Everyday Advice

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letting go, love, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

On Friday during the day, Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours suggests the following, which seems like a Friday-kind of thought, appropriate for the Lenten season but not only then. It seems like something we could take to heart for any day or hour, but only if we’re open to something of a challenge. Here’s what he said:

Let go of all that seems to suggest getting somewhere, being someone, having a name and a voice, following a policy and directing people in “my” ways. What matters is to love. (p.171)

In this time leading up to our celebration of the Incarnation, when Jesus came to be like us in order for us to become like Him, can you see any lesson in this advice?

Bigger Barns

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bountiful harvest, consciousness, declutter, letting go, Luke, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I have been in the process of “de-cluttering” for some months now. It seems that’s the only good opportunity in this season of Covid-19. Sometimes I wake up with great incentive but when I look at the end of the day I see that I have gone through my closet and there are only four or five items in the box that I will give away. Maybe my intention for the day had been clearing out my e-mail list and I find it much longer than I expected with things I am sure I will give attention to in the near future so I turn off my computer after reading one or two “important” documents. And then there is my car which seems forever destined to have very little room for companions because of all the boxes that I call “my traveling office.”

I have always identified today’s gospel as “Bigger Barns” and often remind myself of my state of consciousness with that simple alliteration. I wonder at those times where “letting go” went as I take a deep breath and attempt a purge in whatever corner of my life or heart seems most cluttered. I wonder where I would choose to start if I heard God speaking to me as did the rich man in today’s gospel (LK 12) who was looking for a place to store his “bountiful harvest.”

I’m glad today is Monday. I’m always willing to start over on Monday. It’s getting late so I ought to get started before “overwhelm” sets in. May you have the kind of profitable day that I hope for. I will be satisfied, I hope, with crossing off at least some of the items on my “to-do” list. What about you?

The Flow of Life

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breath, breathe, change, flow, letting go, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today I’m sitting in the quiet, reflecting on the flow of life and how important it is not to upset that flow any more than is necessary if we are to continue to travel on an even keel. It is not generally our doing if schedules get changed or events get shifted around. We in the Northeast are at a moment in the year when the weather plays a big part in everyday plans. A big snowstorm cancels lots of things as does a death in family or friendship circles. We can fret and moan over the inconvenience of rescheduling, or take a breath and look for alternatives.

The best thing to do (and this takes a lot of practice) is to breathe in the change and then let go the distress. Sounds easy…breathing in and breathing out, right? We do that automatically. (I’m watching my breath as I type.) I have come to know the value of letting go for equanimity in daily life as well as for spiritual growth and I would recommend it – especially as we move into our biggest and most important holiday season. Not as easy as it sounds, I know!

Practice makes perfect…give it a try!

Spring Cleaning

Tags

letting go, seasons, spring cleaning, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I left my bedroom window open all night last night for the first time in many months and I am happy to say that I believe spring has truly sprung here in New York State. Just now reading about the practice of “letting go” I sensed how it’s easy to see how examples of that process manifest in many ways in the spring.

It’s time for cutting down and picking up what is dead in the garden spaces and all over the land where the winds of winter left evidence in small and large branches. The miracle of growth will follow if we give sufficient space to breathe. Pruning is not my favorite task but I have come to know its necessity and its effectiveness.

Within a week our summer buildings will have running water again as the fear of frozen pipes is past. Spring cleaning has always been a harbinger of new life, a clearing away of dust and debris to let the sun shine in. As we polish furniture and windows, there is a concomitant cleansing process that can happen in the cleaning team, a joy that comes with letting go of what no longer serves us and therefore gives way to the new. We begin to feel the energy of who will come to programs this season, what we will give and receive and how we will grow just as our cherished land will again flourish in this divine/human exchange. And all will be greatly blessed!

Rich and Poor

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happiness, letting go, Mark, Meister Eckhart, poor, rich, spirituality, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, willingness

The longer I live the deeper and broader the interpretations of “the rich young man” story (MK 10) become. My experiences – most recently of Peru – convince me that if we are thinking in terms of financial wealth we are only scratching the surface of possible meanings. (How can all those poor people seem so happy?) While it is true that money cannot buy happiness, it can provide food and other necessities of life. At the same time, it’s easy to see that money can complicate life significantly.

