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awareness, child, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, content, faith, friend, friendship, gratitude, humble, knowledge, light, poverty, praise, prayer plant, presence, simplicity, spirit, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton
Sometimes when life feels very complicated I like to find some simplicity somewhere. This morning, since light had already arrived at this task before I did, I looked up and saw that my prayer plant had found a way to untangle herself from the tight configuration her leaves had been living in since I transplanted her a few weeks ago. She seemed happy to spread her arms in praise. That moment was enough to call me to do the same.
The feeling was deepened when I opened to the words of Thomas Merton who offered me the following message from his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:
You ask of me nothing else than to be content that I am your Child and your Friend, simply to accept your friendship because it is your friendship. This friendship is Spirit. You have called me to be repeatedly born in the Spirit, repeatedly born in light, in knowledge, in unknowing, in faith, in awareness, in gratitude, in poverty, in presence, and in praise.
Such a wide-ranging invitation offered to all who consent simply to accept humble friendship with God!
Here’s a word from St. Catherine of Siena, in translation by Daniel Ladinsky. It would be wonderful if those of us who are disappointed in any physical features that we have inherited are not of our liking. Hooray for all those content with their looks!
I did not post anything over the last two days. While it is true that the weekend was full in a wonderful way with our long-awaited concert and workshop with the extraordinary Jan Phillips, I had every intention of attending to this morning practice. Unfortunately the internet was not cooperating. Thus I missed my chance on her feast to speak about Catherine of Siena – one of my favorites in a long line of holy women who have proved worthy of sainthood. One could begin the litany of her life with the fact that she was the 25th child born to her family! My admiration comes, however, from the chronicle of her friendship with God that gave her the courage to speak truth to power and which led her to a central role in the end of the “Avignon Captivity” – a 70-year period in the 14th century of papal exile in France.
It doesn’t pay to oversleep by two hours after normal rising time. This morning upon deciding that 5:15 was too early to abandon my bed, I went back to sleep for what seemed just a few minutes. My phone display, however, disagreed by showing 8:05! That spells disaster on a day when I planned to cook breakfast for an overnight guest who was due at a meeting at 9:00. I guess it was obvious when I arrived in the kitchen five minutes later that I had just awakened; the smiles that greeted me witnessed to my groggy state. But I managed scrambled eggs and some welcome conversation. When Cathy left, however, I quickly got into “zoom” mode and practically fell over myself trying to do four absolutely-necessary-this-morning tasks at the same time. Suddenly I realized that no one was observing me with a stopwatch – the pressure was all mine! – and I began to breathe a little more consciously. I have now accomplished at least three of those necessary tasks and it’s only 12:53PM! Not so bad…and I am calmly approaching the rest of the day.
The Sophia Center for Spirituality 