Minus to Plus

Tags

A Deep Breath of Life, Acts of the Apostles, Alan Cohen, Emmaus, Jesus, Luke, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today’s Scripture texts – as many in the post-Easter season – tell stories of healings or extraordinary events. The book of Acts of the Apostles finds Peter and John realizing their gift of healing (3:1-10) and the gospel of the “road to Emmaus” recounts an early sighting of the resurrected Jesus (LK 24:13-35). In both cases it is an inner knowing rather than an outer event that leads to the miraculous. The moral of both stories, it seems, is “Stay awake!”

Alan Cohen offers a similar adage in a more light-hearted way this morning, “Every minus,” he says, “is half of a plus, waiting for a stroke of vertical awareness.” (A Deep Breath of Life)

Do you get it? (You may need to read the Scripture texts for help. Here’s a hint: negative turns to positive with divine intervention.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Morning Praise

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Henry David Thoreau, Jesus, Macrina Wiederkehr, mindfulness, morning prayer, Rumi, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Yesterday I made my way along four hours of beautiful New York and Vermont highways, bowing inwardly to the majesty of mountains, trying not to be disappointed that there is no autumn color yet on the trees. It is, after all, still September. I sit this morning in the familiar gathering place aptly named Hallelujah Farm, ready or not to begin the annual meeting when we are privileged to recommend grants that will assist worthy organizations to continue the work of spreading wisdom – so needed in our world today. This will be the last of these privileged granting events as our dear friend’s money has been generously distributed over the past five years and is now doing its work. Helen Daly was a delightful, determined, dedicated woman who passed from this world too early for our liking but whose surrender was a lesson to us all. Her vision will continue to be manifested in the work of more people than she could have imagined in projects that continue to be birthed in ripples all over our country.

As we begin this time, our gratitude for Helen and for those who are doing the work that she so valued is great. Soon we will gather for morning prayer and I will read a reminder from Macrina Wiederkehr which seems appropriate for anyone willing to accept the challenge of morning. Please join us.

What will this day be like? Will I choose to walk through the hours mindfully? “To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts,” Henry David Thoreau tells us. And the mystical poet Jalaluddin Rumi reminds us, “The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you; don’t go back to sleep.” Jesus says, “Stay awake.”

 

 

 

 

 

First Thoughts

Tags

Beethoven, bird chorus, deer, encounter, my soul longs for you, Ode to Joy, psalm 42, rain, stay awake, streams, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Perhaps because I had left my window open last night, I was awakened early by the wild chorus of birds outside. I was somewhat grateful because I believe I saw the only patch of blue sky for this day where once again rain is predicted – 100%! The sky is gray now and the birds have completed their concert, but I continue to hear strains of Beethoven playing inside with the lyrics of Joyful, joyful we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love. Hearts unfold like flowers before thee, opening to the sun above…

In the stillness outside, the movement inside continues as I turn to the Scriptures where I find the beautifully engaging Psalm 42 urging me on like Beethoven toward a deeper place. As the deer longs for running streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. Athirst is my soul for God, the living God…

And then the question of the day arises from the psalm: When shall I go and behold the face of God? The answer today is quick and clear: At every moment in everyone I encounter – if only I can stay awake! As the clock turns to 7:00AM, I know for certain  my task for the day. And so it begins!

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn

Tags

awakening, dance of creation, dawn, Jesus, Macrina Wiederkehr, mindfulness, Rumi, seven sacred pauses, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thoreau

On the opening page of chapter 2 of her Seven Sacred Pauses, Macrina Wiederkehr writes about greeting the dawn. Toward the end of her reflection she offers words more meaningful than any I could string together as guidance for this day.

This is the awakening hour. This is the hour of praise. “O medicine of dawn; O healing drink of morning!” Offering both words and silence, I join in the dance of creation. What will this day be like? Will I choose to walk through the hours mindfully? “To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts,” Henry David Thoreau tells us. And the mystical poet Jalaluddin Rumi reminds us, “The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you; don’t go back to sleep.” Jesus says, “Stay awake.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weather as Teacher

Tags

be ready, letting go, reversal, snowfall, stay awake, storms, surprise, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unexpected, weather, winter, wisdom

I was just thinking, as I waited for the coffee to be perked, how winter in the Northeast can be a “wisdom teacher” in the life-long challenge of letting go. Surrendering to God each day for whatever will come is something we need to able to do with little notice depending on how reliable our meteorologists are in their projections. Today and this coming weekend are good examples. Huge storms are sweeping across the country from west to east and everyone assumes we are in the path of something. What that is exactly and/or when it will arrive remains to be seen. It’s possible (although not looking probable) that all the work I did to prepare for a presentation on the Incarnation for this entire morning could be for naught, if the lovely soft snowfall of the moment increases in intensity any time soon. I’m also scheduled in two hours to call our presenter for tomorrow’s 5-hour retreat to discuss whether travel from two hours away later today will be counter-productive. Better safe than sorry might be the wise decision. And so it goes for the entire weekend.

We talk a lot in our locale about the wisdom of suspending programs in the winter. But how, these days, does one determine when that will be? We just had the warmest autumn season on record and joke about the fact (although not always thinking it so funny) that maybe we’ll be having snow in May next year. It has happened before! So what to do?? It seems the best course of action to plan with our eyes open to the possibility of the plan being changed with or without our cooperation. And it’s not just the weather. Events have a way of taking over our lives so we better be ready to be surprised, remembering that we are not in charge but also that all surprise is not bad or frustrating. Who doesn’t like a snow day now and then? How can we celebrate a few “free” hours? What might we learn in an unexpected moment of reversal?

