The Beckonings of Epiphany

NOTE: Epiphany is the Christian holy day which marks the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus. It is traditionally celebrated 12 days after Christmas on January 6th. Many churches celebrate Epiphany liturgically on the second Sunday after Christmas – which is Jan. 2 in 2011.
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6 ~ Ephesians 3:2-3a, 5-6 ~ Matthew 2:1-12

I chuckle as I think of how my husband and I decorate the house and the yard during the Advent and Christmas seasons. My husband practices no religion (as it's conventionally understood), but he still loves Christmas decorations. Me, I can take them or leave them. With no children in the house, I’m more prone to keep things at a minimal level when it comes to decorations: perhaps some nice candles or a small and simple indoor nativity scene. My husband prefers the whole she-bang: Christmas tree, stockings, lights on the house, a wreath on the door, Rudolph in the VCR, and so on. He used to put a lit up Santa and reindeer out in the front yard, until one year, after I mentioned in passing how much I loved the story of the Magi. He then went out and found a set of three lit-up Kings, along with a bright guiding Bethlehem star that hangs from the pepper tree, and now they grace our yard every year, from the day after Thanksgiving until the feast of the Epiphany in early January. Initially, my husband would even shift the position of the Three Kings a little each day, bringing them a little closer to the star bit by bit, night after night …

Epiphany is my favorite part of Christmas.

The story of the Magi, the Wise Men, the Journeying Seekers, speaks to me metaphorically and archetypally. I love the popular image of the Kings riding their tall dromedaries over the vast desert sands, always under a clear night sky, with a guiding star in the distance. They bring gold – a precious metal signifying purity, frankincense – a temple incense that blesses, and myrrh – a balm traditionally used to heal the wounds of childbirth. (This suggests that their gifts were for both the infant Christ as well as the mother of Christ, the God-bearer.) They travel long and far in the darkness, bringing with them treasures that symbolize purity of heart, affirmation, and healing. When they present these gifts before the baby Jesus – with the desert night and all of nature witnessing – it seems to me that they are offering up their love and the depths of their yearning in the face of a vulnerable, freshly-born awareness. And doesn’t far-travelled wisdom know best how to honor the tender, the humble, the sprout that is yet to bloom?

After encountering the infant Jesus, the Kings return home, empty-handed but full-hearted, by a different route. This is suggestive of metanoia or transformation – but it is not only the long-journeying seekers themselves who are changed. Christ – that light, that new awareness -- is affected as well. According to the story, the Magi’s recognition that they must not return the way they came – through the land of the murder-seeking King Herod-- saves the life of the infant Jesus. Wisdom knows it must protect this new and humbly-born “king”– enabling him to grow and mature to the point where he too will enter the desert, and yearn, and seek. And, like a far-traveled Wise One, he will eventually offer his gifts, his healing, his life to a world that is yet to be ….

I love this story. I do not embrace it as literally true or as historically accurate. I celebrate it as a living, ever-evolving spiritual fable that offers a treasure-box of beckonings and challenges. Here are some Epiphany-inspired questions / musings worth considering as food for thought and prayer and practice:

What is my guiding star? What guideposts, signs, dream messages, intuitive inklings, traditions, teachings, have I come to trust? Will I allow my trust to deepen and lead me on a long journey through deserts and darkness to a place I have never been?

Upon arrival (or a new return) to this place, what gifts might I offer up to God-among-us and to the Christ-bearer? Gold, representing purity of heart, might manifest as devotional consistency; a renewal of a daily prayer or meditative practice; the experience of deprivation to provide for another; teaching prisoners creative writing; secret tithing; a compassionate action that is not self-aggrandizing or attached to public approval or outcome. Frankincense, representing blessing, could reveal itself as an offering of unsolicited validation or affirmation to another; being a source of confirmation for another; a welcoming smile to the stranger in the supermarket; allowing fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, etc.) to flow through my being and out to those whose paths I cross. Myrrh, the healing balm, could emerge as being present at the right time and right place with life-giving support; providing nourishment, medicine, therapy, or shelter for another; a good long hug; listening deeply to others with an open heart; being a messenger of transformative news for someone; planting organic vegetables; beginning a process of forgiveness and reconciliation with someone.

In what way(s) has Christ been born in me and through me? What are the fresh revelations and awarenesses in my life that need my attention, my safeguarding, and my persistently loving care? Am I tending well to the Incarnation, to the body of Christ, to the living God and the Christ-bearer within myself and others? Do I recognize the Herods in my life, and know not to return to the places and activities that threaten to destroy those aspects of Christ within me that have freshly sprouted?

You may see other invitations and insights from the Epiphany story. (I would love to hear them if you'd like to share). Here is part of the gospel reading that is traditionally read on Epiphany Sunday in many churches. May your wisdom follow the star that guides. Happy New Year!

…Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, being me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.

                   --Matthew 2: 7-12

Loveliness!

