Am I awake to what I am really contributing – or not? How best can I prepare for Christmas, internally and externally? Am I honestly ready for my daily prayer to be, “Come, Lord Jesus!” so that I will recognize and truly celebrate the gifts of Christmas when it dawns?

May our preparation be serious and joyful in the knowledge of what is possible for us – inside and out.

 

 

 

 

 

Traditions

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awake, Corinthians, disciples, Garden of Gethsemane, humility, Jesus, John, love, master, servant, St. Paul, The Last Supper, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

With the words I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you (1COR 11:23) St. Paul begins the recounting of the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion. Tonight is one of the few times when many Christian Churches have special services in the evening as we begin the “high holy days” that tell the stories of what is called for many our “salvation history.” All the stories are known to us and by now many of the faithful could rattle off the order of the services, the prayers and some of the hymns that are as familiar to us as our own names (even – for those who are old enough – the Latin lyrics!). There is a special comfort in these rituals that call us back – through over 2000 years of history – to events whose essence has been preserved regardless of dogmatic accretions, religious wars or heresies. Tonight it is just about Jesus and his desire to be with his friends, this desire heightened by his sense of the danger that is building around him. John’s gospel says that he loved his own in the world, and he loved them to the end. (JN 13) In an effort to show them this love while they were at supper, Jesus began to wash their feet, a startling thing for them as it was always the task of servant rather than one called “Master”. A startling thing indeed for us to hear, for Jesus was clear that the tradition was changing. Now we are all called to do the same for everyone we meet. “Love one another as I have loved you,” Jesus said. “Stoop in humility to those who need a hand, a friend, a favor, a great sacrifice from you.” Wherever we see a need we must be ready to answer – as he was.

Tonight in the Catholic Church that I attend, it will be the priest who becomes the servant of all and actually washes feet. Later we will re-enact the walk to the Garden of Gethsemane, the scene of disappointment where the disciples with whom Jesus had just shared so intimately fell asleep while he was praying to be spared what was to be his fate. There will be people, myself among them, who will stay after the service to ponder the events that have taken place and the anticipation of what is to come. It will be late by then. How long will I be able to stay awake? How far will my mind wander? Will anything be changed in me by my participation in this ritual of remembrance? I hope so…as I always do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facing the Storm

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awake, aware, bad news, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, compassionate, fix, help another soul, light one candle, mend, safe, small things, stay calm, storm, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, world problems

The lead story on all of the TV networks last night was the impending storm all up and down the east coast of our country. Already death and destruction could be seen coming across from the west and over the weekend it seems inevitable that a “one-two punch” will wreak havoc on the rest of us. That just adds to all the other bad news of politics and terror attacks that make one wonder when all these storms in our lives will abate.

The Society of the Christophers is famous for the saying, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” I read an analogous quote from author Clarissa Pinkola Estes this morning that gave me permission once more not to set my sights on saving the whole world. (Sometimes in our frustrations we need reminders.) She says:

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.

So blessings today on all those who serve good hot soup to those in shelters, to first responders who leave the comfort of their homes to rescue victims of fire and flood, and to those who stretch out their arms to assuage distress by offering hugs to those in need. Stay safe out there, everyone. Stay awake and aware. Stay compassionate and stay calm. Stay ready to serve.