So as the Scriptures say: Stay awake! Be ready, for you do not know the hour when the Lord is coming! Good advice. And whatever comes, try to have a good day!

 

 

 

 

 

Buried Treasure

Tags

church, compass, consciousness, God, interior experience, joy, kingdom of God, love, Matthew, presence, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, treasure, truth, wake up

When I think of buried treasure, images of pirates or shipwrecked vessels at the bottom of the sea come to mind. This morning’s gospel from Matthew 13 would seem to make the search easier as the treasure is to be found “buried in a field” or in a jewelry store (“a pearl of great price”) but “not so fast”, I say to myself as a cartoon figure appears with a shovel on the edge of a huge expanse of rolling fields. And I’m not a great judge of the quality of gems either!

So how to find the “kingdom of God” has to be a different kind of search. Jesus gives the answer somewhere else, as we know, when he says: The kingdom of God is within you. Looking inside for God is not normally where we go first. Many of us were taught to look in church, where God actually does live, of course. But we need to spend our time there not complaining about less than stellar preaching or wondering why parents don’t teach their children proper attire for church services. We need to be consciously seeking the interior experience that is available to us in the ritual itself and in the community as it is engaged with our own moment of recognition of God’s presence.

And how is it that we miss that pearl of great price as we walk down the street and see God passing by in the eyes of a child or a person disguised as someone different from ourselves? Consciousness is the key, I think. We have not arrived here on earth to walk alone toward that field and we don’t even have to come equipped with our own shovel. We have everything we need to find God; we just need to wake up – first to the field and then to the treasure when we see it. For some – maybe most – of us it takes a lifetime. Maybe that’s how it should be since the treasure is so great a reward.

Today I am thinking that our greatest task, when we understand how willing God is to give us the map, is to wake up ourselves and then share the directions to the treasure with others, especially younger people who are searching and ripe to find what we know. There’s another reason to stay awake: to look into young eyes and recognize a yearning for truth and love – and to share the joy of that treasure every day of our lives.

Call and Response

Tags

Advent, be ready, choices, decisions, fishermen, Jesus, journey, Luke, Messiah, Simon Peter, St. Andrew, St. Peter, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, vocation

I was slow this morning to answer the wake up call of my alarm. Perhaps it was the cold (20F degrees) or the fading dream that made me want just a little more time under the blankets. After surrendering to the morning 15 minutes later, armed with my first cup of hot coffee, I went to read about St. Andrew, the saint of the day. I found what I already knew: that Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, a fisherman, called as one of the first disciples. There was virtually no other information about Andrew personally, except that he was the one, before the miracle of the loaves and fishes, who spoke up about the boy who had some food with him. We only have legend to tell that he preached the gospel to people in what is now Greece and Turkey and was crucified at Patras, now the third largest city in Greece.

Not satisfied, I dug a little deeper by reviewing all the canonical gospel stories of Andrew. In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, his call to be a disciple is recounted in the same way. Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and sees Andrew with his brother, Simon, plying their trade as fishermen and calls both of them with the direct, if strange invitation: Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. In Luke’s gospel, the spotlight is on Simon Peter, who has a conversation about his unworthiness to be offered such a call by Jesus; Andrew is not mentioned until chapter six where the entire group of apostles is named. John’s version of the story is altogether different as Andrew becomes a major player. Originally a disciple of John the Baptist, Andrew and another disciple of John are present when Jesus again walks into their midst the day after John first recognizes Jesus as God’s Chosen One. They follow Jesus and when he turns around to ask what they’re looking for, they answer with a question: “Rabbi, where do you stay?” At the invitation to “Come and see,” they go along. After spending the day with Jesus, the first thing Andrew does is to seek out his brother Simon to tell him, “We have found the Messiah!” Then he brings Simon to Jesus.

All of this made me consider the notion of call and where it leads when it is heard. How was it that I came to know my vocation in life? Did it grow organically or was it a lightning bolt that shifted my perspective on everything? Did someone invite me to something I had not considered or introduce me to someone who changed my life direction? Did I hear a lecture or take a course that made things fall into place for me? And what have been the events/circumstances that have occasioned the less dramatic decisions in my life, the everyday choices I have made? How do I keep on the path every day?

In this season of Advent, when the call to “Stay awake!” and “Be ready!” is the daily message, we would do well to think on these things and sharpen our ear to hear what might be a next step on our journey.

Inner Eyes

Tags

call of God, Ephesians, hope, keep the peace, Paul, recognize the truth, speak the truth, stay awake, the eyes of our hearts, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth

During the last two retreats in which I have participated a strong emphasis was put on recognizing and telling the truth. It may sound strange to talk about recognizing the truth but these days there is so much information swirling around us and so much pressure to influence and impress others that sometimes the truth becomes a relative thing. The first task becomes clearing away all the accretions in order to tell the truth to ourselves. This takes time and willingness on our part, a willingness to listen deeply not only to what is in our mind but also to the messages from our heart and our body. It’s much easier to tell people what they want to hear “to keep the peace” or not hurt anyone’s feelings. But that kind of speaking can become second-nature such that we eventually ignore that tightening in our gut or the tiny voice of our uneasiness and so convince ourselves that we are telling the truth when we are not.

These thoughts were brought back to me as I read the verse before this morning’s gospel passage. It is a blessing from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which says: May [God] enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call. Disciples must strive always to be awake to the call of God, a call that moves constantly toward integrity and the highest good of all. It is all about breathing into truth at the deepest levels of our being and having the courage to speak that truth regardless of the risks involved. Today may our eyes be open and our hearts be ready to recognize the truth of our calling in all that we encounter.