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Running with Mary: My Thing for the BVM

I came across Jane Russell Simins' fresh and feisty personal reflection on the Blessed Virgin Mary in the November/December 1997 issue of the Utne Reader. It was originally printed in the Spring/Summer edition of Bust magazine. I'm sharing it here in honor of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which the Catholic church celebrates today. A pretty unorthodox stance, here, "but as the BVM might point out," notes Simins, "it takes all kinds."

My fave goddess is pretty traditional: the Blessed Virgin Mary, the BVM for short. She gets a bad rap – spokesgirl for virginity, poster-child for Catholic-boy Madonna/whore mind games – but I think of her as a mystical, pro-choice badass, and one of my best buddies. Even if you’re not religious (or even if you’re antireligious), her story can be seen as being about trusting yourself, and it’s one of the best feisty girl stories of all time.

I first heard about the BVM in church – Baptist church – and to Baptists she is known more simply as the Virgin Mary, although they don’t explain to little kids what virgin means.

I was immediately suspicious of her, because everybody knows Catholics worship Mary* and thus have a good shot at going to hell. (Those Madonna and Child stamps at Christmas always drew little “hmphs” from my grandmother). But, there she was, right in Luke, chapter 2, so they had to talk about her in church.

My next contact with the BVM and Catholics (I didn’t actually meet a Catholic until I was 10 – welcome to the South) was in Little Women, where Amy stays with Aunt March and meets her French maid. Now, there are lots of things young Amy could have learned from a French maid, but what she learned about was Catholicism, devotion, and piety.

Thus began my secret preadolescent fantasies about prayers and beads and confession. It seemed to me that Catholics got to be assured over and over again that they were good, and if they weren’t good they got to tell someone in secret and then it would be all better. This sounded all right to me, because my chief concern was whether or not I was good enough.

I didn’t think too much more about the BVM until I met this awesome Catholic guy (no mind games here, thank you). One night I made him whip out the rosary and give me the lowdown, and when he got to the last two glorious mysteries – Mary is bodily assumed into heaven and Mary is crowned Queen of Heaven – I laughed out loud. “Those aren’t in the Bible!” I hooted. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

Next came my honeymoon in Italy with this same cute Catholic, where I got completely obsessed with 14^th-century paintings of the Annunciation, the scene where an angel comes to ask Mary if she’s willing to get knocked up for God (this is the pro-choice part: Mary gets to say yes or no).

In those paintings the question came out of the angel’s mouth in arcs of golden words. I was hooked. The paintings were beautiful, and they were intimate – just Mary and her fate having a little chat. I tracked them down everywhere, which wasn’t hard. I bought some postcards of the paintings and taped them up with the Frida Kahlo postcards and the Manolo Blahnik ad at my desk back home.

The BVM was brought to the forefront of my mind again in 1993, when Liz Phair sang “Help Me Mary.” My squeeze didn’t get what Mary was doing in the song, but I knew Liz’s heroine had nowhere else to turn.

           

        Help me Mary, please.

        I’ve lost my home to thieves.

       They bully the stereo and drink,

       They leave suspicious things in the sink.

Now, any girl worth her salt knows what Liz means. It’s that feeling that you’ve betrayed yourself, that the Wrong Element is in your house and running things. I’d felt that way for a long time, still wondering when and if I’d ever be really good.

The Wrong Element had made me nice and pliant and completely unsure of myself. I thought I was too ugly, too fat, too sarcastic, too selfish, and too immoral to be fit company for anybody. Except the Catholic husband and some cool girlfriends. And, finally, the BVM.

Last summer I got really curious about the BVM, mainly because I felt like she was talking to me (not out loud, thank God). I wanted to learn more about her, and about how Catholics think about her, since they’ve sort of cornered the market on Mary. Her story’s really simple: She risked ostracism to do what she felt (and what God via Gabriel told her) was the right thing to do. It was not the nice thing, the acceptable thing, or the correct thing.

The story of the BVM divorces goodness from niceness forever, which was just what I needed to do at the time, and is probably why she and I started holding all these conversations.

My image of Mary is pretty personal. Sometimes she’s Marmee from Little Women: She can see into my heart and help me to be true to my own nature. Sometimes she’s like Samantha from Bewitched, distracting people who are potential dangers to me, like helping the swervy driver in front of me onto an exit ramp.

Sometimes she’s Jackie Onassis, dressed to kill and drawing too much attention, like when she showed up at Lourdes and got Bernadette in big trouble. (If Manolo Blahnik designed something like those rose-feet Mary wore at Lourdes they’d be sold out until the second coming.)

She was a hussy (getting to tell her fiancé she was pregnant before he even got a peek at her), a nag (“Jesus, these people are at a wedding! Whip up some wine!”) and a renegade, giving birth in the barn and aiding and abetting her son, an enemy of the government. But best of all, she listened to those golden words and said yes.

When you’re busy being nice and docile, like I was, you can’t hear anything but whether or not your good behavior is earning you points. If Mary had been a good girl she wouldn’t have had the guts to say yes to the golden words. She would have been afraid Joseph would leave her, or that her family would disown her.

