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Tag Archives: experience

Darkness to Light

13 Monday Apr 2020

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awakening, Barbara Brown Taylor, experience, Learning to Walk in the Dark, lessons, living in the moment, meaning, new growth, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Zoom

In a first step toward what might be movement back to the work of the Sophia Center – although that seems still very far away – Cheryl (my co-facilitator) and I are “zooming” today to plan what we hope will be the virtual re-gathering of our book study group to finish consideration of Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Learning to Walk in the Dark (Is that not a perfect title for this moment in time?) which we left in mid-read in early March.

To prepare for our conversation this afternoon, I pulled the book from its resting place. Upon opening to the chapter where perhaps we left off (a very long month ago), I found a loose sheet with a poem entitled For Light by John O’Donohue. There is a parenthetical subtitle (A Blessing) and I found the first stanza very apt in describing just that. Here is what the poet said:

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.

It seems to me that this is what is happening at this “moment.” We cannot reach for the solace of others except virtually and not being able to touch physically is clearly a loss. Can we, however, learn lessons from this distancing? Does it become a benefit when, in the future, we will need to let go of a significant relationship? Are there times when we must “stand on our own two feet” and come through a danger or challenge that we thought we would never be able to achieve?

There are so many lessons offered to us now. We may not see them as blessings just yet but perhaps we are coming closer to the possibility of awakening to new meanings, new growth, new experiences of life. We may even name those openings “Blessings.”

20-20 Vision

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thesophiacenterforspirituality in Uncategorized

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20/20 vision, A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, appreciation, attitude, clarity, experience, gift, hear, meditation, messages, prayer, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

It seems incredible that we have already traversed an entire month of the year 2020. It is shaping up to be a challenging time for many reasons, some from natural causes and some of human initiative. It seems imperative that we be constantly awake to the broad spectrum of events and stay true to our own integrity, which includes watching our own behavior and response to challenges.

The impetus for this line of thought is (as usual) something I read just now from A Deep Breath of Life by Alan Cohen. In his reflection for this date, Cohen says the following:

Through prayer and meditation, you can sensitize yourself to hear important messages before they are played out in the physical world…Rather than fight life or adopt a victim position, look for the gift in the experience. Imagine that the universe is conspiring not to hurt you, but to free you. An attitude of appreciation, rather than resentment, will soften and transform otherwise difficult lessons.

It isn’t always easy to admit our less than stellar behaviors and reactions to life events great and small but if we stay awake and practice seeing the lessons in our days, in the long run our vision improves and we can learn to accept ourselves and others without a need for obfuscation or excuse.

What better year for working on clarity of vision? It is 20-20, after all!

A New Adventure

20 Sunday Jan 2019

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blessings, experience, Machu Picchu, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, travel

It’s 3:29am and I have already nearly downed a whole cup of coffee. I am missing a phenomenon familiar to me as I sit thinking of the snow that is falling at home in New York State. It’s raining here in North Carolina in a far less daunting but not so beautiful event. (I am truly a child of the Northeast as the big snowstorms hold for me both awe and a recognition of danger for so many…)

I’ve come here to meet up with a friend with whom I will travel to Peru to visit our Sisters and the wonders of Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley for the next nine days – surely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We leave in fifteen minutes for the airport and a long day of travel. I can only imagine what we will experience and I hope to be fully awake for the duration. I am not certain of access to the internet because of time and circumstance but I promise to return with the turning of the calendar. I will surely be back by February with lots to say!

Blessings all!

Deeper Meanings

10 Monday Dec 2018

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be not afraid, burdens, experience, healing, Isaiah, Luke, participate, psalm 85, Scripture, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, yoke

One could say I’m rather stuck on a theme carried over from last week’s messages as I see and hear short but powerful texts from Scripture. It’s the power of words that makes me stop and say to no one in particular in the ethers of my bedroom, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before!” At other times it’s the tenor of the entire cluster of readings that wakes me up to the obvious, reminding me of something I have most likely known for decades. Both experiences speak this morning.

  1. Throughout today’s texts (IS 35: 1-10, PS 85: 10-14 and LK 5:17-26) there is a consistent feeling of promise. God is working on physical wholeness and psycho-spiritual healing for all creation – not just humanity, and the urging not to be afraid is palpable. Assurances abound that God will do this!
  2. In the “never heard it before” category is the gospel acclamation that says, “Behold the king will come, the Lord of the earth, and he himself will lift the yoke of our capacity.” I learned long ago that when Jesus told the people to take his yoke upon them, he was speaking metaphorically of the burdens that they carried, those he shared with us being lighter than those demanded by the laws of the religious leadership. Not so long ago I heard capacity defined not just as “the maximum amount that something can contain” like water in a bottle or pain the body. Rather another nuance was added, i.e., “the ability or power to do, experience or understand something.” For me, that moved the definition from one of passivity to active participation. This morning I am aware, therefore, that not only are my burdens light because I do not carry them alone but, in addition, I have the offer of laying them down totally if I am willing to work on expanding my capacity for living fully.

