contemplation – Spirit Reflections

Welcome, Welcome

March 28, 2022

If you have never wanted to control a person or fix a situation, if you have never wanted to step in and take over because you knew your way was best, if you have never tossed and turned in the night because of worry, then raise your hand. That’s what I thought. As humans, we all want some degree of power and we all want to be in control of our lives. Our many cultures teach us that power and control are the ultimate achievements. But are they? Or are they simply illusions that control us?

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to You.
May Your will be my delight today.
May You have perfect sway in me.
May your love be the pattern of my living.

In these forty days before Easter, this Lenten season, I have been sharing my journey about practicing (practicing being the operative word) surrender and acceptance. Today’s blog explores a Christian form of contemplative prayer called The Welcoming Prayer. Contemplative prayer is often wordless prayer where, instead of dictating our desires to God (power and control?), we surrender our own voices and open ourselves to the work of the Spirit in our hearts: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

The Welcoming Prayer is a prayer of surrender and acceptance, two behaviors quite countercultural in today’s world. Surrender is the act of moving ourselves aside; acceptance is being receptive to what is. This prayer is a prayer of relinquishment, of letting go of what we so often hold tightly. It is not an easy prayer.

I surrender to You my hopes, my dreams, my ambitions.
Do with them what You will, when You will, as You will.

The first step in The Welcoming Prayer is to settle ourselves quietly and “welcome” the Spirit, or the Christ, or God, or Allah, or the Buddha, or Nature, or whatever is we believe is the source of Divine Love. Our first surrender is this: I relinquish my desire for power and control. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Then we sit in the silence for a few minutes, surrendering everything or everyone we are trying to control and releasing where we are fighting for power over others. We let it all go, and welcome in its place Love. This is not an easy prayer.

I place into Your loving care my family, my friends, my future.
Care for them with a care that I can never give.

For the last four years, my adult daughter has walked through fire. Her journey has included a toxic work environment where she was emotionally and verbally harassed, a divorce, a job change that took her across the country during the worst days of the pandemic, working remotely over a year in a city where she knew no one, and now dealing with an immature and jealous co-worker who is undermining her work. I cannot count the number of times I have wanted to tell her “what do to” or how she “should” respond or what other courses of action she could take. I have tossed and turned with worry over her. I have wanted to fly to be with her and fix her problems. But . . . I . . . cannot. Her journey is her journey, and I, while I will always be present to her, have to relinquish (surrender) my desire for power and control (as if those will make everything all right, anyway), and accept that this is where she is right now. I have to take myself out of the equation in order to give space to Divine Love to show me how to respond with love, wisdom, and care. This relationship is simply one example of the many situations in which I crave control and power, yet I know that that craving is not leading me where I want to be spiritually. Control and power do not make me a gift to this world.

I release into Your hands my need to control, my craving for status, my fear of obscurity.

Seeking to relinquish power and control and “fixing” is not the same as being apathetic, uncaring, or giving up. It is, instead, an acquiescence that God is God and I am not, that in reality, I am powerless over everything except how I choose to respond in this life.

Eradicate the evil, purify the good, and establish Your Kingdom on earth.
For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

The prayer which I have quoted here is the Prayer of Relinquishment composed by the Quaker theologian and spiritual author and teacher, Richard Foster. It is not an easy prayer, yet it is a prayer for a more loving and peaceful world. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Walking with you ~ Rosemary

A Way to Be: Bearing Witness

March 11, 2022

The Table

You know these voices,
if you have ears to hear.
They are legion, whispering
(or shouting) within you
desperate to be noticed,
coming from all corners
of your life, east and west,
north and south, from infancy,
to old age, and all the seasons
in between,
soloists tugging at
your sleeve for attention.
You wonder why they bother
you and what they want
while you try to swat at them
like so many buzzing gnats
and go your unlived way.
It is, after all, so much easier
pretending to be deaf, instead
of inviting them in for tea,
laying your table
with a freshly pressed cloth,
fetching the fine china cups,
the ones you keep in the glass-
fronted cabinet,
or even the chipped mug,
brewing the tea and baking
the cookies. But if you did
greet them as guests,
what would you say to each
voice, each self, that approaches
your table with caution
and desire? Maybe your only
role as host is to be silent,
do nothing but pour the tea,
pass the cookies, listen
to their stories unfolding
like morning glories,
exchanging compassion
for the gift they bring,
the wisdom of your own
unique life.

