Thoughts in Community

The Rhythm of Growth

2008-03-10T19:26:00.006-04:00

If things are dying or falling away, we dismiss it, we refuse to see it as the second half of the very same cycle and think there is something “wrong” with us. We think something terrible has happened and we need to do a whole list of things to put it right. Much of our stress and subsequent exhaustion at work comes from our wish to keep ourselves at full luminescence all month, even when our interior “moon” may be just a sliver in the sky…what would my life be like if I had as much faith in the parts of me that were fading away as I had in the parts of me that were growing?

- David Whyte, The Heart Aroused

Rhythm. Though it may seem obvious to say,we need both day and night to make a complete cycle. Often we resist, wanting to hold to one or the other. But it is this cyclic movement which marks the journey and it is the journey itself which is ultimately the measure of our growth. We want a straight path free of switchbacks and obstacles, but rarely is this the way. Since that is so, as any traveller will tell you, it is best to walk when you are strong and rest when you are tired. Your life is not an endurance contest.

blessings,

sam

Poets and Priests

2007-11-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.They waste their years in vain efforts to become some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own. They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

The simplest thing is to be who we are, since it is the only true option we have. But it is the most difficult thing to arrive at because we must first understand who we are and learning to know ourselves can be many years work. For some the understanding comes in a flash of insight, but for most it is the gradual peeling away of all that is incidental: The need to please, the desire to emulate what we are drawn to in another, the youthful proclivity towards trying to do everything, to be everything. And throughout, we so easily deceive ourselves. But don’t be discouraged, as you continue on the path to understanding yourself, you will one day see that the journey itself, with all its detours and dead-ends has not delayed your understanding but was, in fact, essential to it.

Blessings,

sam

Take it then!

2007-07-03T16:38:00.000-04:00

There were two elders living in a cell, and they never had so much as one quarrel with one another. One therefore said to the other: "Come on, let us have at least one quarrel, like other men." The other said: "I don’t know how to start a quarrel" The first said: "I will take this brick and place it here between us. Then I will say: it is mine. After that, you will say: It is mine. This is what leads to a dispute and a fight." So then they placed the brick between them, one said: "It is mine" and the other replied to the first: "I do believe that it is mine". The first one said again: "It is not yours, it is mine." So the other answered: "Well then, if it is yours, take it!" Thus they did not manage after all to get into a quarrel.

-from The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers.

In order to have peace, we must learn to let go of the need to own. We want to claim and hold possessions and people and even circumstances and moments of our life. But these are only illusion. I’m not saying that nothing is real, but only that much of what makes us unhappy is a matter of perspective, of needing to feel we can and must own (and thus control). But we can decide to enjoy the people in our lives without defining them as extensions of ourselves, to keep our arms open to both receive them as they come and to bless them if they go, to hold those material things which are in our possession with a relaxed grip, prepared to enjoy them or to let them go as we find the circumstances of our lives changing. To make our plans but allow God to shape them as he will without resentment or regret. Like the monks, we can learn to say: "Take it then!"

blessings,

sam

The Present Moment

2007-05-24T08:56:00.000-04:00

Slipping
On my shoes
Boiling water
Toasting Bread,
Buttering the Sky:
That should be enough contact
With God in one day
To make anyone
Crazy

- Hafiz

There’s the story of Jacob and his dream. It doesn’t happen in a temple, or a special holy place. Neither on a mountaintop or a lush verdant oasis with beautiful flowers and smells lifting the mind to God and his creation. This was a desert. Desolate. Barren. Uncomfortable. He had to use a rock for a pillow. And it is here that he is given a glimpse of a deeper reality. Of the invisible movement of God in that place, the hidden picture that he didn't see. And so we have that great line of Jacob's upon awakening (in more ways than one): "Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not" (Gen 28:16)

There was a 17th century Jesuit by the name of Jean-Pierre De Caussade who wrote a small book of spiritual direction. In it, he refers to Jesus with an interesting phrase. He calls him the Sacrament of the Present Moment, writing "He who recognizes a king in disguise treats him very differently from he who sees before him only the figure of an ordinary man…. Likewise, the souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally…” For Caussade, the true nature of our existence is that the presence of God is not something removed that must be coaxed and convinced to come closer. God is here...now. We only need to learn to see and in seeing, to follow the moments of our lives as the unfolding of our experience of God and the expression of God working in our lives.

This is hard to grasp because it is, after all, just our everyday life he’s talking about, filled with ordinary things that most of us wouldn’t think of as spiritual, certainly not as something sacred. That is supposed to be something high, removed, something extraordinary. Something that doesn't happen every day. The secret here is that this experience of God looks and feels so much like our ordinary life, because it is our ordinary life. For those who can refocus their eyes, to see the hidden picture Cassaude writes that: “All that remains is to be ready to grasp God who is close beside them at each step and each moment in all the various situations that arise in never ending succession along their way." And so because Jesus is the sacrament of the present moment, then every moment is a holy moment. Every place is a holy place. If we can recognize it.

"Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not"

blessings,

sam

Hidden Gifts

2007-04-30T08:27:00.000-04:00

For ten years, a king sat in his chamber to hear petitions and dispense justice. Each day a holy man in the robe of a beggar appeared and without a word, offered him a piece of fruit. Although he always accepted the trifling gift, the king did not give it any thought but merely passed it on to his treasurer, who later tossed it from an upper trellised window into a neglected corner of the treasure house. One day, ten years after the first appearance of the beggar, a tame monkey, which had escaped from the women’s apartments in the inner palace, came bounding into the king’s chamber and jumped on the throne. Because the king had just received the beggar’s fruit, he playfully handed it over to the monkey. When the monkey bit into it, a sparkling jewel dropped out and rolled onto the floor. His eyes growing wide, the king turned to his treasurer and asked what had become of the beggar’s many other gifts of fruit. Excusing himself, the treasurer went to the treasure house and made his way to the area directly under the trellised window, which he had not visited all these years. There, on the floor, lay a mass of fruit in various stages of decomposition and, amidst their remains, a heap of priceless gems.

We should be careful not to disregard the simple and unassuming in life. Often the greatest wisdom comes very simply and quietly. God so often speaks in a small whisper, and what seems foolish is found to be of great worth. Here the jewels are hidden in a piece of common fruit given by a spiritual one who does not appear spiritual at all. And it takes the silly monkey to uncover the truth. Let's try to stay awake so that we might recognize the stranger when she comes with an unassuming gift of everyday experience. And let's try to not take ourselves too seriously so that, like the monkey, we might stumble across the hidden jewel that our king, occupied with so many daily affairs, is unable to perceive.

Blessings,

sam

The Simple Act

2007-03-11T22:31:00.000-04:00

But just how far can we implement this planetal awareness? We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The inter-relatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold. Or rather- for I believe the heart is infinite - modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry.

- Gifts from the Sea , Anne Morrow Lindbergh

We can easily become overwhelmed by the needs we see around us. The suffering of people thousands of miles away are immediately present to us. But there also is much suffering closer to home, and we can feel as inadequate in the face of those needs as we feel towards those which are in another country. How can we help? What difference can we make when there is so much need? The answer may be that when we regard the mass of need, there is little we can do. But if we will look for the one person who has been placed in our path, perhaps for that one we can do something. It may be food, or shelter, or a ride to work. It may be to simply sit with them and listen, to let them know that they will be strong again. The little things can be very powerful in a person's life, and they can only occur between persons. The simple act. The single person. That may well be all that is asked of us.

Blessings, Sam

Falling or Floating?

2007-02-19T14:14:00.000-05:00

“…almost everything we come across in life is nonlinear, that is, the shortest point between A and B is not a straight line because there almost never exists a straight line to follow in the first place. The line is an evolving path that actually changes according to the first steps we ourselves take to begin the journey. Most paths, in fact, metaphorical, literal, or mathematical, take the form of an iterative equation, an equation where the values and events it produces are continually fed back into the equation again and again, influencing any future values it may throw out. Every action, then, no matter how small, influences every future action, no matter how large....Without the fiery embrace of everything from which we demand immunity, including depression and failure, the personality continues to seek power over life rather than power through the experience of life. We throw the precious metal of our own experience away, exchanging it for the fool’s gold of superimposed image, an image of what our experience should be rather than what it actually is…”

David Whyte – The Heart Aroused

There may be no emotion so powerful, so compelling as the need to bring resolution to some area of tension or pain in your life. You may feel like a trapeze performer who, having let go of the bar, finds yourself tumbling, slow motion, in mid air waiting for the other trapeze bar to appear. Neither here nor there, you feel ungrounded, exposed, wondering if it will be there in time. Consider though, for just a moment, if you found yourself floating, suddenly weightless. Would that not make a difference in the waiting? The bar will eventually come swinging within your reach, though you often cannot control it’s arc or timing. But there is something that you can control. Falling or floating, how you view the waiting is up to you.

Blessings,
Sam

Solitude

2007-02-09T18:01:00.000-05:00

"In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of the One who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could free others, and who loved us long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts."

- Henri J.M. Nouwen. The Only Necessary Thing.

In the west, we are accustomed to valuing our worth and the worth of others based not simply on what we achieve, but also by the level of our independence from others. "Self-sufficiency" is especially coded into the American gene. Even in our spiritual lives we want to insist on independence, understanding all possibility, all completeness, as inherent within ourselves. In the quiet we can find the balance necessary to see both our immeasurable worth and our finitude. We can celebrate our dependance, looking to the One who is beyond all and opening ourselves to receive that which comes as the greatest gift: unconditional love.

Blessings,
Sam

Practicing the Presence

2007-02-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

"We are challenged on every hand to work untiringly to achieve excellence in our life work. Not all men are called to specialized or professional jobs; even fewer rise to the heights of genius in the arts and sciences; many are called to be laborers in factories, fields, and streets. But no work is unimportant and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well"

- Martin Luther King Jr.