Leaving finances aside, I look at the complications in my life and how much more likely spiritual growth would be if I could only become simpler: in my desires, in my outlook, in my judgments…in my life. Looking at life from a perspective of fullness rather than lack and from the spirituality of subtraction and/or detachment that Meister Eckhart preached allows the freedom that would seem to be the end of seeking for the rich young man and for us.

If only we could let what holds us back fall off of us like the water in a morning shower or the fluffy snow that I easily brushed off my car last week in order to clear my way toward home. Letting go can be such a freeing gesture of only we open our hands and our hearts to the willingness that brings us to God’s heart. It’s all about practice and it can start at any moment. A thought, a gesture – maybe even giving away a smile to someone who irks us – could be enough to start a process that might last a lifetime. Who knows?

Inter-abiding

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Emmanuel, God, good, grace, Jesus, joy, letting go, O Antiphons, presence of God, seek love, soul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, true self

Today we are on the edge of the greatest Christian mystery: God becoming one with us in human form in order that we may abide in God in a way beyond our capacity to comprehend with our “ordinary mind.” We can only approximate the reality if we try to think ourselves into it. We need to be willing to “go to the lengths of God,” as Christopher Fry has said, letting go of the mind to a place of soul that is reached only as gift. The paradox is that we cannot get there by striving but we must continue to seek in love for love. Moreover, each of us must make this journey to our true self (where God lives) as ourself. Ultimately, no one can tell us who God is at the deepest level of knowing. That is a secret held only in the depths of the heart, a gift of grace. We can only open our heart – in our own words, with our own gesture – to this most welcome guest.

O Emmanuel, God with us, come now and abide in us that we may abide in you for the good of the world and the joy of knowing that you love us each as a precious and unrepeatable presence in you.

Rev. Thomas Keating

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A Sleep of Prisoners, Bartimaeus, breathing, centering prayer, Christopher Fry, Father Thomas Keating, Jesus, letting go, Mark, prayer, presence of God, rest in peace, see, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I just read the gospel story of the blind man, Bartimaeus. (MK 10: 46-52). My favorite line has Bartimaeus answering the question Jesus had put to him when he called out for attention. Actually both lines of the exchange are crucial. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” to which Bartimaeus answers, “Master, I want to see.” Upon reflection one might ask why Jesus needed to pose that question as it must have been obvious that the man was blind. It certainly wasn’t a trivial request. The fact that Jesus asked it, however, might move us to consider some deeper content in our own prayer.

Does our prayer sound like a Christmas list sometimes, asking God to fix things in our lives so that we will be more comfortable than we are? Surely we are called to ask for help to live good lives and have compassion for others but in these troubled times when events and world conditions are now “soul size” (see A Sleep of Prisoners by Christopher Fry) we must be called to new ways of participating in life.

Father Thomas Keating died on Thursday (10/25) at the age of 95 years. Fr. Thomas is known to many as the father of the Centering Prayer movement and a spiritual giant who personified the best of a life of contemplative prayer. I was privileged to encounter Father Thomas twice in person and found him to be delightfully down-to-earth while also shining like the sun from the inside. His deep practice of prayer was evident in the joy with which he lived and in the deeply wise, carefully chosen words he used to speak of spiritual things. It was clear that his way of prayer was deeper than words, however, and leaned in, always listening, to the heartbeat of God.

Centering prayer is like that, Fr. Thomas would say. It consists of sitting down and “consenting to the presence of God,” returning, when we recognize that we are thinking, to just being in the Presence, letting go of everything else. Just like breathing, this kind of prayer gets patterned into us and becomes an anchor for life. Hundreds of thousands of people the world over practice this form of prayer each day and are united now in feelings of happiness and sadness at the same time: sadness to have lost the physical presence of Father Thomas in this realm but, oh so happy to think of his joyful passage into the next! May he truly rest in peace!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Time Is It?

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decisions, ending, expectation, future, gratitude, letting go, live in the present moment, memories, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, timing, unknown, Wisdom School, wisdom way

I have started this post three times in the past two minutes and am grateful for the technology that includes a “delete” button. It’s not that I have one thought stream; rather, there are too many words rumbling around in my head with no clear way to express anything. This happens sometimes when too much is going on and especially as I prepare to travel. It’s as if I need to be sure I have everything taken care of before I leave, especially remembering (of course) what needs to go with me.

