reflections – Spirit Reflections

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.

Fissures and Light

March 1, 2021

I belong to a group called “The Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks,” a title that resonates with me because it breaks the mold of how the world sees “religion.” The people in this group are artists: writers, poets, painters, dancers, sculptors, songwriters, and more—anyone willing to embrace creativity–and we delight in letting THE Creator out of the box. We are “monks” in the sense that our creativity is dependent on our various contemplative and spiritual practices, all intended to bring beauty and joy into a dark and broken world.

One topic that often comes up is our indoctrinated quest for perfection. We hear it from our earliest ages: “Do your best,” and “Practice makes perfect.” Being human, however, at some point we run straight into the truth that it is impossible to do our best all the time, that we make mistakes, some with very serious consequences, and then we struggle with our sense of “enoughness” because for some of us, we feel we will never be enough. We will never live up to the expectations others have ingrained in us, or those we have ingrained in ourselves. We fear we cannot be loved if we are not perfect; perhaps we’ve even experienced rejection or betrayal when our imperfections revealed themselves. So we bear the brokenness, the cracks, from those experiences, and wonder how we can ever be whole again, how we can ever be loved again.

Too many of us have only heard of our sinfulness, our shame, and our guilt, as if these are all that define us. These seasons of atonement, like Lent, if we are not careful, can mire us in a sense of hopelessness: we will never be good enough to be loved. But what if we turn away from that thinking, what if we give up those false beliefs for Lent, for our lives, and we instead turn toward the Light that assures us we are indeed loved–wounds, fissures, and all?

No one is perfect. No one. And none of us ever will be perfect, thank God, literally. Instead, we are on a mutual journey of discovery that leads us to be gentle with our woundedness, our cracks, our imperfections. As singer, songwriter, and spiritual guide Leonard Cohen writes, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” These cracks can become the breeding ground of compassion and empathy, for ourselves and for others, and that ground becomes holy. We should all be walking around with bare feet! “Every heart to love can come, but like a refugee,” sings Cohen. Aren’t we all refugees seeking acceptance, belonging, love, and the assurance that we are, just as we are, “enough”? Punishment, shame, and fear will never move us along in our spiritual journeys; they are only control mechanisms to keep us stuck. Instead, we turn to Love, to the Light, to the Divine Source of our Being from which we were created who desires to shine in us, who desires to heal us, who desires to see us dancing in holy disorder.

This same Being offers you two gifts today. The first is a short parable about the beauty of brokenness. The second is the song Anthem by Leonard Cohen. May you listen to both with the ear of your heart and know that you are, indeed, enough. Blessings ~ Rosemary

The Parable of Two Flower Vases

“Let us suppose that there are two flower vases made of fine china. Both are intricately carved and of comparable value, elegance, and beauty. Then a wind blows, and one of them falls from its stand and is broken into pieces.

An expert from a distant land is called. Painstakingly, step by step, the expert glues the pieces back together. Soon the broken vase is intact again, can hold water without leaking, is unblemished to all who see it.

Yet this vase is now different from the other one. The lines along which it had broken, a subtle reminder of yesterday, will always remain discernible to an experienced eye.

However, it will have a certain wisdom, since it knows something that the vase that has never been broken does not: it knows what it is to break and what it is to come together again.”

Dr. Salman Akhtar in Broken Structures

Leonard Cohen, Anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg

Reflection

February 24, 2021

“The power of God is present at all places, even in the tiniest tree leaf. Do you think God is sleeping on a pillow in heaven? . . . God is wholly present in all creation, in every corner, behind you and before you. God’s entire divine nature is wholly and entirely in all creatures, more deeply, more inwardly, more present than the creature is to itself. God is entirely and personally present in the wilderness, in the garden, in the field.”

A major part of rising from the ashes of this past year has been, for me, Nature. I don’t necessarily mean sitting in the woods all day, though I sometimes wish I could do just that, as much as simply paying attention to all the many miracles of wonder and awe that surround us daily. Take, for instance, ice.

I recently had reason for travel that included a stretch of Interstate 81 across the state of Virginia. Snow had fallen as part of the huge storm that affected 2/3 of the country, but snow wasn’t the issue by the time of my travel—the frigid temperatures and the arctic winds were. Yet even with that discomfort, which can certainly remind us of who is in charge, I was blessed with a most wondrous display of exquisite beauty: iced trees. As my husband and I rounded a corner, before us lay a display that only cliches can really describe—a “fairy world,” a “winter wonderland,” ice that “sparkled like diamonds.” The western afternoon sun reflected off of millions and millions of ice crystals that bejeweled the trees against a vivid blue sky. Trying to take pictures with a phone camera in a vehicle moving at 70 mph does not good photography make, but perhaps offers just a glimpse into the miracle with which we were gifted, mile after mile. We were spellbound.

When I got home and looked through the photos on the laptop, I was disappointed that we hadn’t been able to capture the full glory of that brilliant, shimmering display, but then I considered that Nature, and God, aren’t intended to be “captured.” They are intended to be received. When we stop to receive them, however fleeting they may be, we are reminded of the constancy of beauty and goodness. Creation itself becomes an anchor to all that is most important. It rises, not only from the ashes, but above the ashes, whispering, “And God saw that it was good.” That is what I hope to focus on and give my attention and energy to as we move from winter to spring, as we make a turn around from all the disruption and pain of this past year—that which is good.