It can be hard to remember that our lives take their shape as the accumulation of a hundred small acts, thoughts and decisions which we make every day. Because of this, nothing is inconsequential. Everything matters. Nothing is so small that our future course cannot be altered by it, no job so mundane that it does not warrant our full presence and attention. God is found in the washing of a dish, the life we dream of in the sweeping of a street…if we sweep with purpose and resolution. As we bring attention to the moments of our days, our lives (which are the accumulation of those days), are attended to as well. The broom becomes a tool of our practice and a doorway to peace of mind and acceptance. And acceptance allows us to see with clarity and move freely, staying or moving on as we desire. There are no small acts.

Blessings,
sam

Each Morning is a New Beginning

2007-01-22T18:57:00.000-05:00

Thought I would share this from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

"Each morning is a new beginning of our life. Each day is a finished whole. The present day marks the boundary of our cares and concerns. It is long enough to find God or to lose him, to keep faith or fall into disgrace. God created day and night for us so we need not wander without boundaries, but may be able to see in every morning the goal of the evening ahead. Just as the ancient sun rises anew every day, so the eternal mercy of God is new every morning. Every morning God gives us the gift of comprehending anew his faithfulness of old; thus, in the midst of our life with God, we may daily begin a new life with him. The first moments of the day are for God's liberating grace, God's sanctifying prescence. Before the heart unlocks itself for the world, God wants to open it for himself; before the ear takes in the countless voices of the day, it should hear in the early hours the voice of the Creator and Redeemer. God prepared the stillness of the first morning for himself. It should remain his."

Community Practice: Breaking the Jar

2006-01-17T13:44:00.000-05:00

Luke 7:36-50

Hi Everyone,

Thought I would send a short follow up to Monday’s discussion of about “breaking the jar.” For those of you who might be stuck, finding it hard to let go of those stones of judgment or hurt, this practice might serve as a way in. As we considered the woman who came to Jesus, we saw that she gave lavishly, pouring out her perfume and holding nothing back. She came because she understood who she was and the extravagant grace of being forgiven. What she did was no idle gesture since she couldn’t get it back; she couldn’t save some for later; it cost her a great deal, maybe everything and; it couldn’t be paid back. What can we learn from her? Perhaps that just as we drop the stone when we recognize that we are guilty too, so we break the jar because we realize that we are forgiven.

And so we might ask ourselves “what’s in my jar?” What have I been saving up? What is precious to me? Our jars might hold things like:

- Our reputation.
- Our need to achieve.
- Our need to be right.
- Acts of kindness that we have been withholding from another.

When we break the jar, we act lavishly, emptying ourselves in gratitude at the feet of Jesus. Releasing everything. And how do we start? By pouring ourselves out for others.

This is not what we feel, but what we do. Especially when we find it difficult to drop the stone, we might try doing something more active, more tangible: By being kind when others are not kind to us. By refusing to return an insult or engage in gossip. By serving them in some small act of caring. By taking the time to really listen to them. Find some way to serve them. Don’t explain it. In fact, they don’t have to know what you are doing. Just break open that jar of all the stuff you have been saving and pour it out extravagantly. Maybe you have been holding it back for so long it has become stale and lost its fragrance. As you pour, watch it transform from something old and spoiled to something fresh and fragrant and beautiful. Think of it as aromatherapy. This fragrance will make you strong, revitalize you, make it easier to drop the stone and leave it there.

This is our second community practice. Breaking the jar.

How are you doing?

Blessings,
sam

Community Practice: Dropping the Stone

2005-12-26T20:49:00.000-05:00

John 8: 1-11

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I would check in and see how everyone is doing with the practice of “dropping the stone.” You remember that as we considered what it might mean to drop the stones that we are carrying and so be free to reach out to others in acceptance and kindness, we said that it might include:

Learning to be honest about our own angers and insecurities, our sins and shortcomings that cause us to react when we see those things in others.
Learning to stop insisting on our innocence because, sooner or later, we’re all guilty.
Learning to be compassionate with everyone. As one philosopher is said to have written: Be Kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Learning to remember that in the story we looked at, none of them was able to stand before Jesus’ question. Neither can we.
Learning to remember that Jesus told the woman “neither do I condemn you”. And neither can we.
Learning to remember that Jesus was the only one there who didn’t have a stone in his hands. Who do you want to be?

So…in this way we can extend our spirituality beyond the realm of truth statements to be believed, into a practice that we can…..well, practice. Whenever we find ourselves churning over some insult, or remembering some hurt that has been done to us, whenever we know that we have been wronged or mistreated, whenever we see something in another person that just gets under our skin, we can stop for a moment, take a deep breathe, and picture ourselves holding this big stone. And then we can picture ourselves just opening up our hands and letting the stone drop to the floor. See it fall. Hear it hit the ground.

And choose to leave it there.

Do it a hundred times in a day if you have to, until you no longer reach back down to pick it up again.

How are you doing?

Blessings,
Sam