You may be familiar with this story: An old Cherokee Indian chief was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the young boy, “a fight between two wolves. The Dark one is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The Light Wolf is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside of every other person on the face of this earth.” The grandson pondered this for a moment and then asked, “Grandfather, which wolf will win?” The old man simply said, “The one you feed.”

During this season of Lent, as I consider my own choices, my own life, I am looking beyond my spiritual traditions and exploring the three tenets of Zen Peacemaking as a way of being in this often turbulent and always changing world. The poem and this story are both examples of the power of the second Zen tenet: bearing witness. (See the previous blog for the first tenet, “Not Knowing” https://spirit-reflections.org/2022/03/07/a-way-to-be-not-knowing/). When we bear witness, we acknowledge all the different feelings, or parts of ourselves, that arise at any given moment, whether it be full of joy or suffering, or somewhere in between. We wake up to the current situation and give attention to whatever feelings, thoughts, or judgments arise, without condemning or stuffing any of them, but instead deciding which one we will attend to, or, as the Cherokee grandfather says, “feed.” What comes out of our mouths, as Christ said, reveals what is truly in our hearts (Matthew 15:18).

“When you bear witness you open to the uniqueness of whatever is arising and meet it just as it is. When combined with not-knowing, bearing witness can strengthen your capacity for spaciousness, thus enabling you to be present to the very things that make you feel as if you have lost your center.”

As the first tenet confirms, we cannot know for certain what will happen next, not even in the next minute of our lives. (The trout lily, pictured above, did not know yesterday that today it would be covered in a late snow.) But we do know that something will happen and whatever that something is, it may open a wide range of feelings, attitudes, opinions, and biases. Bearing witness asks that we hear all those voices and respect them for whatever wisdom or lessons they may bring, and then we decide which one we will feed.

“Bearing witness can allow you to eventually come to terms with the most difficult life circumstances. The practice is always available to you regardless of the time, place, situation, or people involved. There is nothing that you cannot bear witness to, from dusting the lint off your sweater to living in a pit for two years.”

With the possibility of a growing war, and in the midst of so much division, to live from the center of our lives, to live in balance, to be able to respond to these present times instead of react, to choose what brings Light instead of Darkness, may be the single most important gift we can give to our world.

Walking with you ~ Rosemary

Quoted material from Zen Peacemakers: https://zenpeacemakers.org/the-three-tenets/.

A Way to Be

March 2, 2022

In the Christian tradition, today, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the six-week period called Lent and is a day to ponder our own mortality. Considering the last two years of perpetual Lent co-existing with the pandemic, it seems sometimes that pondering our own mortality is all we have been doing. And now, with the war in Ukraine and the possibility of that war extending throughout Europe and even beyond, Ash Wednesday feels redundant. We get it. We are all going to die. Besides that, what can we really do about any of these trials and tribulations?

I have been pondering that question, and the answer I have received is twofold: I can continue to create, and I can continue to pray. I have read several bloggers recently who lament that they cannot write their stories, poems, essays because of the weight of this current darkness. Yes, it is difficult because there are no words that can make any sense out of war. Further, does what we write even matter? But what I hear is, “Keep writing anyway.” Keep creating because creating is an act of life. Keep offering whatever it is you have to offer because the rest of us need to witness that faithful resilience.

And I also hear “Keep praying.” I admit that prayer is tricky and that I sometimes wonder if prayer “works,” but “works” is a human term, not a spiritual one. Prayer is an admission, or humble realization, that there is indeed something/someone larger, more infinite, more caring than any of us can ever be. However we choose to pray, prayer grounds us, roots us, in each other and in God (by whatever name we each call God) and in this crazed, white-water world, I need grounding. I need to know I am not alone.

So, on this first day of Lent, when so many of us are tired, frightened, or at a loss for words, I offer a prayer. God breathed God’s name with the two-syllable word “Yahweh.” The country we currently hold in our hearts has a two-syllable name, Ukraine. I breathe in “Yah” and breathe out “weh.” I breathe in “U” and breathe out “Kraine.” I trust that the One Who is Bigger than Us will fill in the blanks.