Today is a moment when memories and expectations abound and I will need to remain fully conscious of the present. At noon we will close what has been a six-year series of “wisdom schools” and this evening I will leave for a meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota that is preliminary to decision-making about our (Sisters of St. Joseph) future. It is as if I am in a room with two doors leading in different directions, knowing that it isn’t time yet to open either one. Behind the first door is an immense quantity of gratitude for the work we (my colleagues Bill and Deborah and myself) have been privileged to do, tinged with a bit of sadness for the ending, although the timing is surely correct. Behind the other door is the unknown future of our dynamic, yet aging, community of women who sit in a moment of “not yet” and try to envision a worthy future for us and those who will be called to join us.

It isn’t always easy to let go of outcome and just live in the moment we are experiencing. Today that will be my most important task and it begins right now. I trust that these years of training and practice in the “wisdom way” will serve to allow both doors to open in their own time and that life will go on as it should. Amen. (So be it.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life and Death

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death, die, divine, failure, foibles, God's embrace, humility, letting go, psalm 49, regret, success, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wealth, willingness

Psalm 49 speaks loudly of the reality that “you can’t take it with you.” No matter our success or wealth, wise people die, the psalm says, “and likewise the senseless and the stupid pass away leaving to others their wealth.”

No matter how I tried to ignore talking about death at the beginning of the day, I kept coming back to it, remembering an often repeated concept of our wisdom work that recommends learning to “die before you die.” What might that mean exactly? For most of us there are events or circumstances in our lives that we would rather forget for our poor handling of the situation or the pain we have caused, but blotting them out without learning the lessons they teach merits us nothing. Owning up to our foibles, expressing our regret, making restitution if necessary and then letting go is a “death to self” that opens up the possibility of a deeper way of living. Not beating ourselves up for mistakes but having the humility to acknowledge that full and true humanity is a skill learned as much through failure as through success seems the only sensible way to live.

If we practice letting go each day of our faults and the perceived failings of others, we will be ready to let go of everything about this human realm to which we have been clinging, be it wealth or prestige or relationship or even the lovely simple things of life. The reward of this willingness, we trust, is a letting go into the divine life that awaits us where we fall effortlessly into God’s embrace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Size Matter?

Tags

deep listening, deeper meanings, experiences, gathering, group of women, intention, letting go, letting God, silence, spirit, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, transitions, trust

I got a phone call yesterday from the convener of a group of women that I am scheduled to address on Saturday of this week. She called to tell me that the registration is now up to 39 people! I asked her if someone was paying the women to come since she originally told me that there would probably be about twenty registrants. As we laughed and discussed things like room set-up and schedule, I began to rethink how I might restructure the day so that all the women would have a chance to be heard in such a large gathering. I was happy when the convener began to speak of tables of six because most people are comfortable speaking in a group of that size. I will want to speak in the beginning of the importance of deep listening without judgment as we tend to jump on one another’s thoughts and interrupt each other when our experiences seem to mirror that of the person speaking. In that way we lose something of the sacredness of the exchange. Sporadic moments of silence to remind ourselves will be essential.

With those thoughts I was reminded of the experience of this past Saturday when I met with five other women in a small circle to spend time considering transitions in our lives. We began talking about the change of seasons, considering how we felt about each of the four seasons, what we like and dislike about each and even naming musical selections that included or indicated characteristics of each. (Everyone listed “Autumn Leaves” in their list; we were all of “a certain age!”) That conversation gave way easily to deeper subjects and by the end of the day these women who did not even know each other’s names at the beginning shared an empathy and reverence for one another that I could only name (and did) as “miraculous!” It was a holy exchange fueled by deep listening.

Is that kind of experience possible with a crowd of forty women? Perhaps. I believe it depends on intention and trust – the willingness to say what is often left hidden inside us because we do not feel articulate or as knowledgeable as others. Establishing an environment of curiosity and willingness to trust will be essential and will be the job of each person in the group. As I write I begin to build my initial approach and my trust quotient of “letting go and letting God” which is the only way that the miraculous dance of the Spirit will take place. I have great confidence in the energy of such a group of women but it will take some shepherding, I think, to harness the energy and make space for the deeper meanings to come through. I look forward to the challenge and hope for the best.

Wish me luck!