Listen Up!

07 Friday Sep 2018

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Blessed Frederic Ozanam, experience, faith, listen, prove, question, response, saint of the day, saints, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Vincent de Paul Society, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

aozanamEvery once in awhile I am pleasantly surprised by what I find as I begin my routine of blogging. My first stop is always the US Catholic Bishops’ website (www.usccb.org) which provides me with the lectionary readings for the day. Next I check Fr. Don Miller’s information about the holy person whose designated feast the Roman Catholic Church celebrates on that particular day (www.franciscanmedia.org). I do check into the thoughts floating in my own mind as well but always like to have some backup in case of “brain freeze.” And as most of you know, my “backup” stretches to many other sources as well.

This morning I was interested to find a “saint of the day” – the second in a week – whose story I had never heard. This man on the way to canonization, Blessed Frederic Ozanam, is credited with the founding of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in 1833. Although he was a stranger to me, his organization is not. My sister has a very active “chapter” of this society in her parish and she herself has become very involved in the Thrift Store that is integral to the work of the society for the benefit of the poor. This  work can be found in many countries in the world and is extraordinary in its reach.

God speaks in many ways at different times and it is always important to be attentive to when a word might be meant specifically for you – or me. It happened for Frederic Ozanam during a session of his book club one day. The club was a very diverse group of people including agnostics and atheists in addition to Christians. As he was speaking about Christianity’s role in civilization, someone said to Ozanam, “Let us be frank, Mr. Ozanam; let us also be very particular. What do you do besides talk to prove the faith you claim is in you?” In this question lay the seed of response that became the Society dedicated to justice and aid to the underprivileged under the patronage of St. Vincent de Paul, great champion of the poor.

What Ozanam’s life would have become if that question had not been asked or if he had not taken its meaning to heart will never be known. Was it the directness of the question? the readiness of Ozanam’s spirit? his experience of life up to that point? Who knows? What is important is that he responded in a way that has changed lives over the past two centuries. A good example for all of us.

 

 

 

 

 

Epiphany Today

07 Sunday Jan 2018

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Christ, compassion, epiphany, essential meaning, experience, insight, intuitive, occurrence, perception, recognition, Revelation, success, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, universal love

aepiphanyI just read my post from yesterday to refresh my memory of what I said or didn’t say about Epiphany. As it happens, I think that post turned out to be a bit of an example of the meaning of the word. As celebrated in Christianity, the Epiphany is the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles represented by the Magi: a moment of great revelation. In a modern dictionary definition it is seen as “a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.”

I was talking yesterday about the possibility of overcoming fear through simple, commonplace practices of eating, walking and talking to a friend. It isn’t the practices themselves, however, that overcome the fear. It is rather our recognition of our ability to achieve success in those things that gives us new confidence in facing what frightens or stops us.

It is all well and good for us to celebrate the revelation of Jesus to the larger world 2000 years ago but that revelation is only “activated” in our day if something related to the event is triggered in our lives. If we consider the most important lessons we have learned from the life of Christ, which I believe to be universal love and compassion, it would seem that our job is to manifest the reality of those lessons in our daily lives.

What does love of neighbor mean in 2018? How are we able to practice compassion when we see a need – either spiritual or physical? It takes keeping our hearts open and, yes, “eating our vegetables” to push us beyond our limits – one step at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Good Perspective

17 Wednesday May 2017

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A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, consciousness, experience, force, good, love, painful, purpose, raw material, recycled, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

amanureQuotes from Pendle Hill: Today’s quote comes from Alan Cohen in his book A Deep Breath of Life.

Think and act as if everything that shows up in your field of consciousness is for your good. Imagine that there is only one power – love – and it is the force behind every experience. Even if something seems painful or insulting in the moment, use it as raw material with which to grow. Even repulsive manure is good fertilizer, when put in its proper place and recycled for the farmer’s purpose.

Today let me recognize Your voice behind every voice. Help me to take Your signs and signals and build a life of beauty and abundance.