I honestly do not know what else to do except to be, and “being” includes, for me, creating and praying. I remind myself that the word Lent comes for an old Germanic word meaning “spring,” and with spring come new life and hope. Winter cannot last forever.

“Being” with you this Lent ~ Rosemary

Morning Prayer

And this is prayer:
The black cat perched
on my lap this new morning
silky fur against one hand
the weight and aroma of the coffee mug
in the other
as we two creatures gaze
at Spring’s emerald leaves
clapping together
in the early breeze.
Only yesterday, it seems,
bare branches alone reached heavenward
but today hickory and elm wear veils of green
in praise before the Creator.
The cat purrs,
I lift my palms,
both offering our amen.

Thin Place

February 9, 2022

In Celtic Spirituality, there is an understanding that certain places become the meeting ground between heaven and earth, the “holy ground” of Moses before the burning bush. Such spaces are called “thin places” because the division between the holy and the ordinary disappears and the time spent there usually is fleeting. In a thin place, all of our senses are fully awake and we are aware of that present moment only. Sunrises and sunsets, forests and mountain tops, oceans and streams are often places that become “thin” if our eyes and ears and hearts are open. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “Earth’s crammed with heaven.” In these holy moments, we recognize that we have received a gift of presence from Divine Love. May we practice opening our eyes and our hearts in a world that often trembles. Blessings ~ Rosemary

Thin Place

A bald eagle lifts from her nest to roost on a pine bough
against a cerulean sky before thrusting herself forward
over the wide expanse of lake,
while photographers turn their massive lenses
skyward, laughing and pointing in flannelled
camaraderie. A pair of brown-haired children,
coats off and sailing like kites in their hands,
race along the path past them,
their bemused mother smiling as she struggles
to keep up. Behind, a young flower-laden
couple pose with hope-filled eyes while a friend
snaps pictures of a moment never to be reclaimed
and beyond, a seasoned man and woman perch
on a bare rock, tossing bread from a wrapper
to two fat geese waddling after each crumb.
Out on the water, weightless as dandelion puffs,
five white pelicans with long yellow beaks
drift on the current of a jon boat
where a lone fisherman stands erect,
silhouetted in black by the clear afternoon
sun, his line as straight and steady
as he is. In this simple moment,
like transient etchings, heaven dissolves
into the earth, earth evaporates
into the heavens,
past and future are shut out
while all creation does what it was created
to do, and I remove my shoes
to stand on holy ground.

Sacred Cycles

Nov. 17, 2021

I have been extremely fortunate this fall to see so much colorful foliage. Here in the southern states, the leaves typically dry up, turn brown, and tumble away, but this year, perhaps due to all the summer rain, they transformed themselves into muted reds and vibrant yellows. In New Hampshire, the autumn foliage stunned me at every turn, and even outside of Chicago, on what used to be prairie land, the leaves and grasses lit up in color. The problem with all this beauty is that I don’t want it to end. I don’t want the trees to drop those rich, warm hues of delight, and yet they will.

Autumn is the most subtle of seasons. With all its beauty, it knows what is next—the letting go. It is also the season that most stirs my soul and touches my heart. When I had young children, autumn marked the start of school, an exciting time of growth, and a recognition of another year gone by, preparing me, like an autumn tree, for that not-so-distant letting go. Now that I am older, autumn reminds me where my days will eventually take me, to a final letting go, and letting go of those I love. Autumn demonstrates for us the truth that life will be different in the future. The wheels do turn. But if wheels did not turn, we’d be stuck.

Autumn also offers us an opportunity to assess our lives and to discern in the early shadows of the afternoon what we might be holding too tightly, so tightly that we are keeping ourselves from opening a space for something else. It could be anything—an emotion, a grudge, a fear, a lost love or opportunity. It could be a material possession to which we are too attached or perhaps a lost dream begging to be let go in order to let a new dream breathe. Autumn invites us to trust the open palm that understands something has to be released in order for future birth to take place. Creatively speaking, autumn invites us to consider letting go of an art form that is comfortable and familiar in order to embrace and create something new.