To me that’s what liberation is all about: giving yourself permission to figure out what your calling is, instead of obeying everyone who wants to decide it for you.

Going for it, I finally decided to become Catholic, but even though I take advantage of the good points – those little medals with clear blue BVMs on them, the priest at my church with a degree in psychology – I figure I don’t have to buy the whole package.

I’m not sure the church would have been so interested in me if they knew I was going to stay pro-choice, to champion Mary as an early riot grrrl, to advocate for women priests and birth control, but as the BVM might point out, it takes all kinds.

Since I come from a long line of good girls, martyrs, and rule-keepers, I learned only people-pleasing goodness. Catholicism, at least my brand of it, helps with the internal, spiritual BVM kind of goodness that helps girls follow their hearts and turn into amazing women. Into goddesses, even. 

--Jane Russell Simins, from Bust (Spirng/Summer 1997). 

*This is a common misconception. Catholics may venerate and honor Mary, asking that she intercede with her son on humanity's behalf. This is not the same as worship, which is reserved for God alone.

Island of Misfit Toys

My husband called me from work yesterday evening to announce that he was scurrying to get home in time for the annual airing of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Mind you – we actually own the video – that special restored version with added footage not included in the original – which means that we can view this classic holiday story anytime we’d like. But we typically watch it when it re-airs each year on a major television network, usually in the middle of the week after Thanksgiving. It’s one of those paradoxes of technology: for us, owning a video means that there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that it gets watched only once before it spends the remainder of its life inside its container, collecting dust on a shelf. (Which is why we own just a few videos and DVDs. And this may also be an inevitable part of life in a childless household.)

But there’s this odd impetus to watch this particular show when it airs on national TV, when we know millions of others will be seeing it. It’s some kind of communal yearning – a desire to experience a beloved tale collectively. A need to be swept up with others – even unknown others -- in some current of mutuality. Perhaps, even, some subterranean tribal echo. But these days, rather than gathering in groups around a fire to listen to elder-told fables, we sit in front of movie and television screens, communally accepting an invitation to briefly set aside our own lives and, together, fall under the spell of Story.

I admit, however, that this story’s spell spins a little thinly at points.

Santa, for example, is a complete asshole. When he meets the infant Rudolph and sees his shiny nose, the first thing he can think of to say is “great blithering icebergs! He’d better grow out of that red nose if he expects to join my sleigh team some day.” (Because apparently a natural source of bright light on a high-flying sleigh in December darkness would just be ... terribly gauche). This is Kris Kringle, jolly ole St. Nick, giver of secret gifts? I think not. He’s grumpy, small-minded, and easily dissatisfied. Not someone I want as a judge of whether I’ve been naughty or nice. Not someone whose lap I’d want to sit on and whisper my Christmas wishes to. And Santa’s right-hand man, the bombastic elf-overseer, never has an encouraging word to say to the elf laborers, who, as far as I can tell, sing perfectly harmonized songs and make perfectly delightful toys. Well – except for those occasions where someone slips up and builds a train with square wheels or a watergun that squirts grape jelly. Did somebody overspike the eggnog, or were those misfit toys actually the products of elfin sabotage? Perhaps instigated by Hermie, who didn’t want to be a toymaker anyway? We’ll never know. But of this I am certain: we gotta get that Santa fired.

And, okay: What was that lion King Moonracer thinking when he suggested to the wandering Misfit gang (Rudolph, Hermie, and Yukon Cornelius) that they should return to Christmastown and tell Santa about all those unwanted misfit toys on that island? Moonracer seems to presume that big-hearted Santa will be eager to find a home for all those freaky toys. But this is the same Santa who rejected baby Rudolph because of his red nose. This is same Santa who does not know or care that poor Rudolph ran away after all of the other reindeer laughed, called him names, and kicked him out of their reindeer games (except for lovely Clarisse, who sees the splendid buck beyond the shiny nose). How can K.M. be so sure that a diplomatic plea from the Misfit gang will work with this feckless, thoughtless Santa?

And – one more thing -- why, oh why, does Yukon Cornelius have a professionally-groomed toy poodle and a pug on his dogsled team?  Only one dog, the St. Bernard, seems capable of dragging that big lug around. That’s the real reason why the sled keeps gliding when Cornelius yells (and re-yells) “Whoooaaa!” Simple inertia.

So, yes: Christmastown and its leaders are deeply flawed. But at heart, of course, Rudolph is a sweetly radical story. I was irresistibly drawn to it as a child. As a member of a multicolored family living in a deeply segregated city in the 1960s, I completely sympathized with the ostracized Rudolph and the dentally-aspiring Hermie. As an adopted biracial child, I recognized that I had also come from an Island of Misfit Toys. I was one of the unwanted sad beings rejected for who knows why, not fitting into any neat and tidy category, hard to place in a permanently loving home. I imagine that anyone who was shunned, despised, mocked, or bullied as a child for any reason feels warmly vindicated when it turns out that the very attribute that pegged one as a misfit is the necessary talent, the saving grace, the workable solution to a major quandary. Rudolph and his misfit allies represent any of us who were sneered at for being disabled, odd-looking, gay, unexpected, alien, a member of a minority religion, too quiet, too outspoken, hyperactive, freethinking, nonconformist, perplexed, bookish etc., etc., . . . so many red noses in this world. So many Charlie-in-the-Boxes and swimming birds and ostrich-riding cowboys. Probably enough to populate an entire Archipelago of Misfit Toys, when you think about it.

