The Perfect Day

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blessings, John, joy, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The rain has finally stopped, the air is fresh and the breeze is invigorating (8:15 AM). It’s the perfect background for John’s gospel – repeated but not annoyingly redundant: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love. Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”
(Big finish)
“I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”

(Can you feel it – the joy of such a morning? Just stop if you are able. Go outside and feel the earth singing God’s love for you! Sorry for my effusiveness. That’s what spring in the Northeast USA will do to you!)
Blessings on your day.

Welcome to Spring!

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spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

On a day in a year in which we most need a respite from bad news and bad weather, it seems we are gifted with the beginning of a lovely spring. Here is a little (and I do mean little) poem to welcome spring. It made me smile because it could so easily be what happens to me on spring days when the sun is blaring all around at 8:00 in the morning like today and the birds are singing their hearts out! Enjoy!

I meant to do my work today
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree
And a butterfly flitted
across the field
And all the leaves were calling me. (Richard Le Gallienne)

Prayer for the Gray Days

Tags

Celtic Benediction, harmony, J. Philip Newell, prayer, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

As we keep stretching toward the spring with all the beauty of nature, we hold on just a little longer, satisfied (as much as possible) with the tiny sprigs of green—the daffodils—that cling to the the side of the house where they can be warm enough to push up through the ground. I peek out each day measuring their progress by inches and cheering them for their willingness to stay the course. And I thank God for any sign of progress that strengthens my hope in nature and humanity. And so I pray:

That you have placed a harmony of lights in the heavens that night is followed by day and the glowing of the moon by the glistening of the sun, thanks be to you, O God. That you have placed a harmony of lights in my soul that there is a gentleness and firmness of strength, intuitive knowing and enlightened reasoning, thanks be to you. Let me be so sure of your laws of harmony in all things that I seek it in my own depths and in knowing it in my inner life yearn for it in the torn relationships my world, man and woman, black and white, sun and moon in a harmony of movement. (J. Philip Newell, Celtic Benediction, p. 46)

Spring, Maybe?

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promise, Psalm 95, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vaccine

Although we have Psalm 95 again today as the response to the lectionary’s first reading (“If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts…”) I can’t imagine having a hardened heart today! Our congress has just passed a gigantic stimulus bill that will benefit the people who actually need the money! Vaccinations are happening in numbers we couldn’t have imagined a few months ago. (My first shot is on 3/29!) And this morning, I could hardly think because the chorus of birds outside was just about deafening! All of this purports to announce the spring we have longed for and even if it is just a promise to be fulfilled next month or later…it cannot be denied today. It will come!

I need to go and open my window now to smell the beautiful fragrances of the day…Pass along a smile, won’t you?

A “Merton Moment”

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creation, morning, presence, silence, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

We had tornado warnings last evening but only got torrential rains that seem to have washed away layers of distress and moved us finally into a glorious taste of spring. I thank God for windows this morning! The first blast of beauty that met me was the flowering cherry tree in the west corner that was glorious seen from above (the second floor). Downstairs there was a congregation of colorful birds on the newly washed deck – more variety than we have ever had! In addition to the ever-present yellow of the finches we have a second appearance of Baltimore orioles and, for the first time, a contingent of rose-breasted grosbeaks. They all know where the party is and it is a delight to watch them as they find breakfast, dancing and singing this early in the day to give me courage.

I sit here in the sun, feeling the gentleness of the breeze and imaging Thomas Merton on the tiny porch of his hermitage on mornings just like this one. The leaves on the trees still sparkle with the remnants of the rain as I turn to his words for a way to express praise of this wonderland of creation.

The most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to “be” once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was…There are drops of dew that show like sapphires in the grass as soon as the morning sun appears, and leaves stir behind the hushed flight of an escaping dove…Today, Father, this blue sky lauds you…The distant blue hills praise you, together with the sweet-smelling air that is full of brilliant light…I too, Father, praise you, with all these my brothers, and they give voice to my own heart and to my own silence. We are all one silence, and a diversity of voices…Here I am. In me the world is present, and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence…(Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours)

The World's Turning

Tags

cycles, Earth, healing, positive energy, spring, Spring Equinox, St. Joseph, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The spring equinox was early and totally missed by me this year! While I was busy trying to celebrate St. Joseph’s feast day (3/19), the earth was sending out messages of new birth and energy. It took until this morning for me to feel it and I had to verify it by looking at my calendar. Now I know why the daffodils are straining to open after their surprise breakthrough along the side of our house two weeks ago.

I plan to go outside today and stand in the midst of all that is natural: the greening of the grass, the calling of the birds, the freshness of the breeze (still somewhat chilly) and feel the hope of healing for the earth rise up to give me courage in this moment when all but the most essential workers have been charged to stay home. With this remembrance of the cycles of life happening in concert with or in spite of us, I hope to add to the positive energy and learn the lessons so important to us all.