I wonder how this season of fall presents itself to you, in your life, in your creative work, in your daily work, and in your spiritual journeys. What memories surface? What experiences? What feelings? While pondering, don’t forget to to relish a final glimpse of the colors and listen to their wisdom before they tuck themselves in until the next turn of the wheel. Walking with you~ Rosemary

Sacred Cycles

Long narrow roots of the maple stretch
like old slender fingers grasping the leaf-
littered ground, fingers fumbling over saffron
scarlet brown offerings of time
evidence of sacred cycles.
Branches themselves evolve into bare black
arms that know when to release
to let go, to set free, a black made vivid
by its bareness.
It is the bittersweet time of year—
everyone knows this—
bidding goodbye to all that came before
within another turning of the wheel–
but no not a dead season.
The multi-hued tapestry spread on the ground
becomes food for moss and mushrooms.
Empty branches recognize the slow sap
circling in anticipation of the next
creation. And though we do not
see them as well in summer through the shady
canopies, autumn stars still light
upon bare black limbs
and ancient slender fingers.
© Rosemary McMahan
20rosepoet20@gmail.com

Outside my window, after the leaves have let go.

On the Road

October 21, 2021

Greetings, friends. It has been five weeks since I have posted a blog, which calls for some sort of explanation. Here in the States, I have been traveling from one coast to the other. In September, we were able to meet good friends in Sonoma, California, where we explored the wine country for four days and enjoyed the beauty of Northern California.

Then we headed over to Nevada to see family who—due to Covid—we were well overdue in visiting. We hiked in the foothills of the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains, savored the aroma of pinion pines, and laughed a lot together.

After being home for a week, we packed up again and flew to Boston to visit our daughter. When we helped her move a year ago, Covid was on a rampage, so we were not able to visit the city. This time, we had the opportunity to explore and also took a side trip to catch the fiery autumn colors in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. In spite of being a bit uncertain about the safety of travel, we were careful, vaccinated, and masked, and extremely grateful to be able to reunite with family and friends and to see the natural wonders of our country.

Since returning, I’ve struggled with what to post. Travel is so rich with inspiration, but this blog isn’t a travelogue; it’s a place for travelers, for pilgrims and sojourners on the way, seeking and sharing wisdom and insights and beauty and meaning, connecting with each other and with The Creator. Travel, even for enjoyment, isn’t easy. There are always slow-downs and detours and risk-taking. There is always the unexpected, and there is also the return, the settling back into whatever is routine. As in life, travel involves both receiving and letting go.

I am in the “settling back into” mode and am not at the moment sure where the Spirit is leading me or what the Spirit is guiding me to share in this space to which I have invited you. But I am here, and I am listening, and I will post again soon as we continue our exploration of and our journeys to our own true selves. We are, each one of us, an essential pilgrim on the way. I am grateful for you. Blessings to you ~ Rosemary

The Eyes of Wabi-Sabi

September 1, 2021

I recently was introduced to the Japanese Buddhist tradition of Wabi-sabi. According to Leonard Koren, “Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional” (Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosophers). Wabi-sabi has an ancient history which began with Chinese Buddhists and eventually made its way to Japanese Buddhists who influenced its current meaning. Wikipedia explains that “Around 700 years ago, particularly among the Japanese nobility, understanding emptiness and imperfection was honored as tantamount to the first step to satori, or enlightenment. In today’s Japan, the meaning of wabi-sabi is often condensed to ‘wisdom in natural simplicity.’ In art books, it is typically defined as ‘flawed beauty.’” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

I suppose what captures my attention about wabi-sabi is how counter-cultural it is to our Western philosophies and ideals of what is beautiful. We admire those who are fit and glamorous, perfectly “put together.” We envy those who own homes with impeccable gardens and golf course lawns. We fill our thrift stores with the flawed objects we have tossed out to be replaced by that which is new and shiny. We often revere successful people who have “made it to the top.” We even teach our children at a very young age that to color correctly (and thus with beauty), they must stay within the lines. And as we age, we despair of every gray hair, every wrinkle, every age spot that somehow diminishes what our world confirms is worthy. Washed away in our strivings to be “beautiful people” are humility and acceptance.

