June

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All Encompassing HEart, harmony, healing, Joyce Rupp, kindness, lightheartedness, love, openess, Prayer Seeds, slowing down, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, understanding

Today we begin a new month, a time – at least in the northern hemisphere – when people look to slowing down and taking more time to notice the natural world. As days are longer in June and life seems lighter, there is usually some evidence of a shift in our spirits as well. More smiles, a bounce sometimes in our step, deeper breaths and willingness to help with tasks can all accompany the arrival of summer weather.

For those of us who are slow (or at least a little slower than most) to give in to this shift toward lightheartedness, Joyce Rupp offers a prayer that we might use as a morning ritual to get us up to speed. See what you think.

All Encompassing Heart, where there is impatience, let me bring kindness. Where there is strife, let me bring harmony. Where there is hurt, let me bring healing. Where there is rigidity, let me bring openness. Where there is judgment, let me bring understanding.

O Wide and Spacious Love, turn me toward your unconditional acceptance. I seek to be a vessel of your great love. Let me carry your love into all parts of my life and pour it forth willingly and generously. (Prayer Seeds, p. 150)

Mother’s Day

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child, gratitude, mother, Mother's Day, openess, Peace, pure love, relationships, solace, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is what many Americans call, somewhat cynically, a “Hallmark holiday.” In addition to cards – often purchased from Hallmark – we spend a great deal of money on flowers and other purchases to tell our mothers that we love them. Sometimes those material things are a substitute for the words “I love you,” words that would be enough for most mothers.

I know that for many people this is a difficult day because mother-daughter or mother-son relationships can be difficult or even tragic and I pray for the healing of those relationships as there are no closer ties than those between mother and child. The time of nourishing a child from within one’s own body cannot be measured or replicated but the longing and waiting of a prospective adoptive mother certainly qualifies as a different kind of pregnancy.

My siblings and I were some of the “lucky ones,” having hit the jackpot in the “good mother” department. A bright, loving partner for our father, our mother, Mary Frances, aka “May,” was born on the first day of this beautiful month and flowered in different ways throughout her 87 years of life. Even in the throes of her last years with Alzheimer’s disease, she never lost the ability to convince us of the truth of her love. All we needed was her smile and the look in her eyes.

Today I pray for all mothers and their children. For those who share a great love and for those who wish they did, I ask a blessing of gratitude and peace. For those who never knew their mothers or those abandoned, I pray for solace. For each of us, I pray a prayer of openness and pure love, that we will love as unselfishly and kindly as the Divine Lover of the universe loves each of us and all of us.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Transfiguration

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a peculiar gift, awe, enlightenment, everyday, gifts, God, inner knowing, James, John, Mark, mystical experiences, ongoing journey, openess, Peter, presence of God, shining like the sun, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, transfiguration

One of the posts here during my Israel trip spoke of Thomas Merton’s mystical vision of people “walking around shining like the sun.” I’m reminded of that image this morning in reading Mark’s version of the familiar story of The Transfiguration, when Jesus was praying and his companions, Peter, James and John, saw him shining in the same way. (MK 9:2-10) As Merton says, mystical experiences cannot be understood with our ordinary minds but only by “a peculiar gift” – a total openness to the presence of God perhaps – which may be fleeting but never forgotten.

I’m interested this morning in the immediate reaction of the apostles – a mixture of terror and awe – which led Peter to suggest that they set up tents and stay on the mountain. And why not? Wouldn’t it be a natural desire if we had such a brilliant experience that revealed a depth heretofore unknown to us to hold onto it? But no. The moment passed and Jesus was again the Jesus they experienced in the everyday. Now, however, the three knew something that they did not know before, something inexplicable that Jesus told them to keep to themselves. Trying to explain it to others would have been difficult and perhaps distracting from the mission of Jesus. If people were to hear of the “ability” of Jesus to be transformed into a being of light they might long for that experience of him and no longer listen to the message of their own transformation into love. So it is with us. If we are granted moments of enlightenment  in whatever way they come to us we ought to be grateful for we will be changed. The challenge is to see these moments of insight (inner knowing) as gifts and to take them to ourselves as strength for the ongoing journey into God who continues to love us more than we can ask or imagine.