Glory Days

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blessings, communion, gladness, gratitude, humble, John Philip Newell, Mother Earth, Peace, Praying With the Earth, resilience, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today promises to be the kind of day that makes me glad to live in New York State. The birds are singing, the sun is already doing its best to get us to 72 degrees Fahrenheit, the grass couldn’t be greener or more like a grand outdoor carpet while the flowers and flowering trees are stunning in their natural beauty. The grand unfolding of nature seems such an organic process that I tend to forget all that Mother Earth has been through over the past months: hurricanes, torrential rains, frozen rivers and lakes, destructive winds…

Picking up branches on our land yesterday and noticing the new configurations of those places damaged by the winter winds and water makes me grateful for their resilience. The silence as I walked and bent and cleared debris called me to a deeper place of communion with all that is natural to us and often missed in our busyness. I am grateful for the words of John Philip Newell to express my heart sense this morning:

May the deep blessings of earth be with us. May the fathomless soundings of seas surge in our soul. May the boundless stretches of the universe echo in our depths to open us to wonder, to strengthen us for love, to humble us with gratitude, that we may find ourselves in one another, that we may lose ourselves in gladness, that we may give ourselves to peace. (Praying with the Earth, p.20)

Merton’s View

Tags

creation, hope, nature, praise, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours

Up early, I am sitting in the quiet darkness. Feeling the need for someone else’s words to get me going into this day I turn to Thomas Merton, whom I have not visited lately. I can feel him sitting on the porch of his small hermitage taking in the very early morning and putting pen to paper with these words.

I am under the sky. The birds are all silent. But the frogs have begun singing their pleasure in all the waters and in the warm, green places where the sunshine is. wonderful. Praise Christ, all you living creatures. For Him you and I were created. With every breath we love Him. My psalms fulfill your dim, unconscious song, O brothers in this wood. (A Book of Hours, p. 93)

It must have been summer or later morning when he wrote those words as we have a long way to go until the sun appears today, but the hope of the meteorologists and their listeners is exactly that for a second day in a row. That would be enough, I think, to convince us that spring is truly not far off and the “warm, green places” will soon grace us once again.

Shopping

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consider, grace, options, Peace, rainbow, spring, symbol, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I’ve begun to think that everything can be a symbol from which I can learn if I am paying attention. Call me crazy but I’m convinced that there are lessons to be learned each day and life is more easily engaged in a positive manner if we pay attention. Let me explain.

Yesterday I finally accepted the fact that I needed to get a new phone. (Mine has been on a charger now for days with no sign of life.) Being one of the least technologically savvy persons I know, I resisted a trip to the Verizon store but finally gave in to the inevitability and went. Having been alerted to the fact that there is an alternative to the large store near the university where all the employees are like 15-year-old barracudas who meet you at the door and talk faster than anyone I have ever met, I was grateful for the information that led me to that small, quiet alternative where there were only two employees, one a middle-aged man and one a 22-year-old woman. She became my guardian angel within the first five minutes. The bad news was that my phone was irrevocably dead and because I had resisted adding “cloud space” for the last many months, she would not be able to transfer such things as contacts and photos. The good news was that I would be able to purchase a new phone for about 60% of the price that I was expecting.

I did not buy the phone. I needed time to consider the options. Grace got in my car with me for the trip home, however, because in that half-hour drive two things happened. First, in realizing that I would need to let go of much that was contained in the phone’s memory, I would be starting over. A new season would be born for me which suddenly seemed like a good thing – like when the first shoots of spring plants begin to appear. Of course it will demand some work to build a new set of contacts but those will be recent rather than long-ago entries that are no longer operative. And if my photos are gone, I still have the memories they contained. The recognition was swift and filled me with peace.

As I neared my exit from the highway the most vivid and spacious rainbow suddenly appeared, stretching from ground to sky in a blaze of seven colors that took my breath away. Because I had left the sun in the city and was driving into a dark gray backdrop of sky, conditions were perfect for such a show: no rain, just glorious color. It stayed with me for over five minutes of gratitude and glory.

Today I will buy and begin life with my new phone and call it Grace.

This New Day

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beautiful day, blessed, dawn, deep waters of life, gift, Joyce Rupp, Prayer Seeds, receive, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

6:03AM: It’s impossible to stay asleep with all the different birds that are announcing morning outside! I suppose it’s my fault for leaving my bedroom window open all night, but how could I resist? Spring is finally bursting everywhere and it is glorious! It was definitely worth waiting for, although the delay throughout all of April made me wonder if it would ever happen! I celebrate May as the most beautiful month of the year because new life is visible everywhere outside and, as a result, is rising up inside as spontaneous hope. Listen to how Joyce Rupp describes it:

Unscripted. This day. My day. A fresh day. Waiting. Ready to be opened. Holding more than what is expected. No matter the lengthly list of have-to-do, don’t-want-to-do, enter with a readiness to receive, to appreciate. Prepare a full plunge instead of a toe-in-the-water.

Release the tight grip on a measured schedule. Stand on the threshold of dawn like a diver on a cliff eager to receive what awaits, ready for adventure. Aim for the deep waters of life where the day’s activity will surely bring an opportunity to connect with the Holy… (Prayer Seeds, p.154)

May we all be blessed by the gift of this beautiful day!