A couple of days ago, my partner and I took a hike through the woods near our home. I wanted to practice paying attention to what was in the woods, not just blindly stomping past trees, rocks, plants, the sky. I was surprised by how often I caught myself drifting away, and also grateful for those moments when I did, in fact, see a partially hidden spider web shimmering with drops of dew and a single perfect purple spiderwort in full bloom, both beautiful and unspoiled. But it was the hickory tree, pictured above, that made me stop in wonder—the wabi-sabi hickory tree.

We ventured close to examine the trunks, yes, trunks, of this single tree. It appears that as the tree first began to grow, something bent it over. I am not an arborist, so I have no idea why the trunk decided to curve and bend and then somehow root itself again before growing straight upwards, at least 20 feet high, with bright, abundant green foliage. But for all the tree’s mystery, it isn’t a beautiful tree. It is an odd hickory, an anomaly in a woods full of trees that knew how to grow upward from the beginning. Yet it touched me more than any of the others because of its strangeness, its awkwardness, and so I keep reflecting on what wisdom, enlightenment, satori, I might receive from it.

Growing out of the humus, the earth, this hickory reminds me of wabi-sabi and the spirituality of accepting our imperfections, flaws, limitations, and impermanence with humility and with compassion. In my own faith tradition, Jesus Christ was able to do that for others, to see them through “wabi-sabi” eyes. The bent tree reminds me of the story in the New Testament, in Luke’s gospel, Chapter 13:10-17, of the woman bent over for 18 years who Jesus saw with compassion, not revulsion, and healed. Our culture clamors for perfection; we spend so much energy, so much of our lives, trying to impress, trying to prove we are, indeed, worthy, trying to “stand up straight.” Yet perhaps our worthiness resides not in what we do or how we look or what we produce but in honoring ourselves as we are, and others, as they are. This misshapen (at least by our standards) hickory tree reminds me that all of us—all of creation—are vitally connected not by our perfection but by our own imperfections, incompleteness, and impermanence in a way that, if we truly want to see as the Christ sees, makes us somehow beautiful. We are all, each one of us, “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the ancient Jewish psalmist proclaimed (Psalm 139, verse 14) and the hickory tree echoed.

It wouldn’t hurt our Western world to practice a bit more humility, a bit more compassion, a bit more awareness of what is truly important and what is not. So it seems rather fitting that a tree would be that messenger for me. Blessings, Rosemary 20rosepoet20@gmail.com.

The Shell Collector

Imagine God by whatever holy name you
utter, walking along the sandy beach, the waves
roiling and tumbling across feet and ankles
while God collects sea shells.
See God picking up a pearly gray clamshell–
one you would value—
only to toss it back to the sea.
Or perhaps God chooses a whole
sand dollar, perfectly intact,
so rare, and then flings it
into the frothy waves
while you gasp.
Maybe God fancies that cockle shell
with its raised ribs and God remembers
Irish Molly Malone selling her shells
in the streets of Dublin and God smiles
before leaving it on the sand.
You wonder why.
And then imagine that you are a shell,
lying with chipped edges
after your rough ride
through the oceans
and God comes to you.
God lifts you from the tide,
and with a tender hand brushes off
the stray strand of seaweed
to notice your blemishes.
God says to Godself, knowingly,
“This one’s been wounded,”
and pulls from God’s pocket
a burlap pouch and adds you to it,
along with the shell
broken by an affair;
one chipped by divorce;
one marred by grief,
one that’s been lost
for so long it no longer
gleams—none beautiful
or perfect but instead treasured
and precious, and God
walks and walks the beach
seeing in each broken shell
God keeps
God’s own exquisite image.

“Going” on the Prayer Path

July 26, 2021

Decades later, I still remember a cross-stitched saying in a plain wooden frame that hung on the wall of my family doctor’s office. It read, “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.” As a child of five or six, I recall being bemused by that quotation. Were hurrier and behinder really words? And how could a person get behind if that person was, in fact, hurrying? I asked my mother to explain the meaning behind those tightly, perfectly stitched words, and ever since then, when I find I am tripping over myself in haste to get ahead, I remember the wisdom on a wall in a doctor’s small office from a long time ago.

