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A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, connected, creative, darkness, epiphany, fear, great, love, powerless, shine a light, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
January 6 is the traditional feast of the Epiphany but the liturgical calendar – like the “secular” one – is now fond of moving feasts to a more convenient time, in this case a Sunday. So more about that tomorrow. For now I want to borrow a message from Alan Cohen’s book, A Deep Breath of Life, that seems to me a good reflection on how to proceed in this new year.
Fear tells us that we are small, powerless and separate. Love affirms that we are great, creative, and connected. Which voice do you choose to be your guide?
The way to dissolve a limit is to step right up to it and look it in the eye. When we shine the light on the darkness, we see that the thing we ran from had power over us only as long as we kept it at a distance. When we face what frightens us, we discover that we are bigger than it is. We can do anything we choose; we were not born to live in fear, but in love.
Sometimes all it takes is a step toward a trusted friend who will listen to us. If that seems too difficult, I suggest starting with food – no kidding. Eat a vegetable that you’ve never tried that you can’t imagine liking. Even if you find it distasteful, you probably won’t die from it! (If you already love every vegetable available, try some tofu or guacamole: something foreign to your taste buds). Then stand up and walk a short distance, imagining that you are on the edge of a precipice. Don’t look at your feet; just feel each step and know that you will be able to keep walking without falling over the edge. When you’ve concluded those two exercises, find your friend and give her/him the privilege of listening to you!
Coincidentally, you will probably come to understand the meaning of the word epiphany!
Today, the feast of the Holy Family, I am flooded with memories and gratitude for the blessings of my youth. The luxury of growing up with an intact nuclear family as well as the proximity of cousins galore is somewhat more rare these days and something to be treasured. In some wonderful, seemingly organic way, those of us who are now the “elders” seem deeply connected to the younger generation of our family. Although scattered around our country and even the far reaches of the world, on the infrequent occasions when we are together, delight is as palpable as the genetics that we share.
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!
Yesterday we had an uncharacteristically full day here at the Spiritual Center in Windsor, New York. Not a day just full of activity, we hosted three different groups of people including a faith formation work team, a leadership training group of students from a NY state university and a group of individuals, not related except by their desire to experience the sculpture galleries housed on the property. I was thinking this morning as I settled down to write that in a deeper way these people were/are all connected. One of the faith formation members told me that in the midst of their prayer the exuberance of the college students doing an icebreaker on the lawn outside was not a distraction but flowed seamlessly into their prayer. (Imagine a great sigh of relief on my part!) From that and many other snippets of conversation and observation I now realize the connection as an organic energy of spiritual seeking that was present throughout the day and into the evening.