The quotation at the beginning of this reflection was written by the great Reformer, Martin Luther. I can only imagine the horror of the Church at the thought that God might be present in the “tiniest leaf” instead of in power and wealth and control. But those things mean nothing to God, and nothing to Nature. So may we move forward and find God, the Source of our Being who is indeed rooted in us, in our wilderness places as well as in our gardens. Blessings to you. ~ Rosemary

Returning

February 22, 2021

Metanoia is a Greek word we Christians hear much about, especially during the Lenten Season when our focus is intentionally on the journey which Christ took and on how faithfully we are following. The word itself basically means a change of direction, turning around, or turning back towards, and so we look for places in our lives where we need to make spiritual U-turns and head back toward the Light. This liminal time between winter and spring suggests such a turn as we watch Nature begin to wake up.

One of my favorite perennials is the Lenten Rose because it embodies strength, resilience, beauty, and because it knows the real struggle of returning year after year. The Lenten Rose spoke to me last year as we entered our first Lenten season at the beginning of what we assumed would be a short-lived pandemic. Today in the United States, we approach the half-million dead count to this virus, so it wasn’t so short-lived after all. Yet as I watched this plant push itself through frozen stubble and bloom despite its weathered, frost-bitten leaves, I couldn’t help but think of the hope of resurrection, of rising from ashes, which for most of us happens more than once in our own lives. We are somehow banished from what or who we love or from a dream we cherished or from a familiar way of life and there is no going back to that one, particular time. Still, we are empowered by the Spirit to make a return somehow, just as those multitudes of families and friends must do who lost loved ones to Covid, or to other circumstances. We are empowered to say “yes” to life. We, too, are invited by the Light to scrabble and scratch through the debris of whatever haunts us in order to rise and bloom, as many times as it takes, because we do not take that journey alone. Love goes with us.

This year, my Lenten Roses got caught in 10 degree weather just as they were beginning to bloom. I feared the freeze would kill them, but it did not. They are a bit stunted (as I believe we all are as this plague drags on), yet they still offer their beauty. Their message of hope speaks deeply to me while we step into the second year of pandemic, and I rely, again and again, on their example of beauty and new life.

Perhaps that is what this specific time is about: returning, like the rose, to our deepest, truest selves, despite the rubble (or even in appreciation of it), knowing that while the rubble can teach us, it cannot contain us. When we return to our deepest selves, we find our Creator, the One who formed us out of nothing but desire, the One who knit us together and called us wonderful, and we begin to bloom once more. Blessings to you. ~Rosemary

Banished
Lenten Roses are a perennial plant. A member of the buttercup family, they bloom near Lent and require little care.

Think of it as hibernation
or incubation
or even dormancy
but call it what it is—
banishment—
driven beneath the soil
to disappear
to be no more. At least for now.
There is no choice
when a fiery revolving sword
and resolute cherubim
bar your return.
In the dark, you dream, you weep
for all
that has been lost—
your splendor gone
your essence buried
your precious names forgotten:
Christmas Rose, Elegance Pearl,
Ivory Prince, that made you
you
while above, wrens skitter
in brittle-brown leaves.

But I want to know
what the turning was like—
the desire to push back
the resolve to reach up
the Self-love that broke
through time-worn debris
to proclaim
“Here I am”
and show buds like roses
that unfold in the purple hues
of Lent.

Ash Wednesday

Feb. 17, 2021

And we are put on earth a little space
That we might learn to bear the beams of love.
William Blake

No matter where we have lived this past year, we all have one experience in common: the pandemic. We all know how it feels to have our personal freedom and choices and pleasures denied as a deadly virus swept over the globe and continues to spread and infect. We all have experienced to a certain extent what existing in a perpetual Lent feels like. I assume you have given up some of the same things as I have: being with family during holidays; having dinner with friends; going out to eat or to the movies; attending our places of worship as a community. Further, we all are entering a second year, a second time, of honoring our seasons of atonement during this pandemic. If we knew last year what we know now and how long this would last, would we have made it to this point? Yet here we are.

We have given up and fasted from so much that it is beyond my own ability to even consider giving up something else this Lent. Instead, I have been led to reflect on giving to—giving to myself in ways that lead me closer to the Light; giving to the world through whatever it may receive or glean from my words; giving attention to beauty over ugliness; giving the practice of Love over the hate that permeates my own country, the United States; giving light instead of darkness. What the Spirit is leading me to this Lent is a journey of the heart.

In the book The Awakened Heart by spiritual psychiatrist Gerald May, now deceased yet one of my guides, he invites his readers to reflect on all the varied messages about God they have received throughout their lives—in childhood, from religious authorities, from parents, into adulthood, including their own perceptions of God. Then he advises to let all of those go—just throw them to the wind, so to speak—and to, instead, “let God be God.” We can’t, after all, put God in a box, though God knows how hard we try. Then May continues in his own grace-filled way to add, “And let you be you.” Sit with that guidance for a bit.

To let God be God requires an awful lot of trust. To let me be me requires an awful lot of compassion. So, the journey of Lent this year is a real invitation to go inward, to seek God in the holiest of holies, that place within our hearts where only God and I (or only God and you) are present. It is there, if we go with trust and with compassion, that we will begin to be able to give. Blessings to you. ~ Rosemary

Sifting Ashes

What would you do
if you were invited
to enter your heart
in this season
of self-honesty?
If you were encouraged
to leave reason and judgment
behind and instead
ask grace to be your
companion?
Would you accept the flashlight
offered when you crossed
the threshold, the decoder ring
needed to decipher
each message that begs
revelation?
Could you look?
Once inside, would you willingly
sift through the ashes
that have accumulated
over your life
like the layers
of cinder in your
unswept fireplace?
Finger the silt-soft remains
of grief, remorse, regret,
guilt, even shame,
letting them fall
through your fingers
like the fair hair
of a child?
For here, you will hear
the stories that make you
you, filled with ashes
and hope, shadows and light, death
and life.

And after you have sat
among the ashes,
know that it is your choice
to decide which to wash away,
which to bury, and which
to hold to your heart
like a locket,
as you emerge
to breathe the bright air
of Spring.