The last two weeks, I’ve been sharing my reflections on morning prayer, called “Prime” in the Liturgy of the Hours, and its relationship to three ancient monastic vows: stability, conversion, and obedience. I’ve related the vows to the simple instructions that a parent teaches a child before crossing a street: Stop, look, and go. These steps are an analogy for a prayer method described by Brother David Steindl-Rast in his book, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day. Stability is the “stop” we take before we begin our day, our invitation to sit with our God, by whatever name we call the Holy Other. Conversion involves the moments we take to look about us and listen for the Spirit’s nudging before we run ahead of ourselves with our own plans for the day. Today, I invite you to consider the last step: Go.

As Brother David writes, if we go without stopping and looking (as in, the hurrier I go, the behinder I get), we may find ourselves swallowed up in other people’s expectations and agendas, or we may find ourselves spending so much time “producing” that we fail to notice God in the present moment, the God who is “I AM.” For those of us on a creative journey, if we go before connecting to the Great Creator, we may soon find our creative energies blocked, scattered, or stalled. On the flip side, stopping and looking don’t mean much if we don’t finally go. We can sit with God all day, or muse about all the possibilities in the next 24 hours, but if we don’t get up and actually cross over, nothing will happen. So after some moments of stopping and looking, we are called to go into our day.

Obedience is the third vow we make to the creative and aware life and the one that equates with “go.” The root meaning of the word obey is to hear or to listen. Think of a parent saying, “Listen to me!” Obedience is expected to follow. We go to, or obey, the callings of the day which we have discerned through our time with God. We obey the call to prayer, and to service, to family and to friends, to the work that requires our attention, that gives us our livelihood, even obeying that call to wash the dishes. The difference is that we are not going in a hurry; we are not falling “behinder.” We are going with awareness to each task, inviting the Spirit along the way, and paying more attention to the gifts that surround us. For all of us who create, in whatever way that might be, we become obedient, again and again, to that which gives us life, to the creative world. Whether it’s painting, photography, writing, quilting, gardening, designing, woodworking, whatever, obedience is the “go” that gets us to that work. Truly, if the world needs anything at this particular time, it needs acts of beauty, of love, of hope that can arise from the work we do.

With going/obedience in mind, I invite you to consider these questions with holy curiosity:

How are you being invited to listen more closely to the call of your creative life?
Can you identify any resistance to the call and invite that resistance into conversation, listening to it, blessing it, and asking it to trust your call?

Loving and compassionate Creator, we yearn to be obedient to your call to create and to be aware of the gift of Life. This broken world is in so much need of light and beauty, song and dance, paintings and photos, poetry and prose that come from a heart aligned with yours. We believe with all humility that you have called us to create in imitation of you, the Great Creator. Send your Holy Spirit upon us to embolden us and to make us ever faithful to this call. May it be so.

Stop. Look. Go. // Stability. Conversion. Obedience. These are the practices and the vows we are invited to embrace to live our days with thoughtful attention and with joy. May God the Creator take each of us by the hand and heart and lead us forward. Blessings as you go ~ Rosemary 20rosepoet20@gmailcom.

Before Going

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get,”
stated the cross-stitched message
framed on a wall in the doctor’s office
of my childhood.
How often in the many seasons
since then have I recalled
that strange bit of wisdom
while tripping over myself,
arms filled with the day’s work,
on the way to my car.
How often have those words
returned to me when I have awakened
to immediacy and rushed into the precious
minutes of a new morning only
to realize later that I missed
the rising sun or the faithful
early praise of the cardinal.
“Get up, get up. Get going.”
How often have I scurried
at the voice of another’s agenda,
failing to heed the one
that gives life to me? To this world?
Yet what is there of meaning
in the hurry? What happens
to the eyes that hear and ears
that see in the white-water rush
of the day? What happens
to the longing of the heart
and the joy of being?
The world would sweep us along
like so many crumbs on a broom
but I want something more. I
want to be anchored to the Source
of All Being, I want to hear the gentle
whisper of the Spirit that guides me
toward joy, I want to know where
I am going before I say “yes.”

“Looking” on the Prayer Path

July 20, 2021

On the spiritual journey, it helps to remember that we are created to be spiritual beings as well as human doings. Life isn’t all about what we produce. It also involves who we are becoming, and if we believe we are made in the image of Something Bigger than us, of a holy Other, of God, than what we are becoming is Love.