Which is a good thing, because it seems this world is having more than its expected share of blowout winter blizzards lately. We need boatloads of red-nosed reindeers and upstart elf dentists and tree-decorating monster snowmen working in concert to prep and guide Santa’s sleigh tonight, people! The message of Rudolph reaches beyond the mere celebration of individuality. It invites us to pool our various quirkinesses together in some fashion so that gifts and graces will fall from the sky and feed the world. So please: love your freakishness. Bless your streak of bad-assedness. Be patient with what you think of as your flaws. Cradle that part of you that has a ridiculous and seemingly unreachable dream. Be kind to your thunder thighs, because where there’s thunder, there’s lightning. There are gifts lurking inside your awkwardness and disconcerting distinctiveness. As Yukon might say, there’s gold in them thar hills.

A final thought: despite its holly-jolly secular folkstory appeal, I detect Judeo-Christian undertones in the Rudolph story. Like Moses and like Jesus, isn’t Rudolph an unexpected child, a spurned and rejected one, a suffering servant whose life turns out to be a path in the desert and a light in the darkness? Isn’t Rudolph the “stone the builders rejected” who “become(s) the cornerstone?” (Psalm 118: 22).

Perhaps I overplay these interweavings and resonances. But I can’t help it -- the misfit in me seems to have    . . . a nose for such things.

Happy Thanksgiving

A Prayer for Veterans Day

We ask for blessings on all those who have served their country in the armed forces.

We ask for healing for the veterans who have been wounded, in body and soul, in conflicts around the globe.

We pray especially for the young men and women, in the thousands, 

who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with injured bodies and traumatized spirits.

Bring solace to them, O Lord; may we pray for them when they cannot pray.

Have mercy on all the veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bring peace to their hearts and peace to the regions they fought in.

Bless all the soldiers who served in non-combative posts.

May their calling to service continue in their lives in many positive ways.

Give us all the creative vision to see a world which, grown weary with fighting,

Moves to affirming the life of all and so moves beyond war.

Hear our prayer, O Spirit of Peace, hear our prayer.

Psychic Numbing in the Information Age

“Bombarding the Senses” 

[an excerpt from the book-length essay, Compassion, by Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison] --

One of the most tragic events of our time is that we know more than ever before about the pains and sufferings of the world and yet are less and less able to respond to them. Radio, television, and newspapers allow us to follow from day to day—even from hour to hour—what is happening in the world. We hear about terrorism, armed conflicts and wars, assassinations, earthquakes, droughts and floods, famines and epidemics, concentration camps and torture chambers, and countless other forms of human suffering close to home or far away. Not only do we hear about them but also we are daily presented with pictures of starving babies, dying soldiers, burning houses, flooded villages, and wrecked cars. The news seems to have become an almost ceaseless litany of human suffering. The question is, do these highly sophisticated forms of communication and this increasing amount of information lead to a deeper solidarity and a greater compassion? It is very doubtful.

Can we really expect a compassionate response from the millions of individuals who read the paper during breakfast, listen to the radio on the way to work, and watch television after returning home tired from their work in offices or factories? Can we reasonably expect compassion from the many isolated individuals who are constantly being reminded in the privacy of their homes or cars of the vast extent of human suffering?

There appears to be a general assumption that it is good for people to be exposed to the pain and suffering of the world. Not only do newspapers and news broadcasts seem to act on this assumption but also most organizations whose main concern is to help suffering people. Charitable institutions often send letters describing the miserable conditions in different parts of the world and enclose photographs of people whose humanity is hardly recognizable. In so doing, they hope to motivate the receiver to send money for relief projects.

We might ask, however, whether mass communication, directed to millions of people who experience themselves as small, insignificant, powerless individuals does not in fact do more harm than good. When there is no community that can mediate between world needs and personal responses, the burden of the world can only be a crushing burden. When the pains of the world are presented to people who are already overwhelmed by the problems in their small circle of family or friends, how can we hope for a creative response? What we can expect is the opposite of compassion: numbness and anger.

Massive exposure to human misery often leads to psychic numbness. Our minds cannot tolerate being constantly reminded of things which interfere with what we are doing at the moment. When we have to open our store in the morning, go about our business, prepare our classes, to talk to our fellow workers, we cannot be filled with the collective misery of the world. If we let the full content of newscasts enter into our innermost selves, we would become so overwhelmed by the absurdities of existence that we would become paralyzed. If we try to absorb all that is reported by the paper, radio, or television and all that bombards us on computers and cell phones, we would never get any work done. Our continued effectiveness requires a mental filtering system by which we can moderate the impact of the daily news.

