The Gift of Frost

Tags

breathe, Earth, forgiveness, heal the world, heaven, John Philip Newell, land, love, love of life, love of neighbors, Peace, prayer, Praying With the Earth, self, souls, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

7:40AM. There’s something about the drop to just beyond freezing temperatures outside (26 F.) that silences me as if the earth put a finger to her lips saying, “Shh…Pay attention. Don’t move from where you sit. Just drink in the moment!” I would love to open my window and breathe in the freshness but I’m afraid that would be just a little too extreme for such an exercise right now. So I sit ensconced in the comfort of the chair that is slowly molding itself to my body, feeling the air around me. It’s cold enough to make me know I have made the right decision but warm enough to give thanks for the heat that rises from downstairs and allows me to concentrate on the prayer for Saturday morning in John Philip Newell’s book, Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace. Won’t you join me?

To the home of peace, to the field of love, to the land where forgiveness and right relationship meet we look, O God, with longing for earth’s children, with compassion for the creatures, with hearts breaking for the nations and people we love. Open us to visions we have never known, strengthen us for self-givings we have never made, delights with a oneness we could never have imagined, that we may truly be born of You makers of peace.

May the love of life fill our hearts. May the love of earth bring joy to heaven. May the love of self deepen our souls. May the love of neighbor heal our world. As nations, as peoples, as families this day may the love of life heal our world.

The Flow of Life

Tags

breath, breathe, change, flow, letting go, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today I’m sitting in the quiet, reflecting on the flow of life and how important it is not to upset that flow any more than is necessary if we are to continue to travel on an even keel. It is not generally our doing if schedules get changed or events get shifted around. We in the Northeast are at a moment in the year when the weather plays a big part in everyday plans. A big snowstorm cancels lots of things as does a death in family or friendship circles. We can fret and moan over the inconvenience of rescheduling, or take a breath and look for alternatives.

The best thing to do (and this takes a lot of practice) is to breathe in the change and then let go the distress. Sounds easy…breathing in and breathing out, right? We do that automatically. (I’m watching my breath as I type.) I have come to know the value of letting go for equanimity in daily life as well as for spiritual growth and I would recommend it – especially as we move into our biggest and most important holiday season. Not as easy as it sounds, I know!

Practice makes perfect…give it a try!

Ice Cream on a Cold Morning

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breathe, enjoy, inhale, pause, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, This Is The Life

As I clicked my way through my normal check of websites for inspiration this morning, my eye fell on an advertisement for a book offered by Franciscan Media. The book is called This Is the Life. Although it was attractive to me because of the picture of an ice cream cone on the book jacket, it was the tag line accompanying the image that caught my attention. See what you think.

Before we succumb to someday, let us inhale this day.

That one will give me pause, slow me down and keep me breathing!

A Pause That Refreshes

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breathe, chant, mantra, pause, present moment, relax, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Many times during the past week, the members of our assembly have been invited to take a short pause, sometimes as brief as two minutes, to gather ourselves and breathe into the present moment. The silence at those times is deep and palpable. Occasionally, as an additional prompt to renewed consciousness, we conclude the silence with a chant that has a become a beloved mantra for us during these days and, I trust, for the days going forward.

Sacred is our call. Awesome indeed the entrustment. Tending the Holy. Tending the Holy.

Yesterday we reached the mid-point of our time here in St. Louis. Our reward for work well done is an entire day to pause and relax and become tourists, regrouping for the second half of our work. So I’m off to meet my sisters from New York and Hawai’i, likely meeting up somewhere in the city others from Japan and Minnesota, California and Peru! And in our “play” we will, of course, be tending the Holy all day long.

Breathing Lessons

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breath, breathe, compassion, Jesus, Mark, metaphor, parables, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understand

Jesus is out and about again this morning preaching in parables – this time Mark’s version of the sower and the seed (MK 4:1-20). I wonder if it was a whole crowd of blank looks staring back at him and then later the questions from “the Twelve” that frustrated him enough to have him ask, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?”

It all must have been so clear to Jesus and he probably thought that the agricultural metaphor he was using would be easily understood. Aren’t we like that sometimes? We use examples from our experience that we think are self-explanatory, expecting that our hearers will understand what we’re talking about but we might as well be speaking a foreign language if their experience is different from ours. I find it comforting to think that even the disciples were mystified by the parables. Even more am I happy to see the compassion of Jesus this morning who didn’t walk away saying something like, “Oh, never mind! What was I thinking using a figure of speech that I thought would make it easier for you! Why do I even try?” Rather, I’ll wager he took a deep breath to fill his lungs with compassion and then explained the whole scenario to them.

I will try to remember this lesson, forgiving myself for frustration when I am not understood and trying to find the right words when trying to help others understand me, reminding myself always to “just breathe!”