Of course, being made in the image of Love is not what the world proclaims or helps assist us to attain. Too often we hear we are to be #1, the best, the only, and that our own needs and wants are more important than anyone else’s. If you know of any religious traditions that teach that, please inform me because I don’t find that heresy in the world religions with which I am familiar. Listening to those voices that deny Love is detrimental to our spirit and to life all around us.

So, for those of us on a prayer journey, to whom or what do we give our attention? In last week’s blog, I began a three-part series on the liturgical hour of “Prime,” or morning prayer, when we begin our day. In referring to Brother David Steindl-Rast’s book, Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day, I used his analogy of morning prayer being similar to the “Stop, look, go” that a parent teaches a child when learning to cross the street. Last week’s post explored the richness of stopping to be with God before we start our day and the monastic vow of stability. The next step is to look, or listen, which involves the monastic vow of conversion.

What is conversion? It seems the Christian tradition has hijacked the term to mean being converted to a believer in Christ. But conversion in the monastic and contemplative sense has a much fuller, deeper meaning. In her book, The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom, Christine Valters Painter writes that conversion includes stepping “into the unknown space between our egos and our deepest longings.” It is the place where we set ego aside and take that leap of faith, where surprises happen and mysteries become clearer, where change and transformation are birthed, not because of what the world is shouting but because of what the breath of the Spirit is breathing in us and inviting us to look at. After we stop to be with God, then we look and listen. We have to be careful about which direction we choose and which voices we pay heed to.

Brother David encourages us to use our senses in prayer as we look at what is around us, outside our windows, in our rooms, across the street, or in our laps, which is usually my tabby cat. While looking, we listen as the Holy Spirit helps us design the day ahead. What are our priorities? What is God possibly calling us to attend to? Who is being placed on our hearts? Where will our creative work fit into this day? What within the upcoming day is truly life-giving and worth our time? Reflecting prayerfully on the day ahead, we may be surprised by something that calls for our attention that we didn’t expect, or we may decide that what we had planned to do earlier has now become different. The way we move into our day—mindfully not absently–says something about the conversion and transformation that we are allowing in our very lives.

With looking/listening in mind, we might consider these questions with holy curiosity:

How much of our ego is tied to what we produce?
Is it difficult for us to let go of our plans in order to discern God’s invitations for the day?
In what areas of our life might we need to grow in cultivating compassion for ourselves, our choices, and our desires so that we can be open to surprise and change?

If even for a few moments, stop a moment to be with God, to let God look at you with love, just as you are. Then look around you, use your senses, and listen, as the monastics say, “with the ears of your heart.” Then will you be ready to go, our step for next week.

Loving and patient Creator, every single day holds a multitude of surprises and mysteries. Often we miss them because we are so intent on following our well laid-out plans and accomplishing something, anything, that somehow proves our worth. Give us the grace, we ask, to be open to surprise, to practice flexibility, and to discern what is truly life-giving and what brings us the fruit of your joy. May it be so. Walking with you on the journey ~ Rosemary 20rosepoet20@gmail.com

Listen

When the wind blows across your skin, listen
for the voice of an ancestor
guiding you toward your dream.

When you catch the glimpse of silver
dancing across the waves, listen
for the ancient secret that directs your path.

Listen to the way the breeze forms grooves
in the sand and learn about the symmetry
of your own life.

Listen to the way the pelican
rides on the currents or glides
across a cloudless sky, inviting you
to let go.

Listen to the hibiscus when it
unfurls its orange petals to receive
the Light, holding its breath at its own glory
and be amazed at each bright word
it utters.

Listen to your own heartbeat,
what it calls you to remember
and listen for the One
seeking that same heart.

Listen and become the sacred vessel
that treasures each sound it’s given
with reverent wonder.