But there is more. Exposure to human misery on a mass scale can lead not only to psychic numbness but also to hostility. This might seem strange, but when we look more closely at the human response to disturbing information, we realize that confrontation with human pain often creates anger instead of care, irritation instead of sympathy, and even fury instead of compassion. Human suffering, which comes to us in a way and on a scale that makes identification practically impossible, frequently evokes strong negative feelings. Often, some of the lowest human drives are brought into the open by a confrontation with miserable-looking people. In the most horrendous way, this was the case in the Nazi, Vietnamese, and Chilean concentration camps, where torture and cruelty seemed easier the worse the prisoners looked. When we are no longer able to recognize suffering persons as fellow human beings, their pain evokes more pain and disgust than compassion. It is therefore no wonder that the diary of Anne Frank did more for the understanding of human misery than many of the films showing long lines of hungry faces, dark buildings with ominous chimneys, and heaps of naked, emaciated human corpses. Anne Frank we can understand; piles of human flesh only make us sick.

How can we account for this psychic numbness and anger? Numbness and anger are the reactions of the person who says, “When I can’t do anything about it anyhow, why do you bother me with it!” Confronted with human pain and at the same time reminded of our powerlessness, we feel offended to the very core of our being and fall back on our defenses of numbness and anger. If compassion means entering into solidarity with human beings who are suffering, then the increasing presentation of human suffering by the news media does not serve to evoke compassion. Those who know most about what goes on in the world – those who devote much attention to computers, newspapers, radio, and television – are not necessarily the most compassionate people.

Responding compassionately to what the media present to us is made even more difficult by its “neutrality.” The evening news offers a good example. Whatever the news correspondent announces – war, murder, floods, the weather, and the football scores – is reported with the same ritualized tone of voice and facial expression. Moreover, there is an almost liturgical order to the litany of events: first the great news items about national and international conflicts, then the more homey accidents, then the stock market and the weather, then a short word of “wisdom,” and finally something light or funny. All of this is regularly interrupted by smiling people urging us to buy products of dubious necessity. The whole “service” is so distant and aloof that the most obvious response is to invest no more energy in it that in brushing your teeth before going to bed.

Therefore, the question is, how can we see the suffering in our world and be moved to compassion as Jesus was moved when he saw a great crowd of people without food (Mt 14:14)? This question has become very urgent at a time when we see so much and are moved by so little.

--Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, and Douglas Morrison, Compassion. New York: Doubleday -- Image Books, 2005 (Original copyright: 1982). p 50 - 53.

Embodied Spaciousness: Autumn Retreat at Prince of Peace Abbey

During the final three days of October 2010, New Mexico Contemplative Outreach coordinator and retreat leader Susan Rush invited the forty-four of us gathered at Prince of Peace Abbey to step more deeply into a level of awareness that could be described as “embodied spaciousness.” As Susan explained, there is a way in which the combination of contemplative silence and responsive wakefulness can “morph into presence,” an open-hearted condition in which we "put on the mind of Christ" and welcome our bodies into the "homeland of God." While Centering Prayer is primarily a practice of letting go and consenting to God’s presence and action within, Susan maintains that outside of the periods of prayer we can also “partner with God” -- that is, actively cooperate with the Divine -- to bring about a "fuller yes and a deeper surrendering" to Presence. As co-creators with God, our greatest call is to “be who we are,” to embrace our own particular, unique way of living the contemplative presence. Teachers of spiritual and meditative disciplines are rightly criticized when they encourage the cultivation of disembodied or dissociated states of consciousness that split Spirit off from body and/or mind. But for today's contemplative Christianity, Susan pointed out, spirituality is neither body-denying nor body-indulging, but incarnational: fully human and fully divine. Spirit, body, and mind, interwoven and fully present in this homeland of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

The retreat offered many opportunities to rest, awaken, commune, and “pray with God.” In between our periods of Centering Prayer, Susan gave a few contemplative pointers – brief quotes and accessible teachings from the likes of John Cassian, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, among others. She also taught us some wonderful chants. Chants – brief repeated prayers set to simple melodies – bring in the resonance of tones and voices, and the hum in the heart is delightfully grounding and liberating. (I have heard it said that chanting is like praying twice.) The meals in silence, along with the option to attend the Abbey’s daily Mass and the monastic prayers of the hours, helped to create a rhythm of prayer, silence, song, and movement that was both restful and invigorating.