Perspective

12 Monday Sep 2016

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basic principle, experience, good, hear, heavenly, incomparable, love, opinion, perspective, Psalm 40, reflection, see, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

aperspectiveReading Psalm 40 this morning led me to the dictionary for some definitions of the word perspective. After the basic ideas, there were some interesting and even funny examples of the word in context, like: From their different perspectives, the scientists and musician both agree on music’s emotional power, and It took me awhile to put the housewives’ rebellion into perspective. I remember when I first realized a very important truth about perspective in one of its definitions. Sitting directly across from someone in a group having a conversation, I recognized that it was totally impossible for that person to see what I could see (physically) because we do not have eyes in the back of our heads (although many Catholic children thought the nuns that taught them in school were exceptions to that rule!). Because we do not have 360 degree swivel ability, we can only see just so far around us without turning our heads.

This truth about perspective has helped me when I am astounded or appalled that someone with whom I am speaking disagrees with what I’m saying. “How could he think that way?” I ask myself, or “Can’t she see the flaw in that opinion?” The difficulty is that when we move from the practical, physical definition to the intellectual, philosophical arena, there is a much more complex process of apprehension going on. I have come to the conclusion that in order to avoid distress it’s better to stay in the realm of “he just can’t see it” than to try to convince someone of something I see as simple truth.

Here’s what started all the ruckus in my brain this morning: O Lord, all that you do is marked with good, and all the things that you have in mind for us are incomparable. O that I could speak it all for everyone to hear and know, but it is vast and overwhelms the soul. Yet I know this, for you have made my inner ear to hear, that it is never bloody sacrifices we burn for sins you want or need from us. For even in the scroll of Torah, the book you wrote, it is said that I should simply do your will. That is it, your whole desire, which has now become my soul’s delight. So from my heart I keep your ways, your law of life. (Ps 40:7-10)

My perspective on life with God is that if I do my best to do my best God is satisfied, actually overjoyed, with that and doesn’t require anything more than my love. Some would say that perspective is a cop out, as in: What ever happened to “Be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect?” Atonement looms large in that perspective. For me, God’s “law of life” is love and that is the perspective from which I view everything. Our socialization and education contribute so much to our perspectives on things; it takes personal experience and reflection on that experience for things to start to shift. It’s all very complicated…so I try to keep that first basic principle in mind (the impossibility of you seeing exactly what I see unless you are standing beside me – or, more precisely, in my skin) and always move from the perspective of love. Not easy, maybe flawed, but more and more often, it works for me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandparents

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

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appreciation, Bible, experience, grandparents, Lois, perspective, Roman Catholic, St. Ann, St. Joachim, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Timothy, tradtions, wisdom

agrandparent.jpgLong ago when I was baptized the rule was that only saints’ names were acceptable for Roman Catholic babies. Because it was also understood that “the faithful” were to learn about the Bible from the clergy and not their own study (although we were to have a “family Bible” in our homes), not too many people were aware that Lois was mentioned by St. Paul in passing. Did you know she was the grandmother of Paul’s young companion, Timothy? Well, in 1948, Lois was a surprise name choice of my mother so my middle name became more important. It seems ironic now because the name my parents chose was Ann (not Anne, thank you very much!) whom legend says was the grandmother of Jesus, mother of his mother, Mary. So today, the feast of St. Ann (and her husband Joachim, a relatively recent addition to the Church calendar), seems to be about grandparents – mine and yours as well as those of Jesus and Timothy.

I know I have always been proud to carry the name attributed to the grandmother of Jesus and honor her, as tradition would have it, my “patron saint.” I found a lovely comment on http://www.americancatholic.org this morning that seems to fit this feast.  I offer it as a personal reflection for all of us and a reminder of our heritage and what we would hope to pass on to those who follow us in life.

This feast reminds grandparents of their responsibility to establish a tone for generations to come. They must make the traditions live and offer them as a promise to little children. But the feast has a message for the younger generation as well. It reminds the young that older peoples’ greater perspective, depth of experience and appreciation of life’s profound rhythms are all part of a wisdom not to be taken lightly or ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Contemplative Life

23 Monday Feb 2015

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action, cloistered life, contemplative life, creative work, dedicated love, experience, inner discipline, integrity, Kathleen Deignan, personal development, prayer, special dimension, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

contemplateWhen I speak of the contemplative life I do not mean the institutional cloistered life, the organized life of prayer. I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development, which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated, busy-busy existence. This does not mean that they are incompatible with action, with creative work, with dedicated love. On the contrary, these all go together.

~ Thomas Merton
(from Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours by Kathleen Deignan)

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