Stopping on the Prayer Path

July 12, 2021

As a poet, writer, and spiritual seeker, the description of my blog, Spirit-reflections, reads: “Walking the ancient path and shining the Light with prose, poetry, and prayer.” I believe that we, as spiritual beings, have much to learn from our ancestors who also trusted in something bigger than themselves. If we fail to look back, we miss a plethora of wisdom, insight, encouragement, and grace offered to us from the world’s spiritual teachers who faced many of the same challenges, questions, and disappointments that we do. I also believe I am called to shine the Light (in my case, it is the Light of the Universal Christ defined by Love) in this often unloving, frightened, dark and wounded world. My medium is words, and as a creator, I use them in prose and poetry, and often in prayer. We are all creators of some sort, fashioned by and made in the image of THE Creator, so my hope is that this blog speaks to anyone drawn to Light, Hope, Respite, Healing, Beauty, Love, and Peace in their creative, spiritual, and active lives.

However, trust me that I am no saint. Far from it, I assure you. Lately, I have been struggling with my own prayer life and with my understanding of who the spiritual journey is inviting me to be. In reading various books, I came across this quotation from Brother Lawrence, who was born in 1614 and became a Carmelite monk in Paris, famous (ironically, since he cared nothing for fame) for his book Practicing the Presence of God): “Having found different methods and practices to attain the spiritual life, I decided that they would serve more to hinder me than to facilitate me in what I was seeking.” What profound truth. We can spend so much time seeking methods to find God and exploring various ways to discover God that we fail to be with God or to notice God in the present moment. We each have to find our own way. Parts of two books have helped me unfold this truth in this disheveled period of my prayer life. Perhaps they may offer you wisdom, too.

In Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey through the Hours of the Day, Brother David Steindl-Rast writes about “Prime,” the liturgical hour of waking and beginning our day, by using an analogy of a child learning to cross the street. He writes that adults will instruct the child to 1) stop; 2) look; and 3) go. His explanations of each step remind me of the three ancient monastic vows we are invited to make to support our creative lives: 1) obedience; 2) stability; and 3) conversion. In this blog, I invite you to consider “stopping” in your prayer life.

Brother David explains that the “stop” is the pause we take before rushing into the day’s activities. Think about this. Like a child stopping before rushing into a street, we stop before taking up our work. In this pause, we simply sit with God, look at God, and allow God to look at us. Nothing more is needed, not even words, other than showing up for this intentional time to stop as, paradoxically, we begin our day.

Stopping is part of the vow of stability. We root ourselves in the presence of the Creator who calls us to create before plunging into the myriad demands around us. Whenever we stop, even for a few moments, we then can anchor ourselves to prayer or to silence or to creativity or to life itself, focusing on the present moment where “I AM” dwells. Christine Valters Painter explores these vows and writes in Week Five of The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom, that “Stability means not running away from yourself. When the creative work becomes challenging or the inner voices and judgments rise up, stability summons us to stay present to the process and see what we discover.” The same is true of prayer. Stability means not running away from God in whatever way we name God. When we are tempted to begin our day without God, stopping summons us to stay present. It protects us from plunging thoughtlessly into the day while it reminds us that we are human beings, not human doings.

I wonder about myself and why it is sometimes difficult for me to stop before beginning my day. I wonder about my restlessness and my need to get on with it even while I crave an intimacy with my Creator. Perhaps you wonder these things, as well. Perhaps we might, together, lift our wondering to God.

Loving and inviting Creator, we seek to vow stability to the work of creation with which you have gifted us. Our world is always in a hurry, and often, so are we. Sometimes it’s easier to do a load of laundry and mark that off the list rather than stopping, just stopping, to be with you or with our creative work. Spill your Holy Spirit who stills us and helps us focus on what truly matters upon each one of us. May it be so.

Next week, I will explore “looking” and the vow of conversion. You are welcomed to join me. Blessings to you in your stopping. ~ Rosemary

A Simple Invitation

What would it take for you to stop
before you even begin?
To release the tight agenda
the blocked-off calendar
the color-coded “To Do” list
in order to simply be?
Are you able to cradle your mug of coffee
or cup of tea and sit for just a moment
only a moment
to gaze at the wind stirring the pine
or the bird singing praise from a wire
or your neighbor’s laundry clapping
like joyful hands in the morning air?
Can you soften your gaze and see
yourself for the wondrous creation
that you are, just as you are,
in the miracle of this moment
where Love gazes at you
with such deep longing that your heart
can only reply with a sigh?
For when you stop before you even begin,
when you still your mind and open
the door to your soul, if just
for a moment
only a moment
you will remember,
and in the remembering,
you will discover your Truth.