One level of reflection that I especially appreciated was the contemplative awareness walk that Susan invited us to do mid-way through the retreat on our own. I – and many of you as well, I'm sure – enjoy walks in nature during silent retreats, and there is a kind of relaxed alertness and clarity that can emerge after repeated periods of contemplative prayer that allows one to slow down, sink in, and savor the simple beauty of each moment. Here is where I recognize the truth in Fr, Keating’s assertion that “God is giving himself to you in every cup of water, in every sorrow and in every joy.” As a preface to our contemplative awareness walk, Susan noted the three levels of contemplation as described in Keating’s book The Word Made Flesh: 1) The ability to see God in all things, 2) The ability to see all things as God’s gift, and 3) The ability to see God giving God’s self in all things. With this in mind, Susan encouraged us to walk with a deeply receptive attitude, not actively looking for any particular thing, but rather allowing ourselves to be drawn to something along our path. To let God find us through all things.

This had already begun for me at the silent breakfast earlier that morning, when I noticed small tasty details of the moment – Evie M's “Be Present” T-shirt, Kathy A's drinking coffee out of a mug that said “Best Dad” (these are the monks’ mugs? I chuckled to myself), the cranberries in the cookies, the giggles induced by the loudness of me scootching my chair, and Marlene R's salting and peppering of her cantaloupe. God’s spicy sweetness.

Later that afternoon, on my walk, divinity beckons to me through the rich abundance of the living and dying things that populate autumn in southern California. A trail carpeted with dead leaves and chips of bark, with new grasses poking through. Spiderwebs glinting in the sun. Flies and gnats hovering near my ears, as if I am a flower full of the nectar they crave. Sand -- frisky dirt? -- sparkling beside the plain wooden crosses that mark the graves of past Benedictine monks. Life and death all tangled up together, birth and loss and resurrection singing out a wild and holy harmony.

The day has been warm, but a hint of crispness arises as the shadows deepen in the crevices of the hills. I think of the trajectory of my life, of various energies and agendas that have been dying away even as new yearnings sprout and flower. A brisk breeze is blowing, causing the trees to bow and bend, making the leaves tremble and shimmer. There is that wonderful line from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem: Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind. I linger in the crackling of wind-blown leaves and the shining radiance of the ocean in the distance. Cosmic applause, I say to myself. And divine ovation. God beholding God in all things.

Then I sit for a time inside the little gazebo along the Abbey path known as the Way of the Cross. An editor and writer by profession, I cannot help but be drawn to the various graffiti carvings in the wooden beams. Wow: retreat graffiti? I wonder. God in all things? But it is true: next to “Terry was here” and “Tim loves Debbie forever” is etched the divine anthem: I AM. 

--Written for an upcoming edition of CONSD News, the newsletter of Contemplative Outreach of North San Diego

The Dreaded Visitation of the Blessed Blob

            Early on, you developed this fear of miracles. You grew afraid, for example, of the first fifteen minutes of the movie The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. . .

It all begins with those three Portuguese children, who have been sent out after Sunday Mass to take their family’s sheep to the Cova de Iria, a pasture just west of the village of Fatima. It is a cool spring morning early in the twentieth century. The boy, Francesco, plays a fife while the two girls jump rope. Hundreds of miles away a great war rages, but here at the Cova, new mountain grasses are drenched in sunlight. Before eating lunch, the children decide to recite the rosary. Lucia, the oldest girl, begins: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe in God the Father Almighty—

             

            No, let’s do it the short way, says Francesco.

            And wait for the echoes! adds Jacinta, his younger sister.

            And in unison, the children shout across the valley: Hail Mary!

            Hail Mary! the hills answer.

            The children smile at each other, then shout again: Hail Mary!

            This time, a thunderous boom responds.

            What’s that? asks Francesco.

            There must be a storm coming, says Lucia, who looks questioningly up at the sky.

            How could it be, with the sky so bright?

            I don’t know, says Lucia, but we better head for home.

            Arcs of light flash over the near hills as the children hurry down the trail, egging the sheep on with small sticks. The two girls, however, slow down when they find themselves surrounded by a luminous mist. Francesco is right behind them, but sees no mist. What are you looking at? he asks.

            Inside the fog, next to a small oak, the vague outline of a robed woman appears. Lucia and Jacinta turn sharply away, all raw fear, burying their faces in their hands.

            What’s the matter? blurts Francesco. What was it? What did you see?

            Look! says Lucia, pointing blindly toward the oak. Over there!

            I don’t see anything, Francesco protests.

            But in a rich and honeyed voice, accompanied by enraptured flutes and harps, the robed figure speaks: Don’t be afraid; I won’t hurt you. Come here to me, won’t you?

            The two girls slowly uncover their eyes and turn around to face the vision. Come closer, the female voice requests. There, that’s better. You’re not frightened now, are you?

            Perhaps Lucia and Jacinta can lose their fear as they fall under this radiant woman’s otherworldly spell. Perhaps these girls’ faces can light up from within as Lucia quietly asks where does Your Excellency come from? But for you, a modern girl of eight, the whole scenario of an arc of lightning wrapping you in luminous mist and speaking to you in your very own language gave you the bone-deep heebee-jeebees. Watching The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima convinced you to never be caught out in the pastoral wilderness with a rosary in your pocket. For who knew what could happen if an Ethereal Excellency chose you as Her confidante?

