The New Covenant

Tags

heart, jeremiah, Jubilee, knowing, love, pledge, sing, song, St. Joseph, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Our most cherished annual gathering, to honor St. Joseph (feast day 3/19) and those Sisters celebrating a jubilee in religious life (40, 50, 60, 70, 75 years this time), was held yesterday. The liturgy was glorious and we “sang our hearts out!” As I thought of that turn of phrase this morning I felt more deeply the truth of our covenant with God as expressed in today’s first lectionary reading from Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Speaking on behalf of God, Jeremiah says, “The days are coming when I will make a new covenant…” We sang – with accompanying gestures, tracing a heart over our inner, physical, beating hearts: My song will be for You forever, You the music in my heart! Jeremiah continues: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.” Our song proclaimed: I will pledge my love forever; I will call your name out loud. I will reach my hand out to you and I know you’ll reach for me.

The new covenant is sealed in love, is lived in love. There need be no fear of abandonment in this way of relating. It is as certain as the steady beating of our hearts. There can be no greater knowing, no greater blessing than this! Praise God!

 

 

 

 

 

Rhythm

Tags

chanting, conscious work, dancing, knowing, openness, present moment, rhythym, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, universal peace, wisdom, Wisdom School, wisdom work, worhip

As I try to stay in the present moment this morning, I am aware that today is the last full day of our leadership training event. I can feel myself almost physically leaning forward as at the starting line of a race, even while attempting to be present to my typing. One of the words that we have heard often in the last three days as we process the sessions of our time together is rhythm. The word itself is a rare combination of consonants with only the  y to act as vowel. I hear the singsong “a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y” English lesson of my youth and still wonder why that function is only “sometimes.”

I am glad for the “y” in this word as it made me curious enough to look up the word “vowel” on the internet. In a flurry of words, I learned (or learned again) that a vowel is a sound produced with an open vowel tract where some of the air must escape through the mouth. It is frictionless and continuant. Unlike with consonants, there is no build-up of air pressure along the vocal tract. Also noted is that the vowel forms the peak of a syllable. The word rhythm obviously needs that letter y!

That seems to me a perfect description of the way we have been proceeding through these days. There is a felt sense of openness among the participants and no pressure for anyone to act in any way that is other than authentic, whether we are speaking, chanting or moving around the room in a dance of universal peace. We have been blessed with good weather, the only rain a swift downpour in the middle of Thursday night, that has allowed us to exercise our powers of conscious working together – in rhythm with one another – outside stacking wood or inside chopping vegetables. We have recognized the wisdom in the group in such an organic way that our purpose has already been fulfilled, it seems. The challenge will be to stay in the moment for this last day and a half so as not to miss those moments of pure knowing which are sure to come in our interaction and especially in our worship together. I trust, when we are taking leave of each other tomorrow noon, our sense and perhaps our parting words will be the familiar: “It is finished in beauty.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Knowing

Tags

agenda, centering prayer, challenges, John Newton, knowing, knowledge, let go, letting go of thoughts, psalm 139, schedule, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I was listening to a program last night on my computer about “re-writing our own life script.” During the call-in portion the speaker, John Newton, asked the caller how it would feel to live in a place of “not knowing.” What would that feel like? I found the question rather interesting because I didn’t react negatively to it! Usually my first thoughts upon waking in the morning find me running through my schedule for the day (after I am focused enough to even know what day it is!) in order to know how quickly I have to move, whether I have had enough sleep to meet the challenges of the day and how much of my incidental agenda I will be able to fit in between appointments and meetings or whatever has been previously scheduled.

As I listened to John’s question repeated and tried to answer honestly for myself, I realized that I am gradually coming to a place of willingness to let go of my agenda in order to appreciate and respond to the moment I am in rather than what has already happened or has not yet arrived. This made me happy since I have been practicing letting go of thoughts in centering prayer for over ten years!

I still ran my daily schedule tape this morning as I came awake, but I was also glad for the words of the psalmist as I read Psalm 139 which allowed me to give over the day to God. Perhaps you might do the same.

O Lord, you have probed me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I stand; you understand my thoughts from afar. My journeys and my rest you scrutinize; with all my ways you are familiar. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know the whole of it. Behind me and before, you hem me in and rest your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain…

…and so I just give over the need of knowing everything and breathe in the conviction that God is God and I am not.