Our Choice Now

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A Sleep of Prisoners, action, Christopher Fry, exploration, God, peril, response, soul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wake, Word

This morning I woke with a line from Christopher Fry’s poem, A Sleep of Prisoners, in my head. It comes to me in moments of significance – often as the whole poem but sometimes just the part. I always look it up to make sure I’m not misquoting and in the version I clicked on today, the line was set off in bold. It says: Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God.

The past two days (if not the entire past year) have brought me to that conclusion and it is clear that our country is in peril. Our choice of response (not reaction) as we go forward will be crucial to our long-term future. Initial messages – in word and action – to the national elections run the gamut from violent and divisive to peaceful/prayerful and unitive. It is my hope that the populace will come to answer Fry’s final question in the poem for the good of the nation. He says: It takes so many thousand years to wake. But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

Living Large

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cismic life, convergence, energies, heart, larger horizons, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, preoccupations, receptive, scientist, spirituality, storms, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theologioan, wake, Writing in a Time of War

I  found it difficult to go to sleep last night because of the noise, light and torrents of rain in the storm playing outside my window. Perhaps I should have put my attention there instead of on the fact that today would be a long and involved day for which I would need a long and restorative sleep. I should have remembered that lately I usually function quite fine with whatever amount of sleep I have and wake up when God (rather than my alarm) calls…a function of getting older, perhaps. It’s still raining outside but in a gentler, quieter way now. Hopefully the farmers will have received a little of what they have needed for a better harvest and some of the energies in the natural world will have been balanced out a bit for this new day.

These thoughts put me in mind of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – a theologian and scientist whose life and work in the first half of the 20th century have lately found a resurgence in light of the convergence that is happening in science and spirituality. I must admit that his face smiling out from a book cover leaning against a bookcase to my left was also a goad for my reflection. So here’s a thought excerpted from Teilhard’s book, Writing in a Time of War, that might call us to the more today.

To live the cosmic life is to live dominated by the consciousness that one is an atom in the body of the mystical and cosmic Christ. The person who so lives dismisses as irrelevant a host of preoccupations that absorb the interest of other people. Such a person’s life is open to larger horizons and such a person’s heart is always more receptive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signs of Spring

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awaken, calm, dawn, discipline, flowers, forgive, hopeful spirit, impatience, injustice, love, Macrina Weiderkehr, non-violence, prayer, psalm 5, seven sacred pauses, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, tolerance, unfold, wake, winged heart

Late yesterday afternoon I went on a brief “inspection tour” of the property where I live, looking for signs of spring. The air had a different quality to it (it was almost warm!) and there was evidence that the daffodils and tulips, and even the irises, were getting impatient for their time to shine. I whispered to them to slow down because March is so unpredictable; we could be buried in snow next week! There was a feeling of holding back in me at the same time as my own impatience to get out there to begin the clean up of the yard.

I noticed this morning how bright it was at 6:30 – a sure sign of spring – when my alarm went off and I actually spent a moment before I rolled out of bed, musing about how the day might go with God’s companionship. It was not surprising to me then when Macrina Weiderkehr offered me a morning reflection that felt like a plan for  renewal. I’ll share it in its entirety and I’ll take it with me to work, hoping it remains as God’s work within me today and in the burgeoning season just beginning inside and out.

The words of Kahlil Gibran are sitting at the gate of my heart this morning. “To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.” Words from Psalm 5 are also trying to get my attention: “In the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I plead my case to you, and watch.” I don’t always rise at dawn and watch for God, nor do I consistently awaken with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. There are times when the wings of my heart remain folded; yet prayer still happens in me. There are mornings when I simply sit in silence trying to remember some of the things that need to rise in me:

1. a tolerance for those who do not agree with me,
2. a refusal to judge others
3. a willingness to forgive,
4. greater effort to live with a non-violent heart,
5. loving thoughts toward those who don’t exactly dote on me,
6. a calm and hopeful spirit in the midst of my anxieties,
7. discipline in my daily personal prayer,
8. attention and faithfulness in my daily work
9. a holy anger for injustice in our world.

As I remember these necessary risings in my life, the wings of my heart slowly begin to unfold. All Praise to You, Giver of the Morning! (Seven Sacred Pauses, p. 61-62)