Fear vs. Love

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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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Family

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brother, connected, family, Holy Family, New Year, nuclear family, one family, one world, sister, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

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.

I know that I am privileged far beyond the boundaries of what money can buy and I wish such love as exists in my family for all people. Such love does not imply lack of struggle but rather a willingness to acknowledge our imperfections as well as the bonds that hold us together. And in our time we are faced with a new sense of what family can mean as people research their ancestry and submit their DNA to testing, learning whom they ought to be calling “sister” an “brother” in a wider sense than we could have imagined.

Let us, then, on this threshold day of a new year, recognize that we are all connected, and let us resolve to hold the possibility of “one world, one family” as our goal for the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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…

 

 

 

 

 

Indra’s Net

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connected, Indra's Net, Meg Wheatley, Rig Veda, sculpture galleries, Spiritual Center, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, threads, Turning To One Another, universe

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.

It seemed natural for me, then, to pull Meg Wheatley’s book, Turning To One Another, for something more to say. On the page I opened to, I saw on the left the title, Indra’s Net from the Rig Veda as described by Anne Adams and, on the right, this brief description:

There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe…At every crossing of the threads there is an individual. And every individual is a crystal bead. And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.

That is a wonderful beginning image. I would encourage you if you are unfamiliar with the concept to go to internet descriptions and images which expand and deepen this wonderful story. For me, it describes what happens when people come here to our center and encounter a sense of peace and/or deeper meaning in their life or work or a connection with the earth so beautifully present on this land. We do not see the whole universe of stars even on the clearest nights but the light show we watch every day from here teaches us to stay awake (as today’s gospel urges us) for the beauty that will surely pass our way.

May your day include recognition of at least one new crystal bead that lets you know the divine light that is everywhere at all times.