           

The movie's answer to that question is not reassuring. For one thing -- once you get past the initial apparitional freak-out-- Francesco is still flabbergasted. Who are you talking to, Lucia? he asks.

            A Lady.

            I don’t see her. Where is she?

            Here, on the little tree. Don’t you hear Her?

            The youngest girl, Jacinta, has the solution to her brother’s dilemma. She says to say the rosary, Francesco. He quickly kneels down, kisses his rosary, and prays.

            What is Her Radiance’s beef? you wonder. Is She peeved at Francesco because earlier he had wanted to recited an abbreviated rosary? Is She playing some strange cosmic peek-a-boo? Does She dislike little Iberian boys? Or is Francesco really the lucky one, the one who will not have to endure the fate of actually seeing Her?

            As it turns out, he is not to be so lucky. Lucia, I can see Her now! he exclaims. I can see Her plain!

            All of them kneeling now, the faces of the children silently ask the question from which there is no turning back: What is it that You want of us?

            Do you wish to offer yourself to God, to endure all the suffering He may please to send you, and to ask for the conversion of sinners? Leave it to an apparition to read your mind and to answer your question with a series of questions. Yet perhaps Her Luminescence is actually being gracious, and polite. Now, the children, if they so desire, have a choice, an exit, a way out of the wild history looming ahead of them. But—youthful mystics that they are—tall Lucia, brave Jacinta, and semi-pious Francesco answer in the affirmative.

            Then you will have much to suffer, the Lady warns. May the grace of God be your comfort. . .

           

            Much to suffer! Be your comfort! A rosary became a dangerous possession in your eight-year-old world—material that could give you away, like a bleeding wound in shark-filled waters. For who knows that some Mother of God isn’t out there right now, scanning the horizon, looking in meadows and valleys and backyards for unattended children with rosaries on their persons? 

            You decided to take no chances. You usually kept your rosary inside its little plastic snap-shut case, the one that said My First Rosary, next to the small radio in your bedroom. After your exposure to the first fifteen minutes of The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, you put the whole package inside a small cedar-lined box from a curio store in Yellowstone National Park. You locked the box and stowed the key away underneath the largest stone in the far reaches of your back yard—a safe but relatively unapproachable place. For some time, you avoided the tree-filled paradise of the back yard. You learned to keep your curtains closed during thunderstorms, lest an aberrant stroke of lightning morph into the Mother of God. But suppressing miracles, you came to see, would require the utmost vigilance and practice.

            One major obstacle was your next-door neighbor-friend Pearl. With her family, she often attended the storefront Baptist church four blocks north of the street you both lived on. A Bible story devotee, her favorite thing to talk about on a drowsy afternoon when you both would sit in your room and get yourselves into a morbidly philosophical mood was the Beast of the Revelation. “He’s gonna be horrible,” she would remind you. “He’s gonna have six heads and eighteen feet with goat’s hooves, and he’s gonna have big black oily wings, and fangs, and claws, and he’s gonna have antennas and antlers and thousands of eyes.”

            “Whoa,” you would say with awe. “That’s gonna be scary.”

            This one autumn afternoon, though, after you and Pearl had gone through the above routine, she looked around your room questioningly and asked, “Where’d you put your rosary?”

            You felt the hair on the back of your neck.

            “Don’t you keep it here, right next to the radio?”

            “Oh, yeah. I guess I put it away somewhere else.”

            “I want to see it.”

            “What for?” 

            “I just want to look at it for a second.”

            “I’m not sure where I put it,” you lied. It was actually right in front of your noses, inside that locked Yellowstone cedar chest on top of your windowsill.

            “I saw one on TV yesterday,” she told you. “I was wondering if it was like yours.”

            If you had had your wits about you, you would not have let her continue with this line of discussion. But you had been caught somewhat off-guard. “So what were they saying about rosaries on TV?”

            “Somebody’s rosary turned into gold, somewhere in Egypt. The Virgin Mary is appearing right before these people’s eyes, on the roof of this church. And people are praying with their rosaries and their rosaries are turning into gold.”

            “Oh, sure,” you said, rolling your eyes. You tried to be nonchalant, waving her information away with a favorite saying of your brother’s: “You’re just messing with my mind.”

            “No, I’m not! Really. It was on the news. Maybe it’s in the paper, too! Ask your mom.”

            This was the autumn of 1969, and it had been at least a year since you had seen the first fifteen minutes of The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. Now your fear of Her Radiance returned full force, and you stared dumbfoundedly at Pearl. Is my friend also some strange and sneaky minion of God? you wondered.

            “Why don’t we get your rosary and pray with it and see if it turns to gold?” Pearl’s theory, it turned out, was that certain alchemical vibrations had enveloped the planet—because of the Mother of God’s appearance—and that all rosaries all over the world could potentially turn into gold. But you knew better than to let her trick you into getting that rosary out. It was bad enough that people were actually seeing Her, right at those very moments, a bubble of holy light on a rooftop of a Coptic Church in Zeitoun, Egypt. It was bad enough that this wasn’t just some movie about some century-old vision. Alleged vision. No, this was actually on the news, along with the moon landing and the Vietnam War, so, of course, it was actually real. The Mother of God had come light-years closer to appearing before your very eyes! And who was to say that She wouldn’t grow weary of Egypt? America was full of meadows and pasturelands and vales. . .

