Keep Going

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balance, clarity, encouragement, Meg Wheatley, perseverance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, triumph, winter

Having been shocked into awareness of the impending season of winter with ten inches of snow last Thursday and waking up to frigid temperatures since that tell me it was no fluke, I am slowly acquiescing to what will most certainly remain for the next four or five…maybe even six months: cold and probably gray weather. I do not usually mind winter. In fact I sometimes glory in the crisp cold and the beauty of the winter wonderland provided by  snow-covered hills. I wonder if this year will be different or if this difficult start is a sign of change in my outlook as well as in an aging body. Fearing the worst, I turn for encouragement to Meg Wheatley’s book, Perseverance, and am once again called to a new way of seeing. The title is Clarity.

It can take many years of being battered and bruised by events and people to discover clarity on the other side of struggle. This clarity is not about how to win, but about  how to be, how to withstand life’s challenges, how to stay in the river. 

We never learn to triumph over life, but we can learn that every defeat, every problem, every terror is a teacher that prepares us for the next hardship. And we learn to expect that there are more difficulties ahead.

When this clarity emerges from our experience, what also emerges is trust in ourselves. We realize that we can cope and learn and grow from hardship and trials. We learn to accept difficulty and setback as part of life’s normal processes. We cease feeling threatened by most things…

The encouragement continues but, for now, that’s enough to get me ready for the day when I will get out the winter tires for my car, take them to the dealer to be installed and balanced and hope that I will proceed – balanced as well – back on the road that leads me forward.

Weather Report

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A Deep Breath of Life, Alan Cohen, judge, keep smiling, let go, Psalm 147, snow, spark of the divine, spring, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, weather report, winter

I smiled as I read the Psalm for today – one of the praise psalms toward the end of the book, Psalm 147, wherein we find a weather report of sorts. In verse 16, the psalmist sings of God’s activity thus: He spreads snow like wool; frost he strews like ashes. Yesterday I was thinking we were surely headed for spring but this morning there’s lots of activity out there, wind and blowing snow – as if last week’s dump of almost 3 feet of the white stuff were not enough!

My thought that I am powerless to do anything but accept the vagaries of the weather was a good segue as I read a quote about relating to other people. Alan Cohen, in his daily reflection (A Deep Breath of Life) says the following: Help me not to judge my brothers and sisters, but let me recognize  my unity with them. Help me to see the spark of the divine in all the eyes I look into. I smile again as I think of English class when I was a child and find myself cringing at the “dangling preposition” that makes me want to correct the previous sentence to say, in all the eyes into which I look. But how clumsy does that sound! The bottom line in all this seems to be something like the following:

Just keep smiling and let go of your need for everything to work according to your rules. Living will likely be easier that way!

Radiant Dawn

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darkness, dawn, eternal light, justice, light, meditation, moon, morning star, O Antiphons, shadow of death, silence, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Tibetan chime, winter, word of life

This morning there was a shaft of light across my bed as I was throwing back the covers. I thought something – the wind or some animal – had tripped the light over the carport outside. When I looked out I saw a brilliant waning moon with the nearby morning star shining in response to its light. I don’t know when I first heard the line: The morning star shines clear in the sky, offering it the Word of Life, but it always comes to me automatically when I catch sight of that loveliness.

Then there was the silent dawn, clear and pure as the sound of the cymbal Tibetan chime that sometimes calls me to meditation. One of the advantages of the cold of winter (which some of us welcome on this date without much reluctance) is the clarity that accompanies the cold. Yes, there are the storms and the inconveniences but on a clear day there is a sharpness of the air, and breathing it in has the ability to shake the cobwebs out of the mind and get us moving quickly to our destination – literally or figuratively. Today appears to be one of those days. I will know it later when I leave the house. For now, I have the O Antiphon for today to spur me on.

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

 

 

 

 

 

Seeking the Light

Tags

darkness, dawn, life, light, Macrina Wiederkehr, morning light, night, seven sacred pauses, snow, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, winter

6:26am. No inkling of any light in the sky. The sound of one car braving the cold (17 F degrees). I know it must be snowing as all the reports last night telling of 45 states where snow will be a hazard today are likely true of us, but I cannot yet tell. Too tired to think much I turn to Macrina Wiederkehr for help, for a word…She says:

Out of darkness we come passing through dawn into day. Holding hands with dawn we clothe ourselves with light. We clothe ourselves with day. Out of the night we come, bathed and cradled in light, reaching through the dawn, we cover ourselves with day. Our beautiful bowl of life, so full of eternal questions, is filled to the brim with new light. Morning light, be kind, help us find peace of mind this day. (Seven Sacred Pauses, p.64)

May it be so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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!

 

 

 

 

 

The Constancy of Change

Tags

birth, dynamic of change, fall, image of praise, maple tree, Meg Wheatley, perseverance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wholeness, winter, yin/yang

This morning I look out at our beautiful maple tree framed by my bedroom window and see that she is totally stripped of all her leaves, a sure sign of movement toward winter. The color that caught the sun for such a short span was magnificent and I am sad that it is gone so quickly, yet the remainder – the starkness of naked branches – has its own beauty. The tree, so tall and straight, offers me a vivid image of praise – every branch reaching upward, high into the sky toward God. No downward turn anywhere meets my eye as I scan upward from the ground. Even the smallest branches all lift and witness to the willingness of the whole tree to give itself over to praise in what seems a death but is only change.

I found a reflection from Meg Wheatley’s book Perseverance this morning that reminded me of the adage, “Change is the only constant.” She speaks of the Chinese yin/yang symbol as “the dance of opposition that creates wholeness, the dance that never ends.” Here is more of what she says, ending with a question that I think will keep me going when I am tired and wondering when a new spring will come or when I will experience the beauty of what will seem an endless winter:

One state gives birth to another. Whichever state is here at this moment, we can be sure that what’s coming next will be its opposite…At first, the new birth is just a sliver, a new moon glimmer of the future. But the dominant will now begin to wane and the new will grow. Eventually, it too will become the overbearing present and it too will give birth to the next newness. In this way, life’s ceaseless dynamic of change offers hope and caution simultaneously. Everything changes. Good times don’t last forever. And neither do bad ones. Whatever is happening now, good or bad, is giving birth to the next state, which will be its opposite. Does knowledge of this dance help us persevere? (p. 49)

A New Moment

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anxiety, Christ Jesus, cosmic dance, fall, God, Philippians, prayer and petition, St. Paul, surrender, Thanksgiving, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, winter

It’s 33 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside this morning at my house and although it’s too early to see, I can imagine that the colorful leaves of the tree outside my window are falling fast to the ground. The glory and loss of autumn has now arrived in full measure. Loving each season, I am prone to pooh-poohing the letting go that is happening everywhere in nature as plants die or sink into the ground for winter and the bears prepare for the long sleep. But it behooves me to take their example of being in this moment of surrender, offering up the season that has ended in order to be present to what is, as we move forward on the journey. What will today offer me as challenge and/or joy? Will I accept and join in “the cosmic dance” of which Thomas Merton spoke?

St. Paul’s message to the Philippians (4:6-9) is quite apt for this morning, as I see it. “Have no anxiety at all,” he says, “but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to  God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”