 

 

 

 

 

One Liner

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breathe, guest of honor, inner peace, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wellness

I found this well-said prompt toward wellness in a source called Breathe (www.breathethemagazine.co.uk). See what you think:

“Whether you’re working, resting or playing, treating yourself like the guest of honor in your own life will lead towards inner peace.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Quite Yet…

Tags

Advent, breathe, Christmas, faithfulness, Peace, stillness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today we have a strange confluence of Church events. This morning we celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Advent when we normally prepare to wait a little longer for the celebration of the Incarnation. We have, however, by liturgical rules and the calendar, run out of days before December 24th – Christmas Eve – which ushers in what is never a moveable feast: Christmas Day! So perhaps we are brought up short in our spiritual preparation and need to step back to assess our readiness.

For me, this is a moment of “Stop the world; I want to get off!” as I can already hear the preparations in full swing downstairs. As I look at lectionary readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, I hear again and again the promise of God’s faithfulness and know that these reminders will remain and even be strengthened during the Christmas season when the appearance of the Christ as a tiny child is the evidence. I need now to find moments of inner stillness in this day of heightened expectation, to stop and breathe into the great mystery of love that is unfolding in the silence.

Can we stay in the waiting while on the verge of the bursting forth? Only as we breathe the peace that we long for. Breathe now…just breathe…

 

 

 

 

 

Still Searching for Light

Tags

A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, being, breathe, Centered Living, distractions, enlightenment, letting go, light, Peace, quiet, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Well, the storm that promised my “play date” in Latham took a breath yesterday and allowed me to travel home in safety. Overnight, in a second wave, what we had expected finally arrived so that schools are closed and the directive is for all of us to stay home today. Still looking for light (see yesterday’s post), I turned to a new book by Alan Cohen, A Deep Breath of Life, subtitled Daily Inspiration for Heart-Centered Living. I wasn’t disappointed as the selection for today began with a man looking for a lost key under a streetlamp. When a helpful friend asked if he knew where he was standing when he lost the key, the man indicated a tree 30 feet away. “Then why are you looking here?” the friend asked. “Because there is more light over here,” the man answered.

Cohen is suggesting that we tend to look to easy answers for things rather than confronting our deeper issues. He says, “Enlightenment is an inside job. Doing more in the outer world will not result in more peace; only being more will get us what we want. Peace is attained by letting go of everything that distracts us from it.” The thought for the day in bold letters at the bottom of the page is the simple sentence that I was looking for as a guide for this snow-covered day.

In quiet I look within and discover the light I am.

What’d I Say?

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breathe, defile, hateful, Jesus, Matthew, negativity, Ordinary Time, Peter, speech, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unkind words, violent, walking on water, words

Interestingly on this “ordinary day” – Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time in our Church calendar, to be exact – there are two possible gospel readings from which to choose. If I’m not mistaken, that usually happens on big feast days or when a long gospel passage appears first and is followed by a shorter version of the same one. Today we have two completely different texts – the first being the familiar aftermath of the feeding of the five thousand that includes not only Jesus but Peter walking on water (MT 14:22-36). There’s a lot to talk about in that passage. It is the second text, however, that caught me this morning (MT 15:1-2, 10-14). It’s all worth pondering but it includes a sentence that I think is uniquely timely and important for each of us and all of us as foundational to our spirituality. Jesus says, It is not what enters one’s mouth that defiles a person; but what comes out of the mouth is what defiles one.

The verb defile is quite strong. Synonyms include: to mar, sully, spoil, impair, debase or degrade. What Jesus is pointing out is the importance of the words we use every day. We might intuit from this that unkind words can devolve into unkind actions and hateful or violent thoughts or speech often lead to violence. It actually says that our speech can ruin things. We have many examples of this truth in the world today so in addition to praying for peace and enlightenment, it seems that an essential practice for all of us is to watch our speech. If negativity is becoming a constant in our lives we need to pay more attention and leave negative conversations behind. Awareness is key to success in these situations. As a wise woman once said to me, “Energy follows thought.” The train of negative speech gathers steam very quickly after leaving the station. So putting on the brakes and jumping off that train becomes crucial to our own health and that of all those in our circles of conversation.

My plan for today will include an attempt to watch every word that comes from my mouth and (even better) work to see if I can catch the negatives while they’re still rolling around inside me. If I am able to do that, I might also be able to breathe them out so that they dissipate in the air without damage to me or the world around me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Quiet Season

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activity, balance, breathe, content, daily living, find peace, forget concerns, God of the seasons, pray, rest, sacred space, set yourself free, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

We inhabitants of the Northeast United States spent November and December in a mixture of gratitude for warm days and apprehension for a time when the winter would appear with a vengeance. Global warning had seemed to favor us with record high temperatures while predicting a serious plummeting to follow. Well, now it’s January and the other side of the coin has shown itself. The lovely “valley of opportunity” where I live has been spared the 21 inches of snow that fell just 80 miles to our north but frigid temperatures and high winds have forced caution in travel and consideration of cancellation of events. In the frustration of the uncertainty resulting from the weather’s control of my schedule, I am reminded of Thomas Merton’s advice for daily living – perfect as I face the second half of this week.

There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men. “But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret…” Once you have found such a place, be content with it and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be quick to change it for another…Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

When I am too busy to remember the necessary balance of activity and rest, I bless the “God of the seasons” for an opportunity to surrender and find peace in the gift of winter time.