           

Although you made a full-blown project out of avoiding all news for several days—no television, no scanning the evening paper for Peanuts or Marmaduke cartoons—you still managed to run smack into an actual photo of the Mother of God on top of that Coptic Church. Madeleine Tolbert, the nine-year-old nun-in-training whose gym locker was next to yours, had a laminated newspaper photo of the Mother of God taped to the front of her three-ring binder. Walking next to Madeleine after physical education class one day, your eyes wandered and landed on the cover of that binder. An amorphous blob of light floated right above the bell tower of a church. You couldn’t tell what it was at first and squinted your eyes at it, puzzled. Madeleine saw you looking and chirped, “It’s the Blessed Virgin! She’s been appearing at a church in the Holy Land!” Just like the people who rubberneck as they pass horrible accidents on the highway, you could not tear your eyes away. 

That giant glowing amoeba of light etched itself solidly into your memory and began making appearances in your dreams. . . Are you ready to suffer? asked the Blessed Blob as She floated above your bathtub filled to the brim with golden rosaries. Will you convert my sinners? the Virgin Marshmallow whispered as She oozed from underneath your bed . . . 

            You were bad off! You even grew afraid of closing your eyes after looking at a bright light because the afterglow images on the insides of your eyelids too closely resembled the Mother of God. You wondered if you should simply pray for all the information, all the strangeness, and all the fear to just stop, but then recalled that it was praying that had brought it all on for the children of Fatima—praying too much or even praying too little, like poor little Francesco who had wanted to recite the short version of the rosary. Existence was certainly too odd, too marvelous, and too unpredictable for scaredy-cat Catholic girls like you. You took to sleeping with your family’s blind German Shepherd, Sargeant, as a way to ground yourself, to ward off all the lurking Mothers of God. With Sargeant’s help, you wove yourself an earthly refuge before drifting into dreamland. And how well you learned to concentrate on the muddy, smelly, and most unheavenly things in the world: roly-poly bugs, belly-button lint, pork rinds seasoned with hot pepper sauce, and the way your older brother could make farting noises with his hand cupped up inside his underarm.

 [This is part of my yet-to-be-completed work tentatively titled All the Lurking Mothers of God. Which has been writing itself seemingly forever. And ever.]

           

           

           

           

With that Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,

       "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;

       Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull to connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying

With that sweet moon 

      Language

What every other eye in this world

      Is dying to

      Hear.

     --Hafez

Equally Blessed

EQUALLY BLESSED UNITES
CATHOLIC VOICES FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY, JUSTICE

WASHINGTON, DC., Four longstanding Catholic organizations announced today that they have formed Equally Blessed, a coalition of faithful Catholics who support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people both in the church and in civil society.

"As Catholics, we believe that all human beings are beloved children of God," said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an Equally Blessed member. "We are called to do our part in bringing about justice in the church and the world, and Equally Blessed will allow us to do that together."

The coalition also includes Call To Action, DignityUSA and Fortunate Families. Together the four groups have spent a combined 112 years working on behalf of LGBT people and their families.

"Equally Blessed proclaims what most U.S. Catholics already believe," said Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA. "The laws of our land and the policies of our church should mandate fairness, justice and equality for all."

Leaders of Equally Blessed said they decided to work together in the wake of several recent civil and church situations that demonstrate the need for a faithful pro-equality Catholic voice:

·      The Knights of Columbus have mounted an expensive campaign to oppose gay marriage in Minnesota, where it has become a gubernatorial campaign issue.
·      Catholic dioceses spent extensively to overturn legalized same-sex marriage in Maine last year.
·      In the Archdiocese of Denver last spring, Archbishop Charles Chaput sanctioned the expulsion of a lesbian couple's daughter from a Catholic school.
·      In Washington DC, Archbishop Donald Wuerl has recently withheld health benefits from the spouses of newly-hired heterosexual employees so that he could legally withhold such benefits from the spouses of gay or lesbian employees.

"A growing community of faithful Catholics believes that everyone, including LGBT people, are affirmed and welcomed in our church, and these unjust actions do not speak for us," said Nicole Sotelo, coordinator of Call To Action's JustChurch program. "We are called to follow the teachings of Jesus who welcomed everyone and challenged religious leaders when they fell short of that ideal."

"In the wake of these injustices, we particularly urge straight Catholic allies to raise their voices against discrimination that targets our children, our friends, and our communities," said Mary Ellen Lopata, co-founder of Fortunate Families, a ministry for Catholic parents with LGBT children. "The Gospel compels us to spread its message of love for all the children of God."


Equally Blessed is a coalition of faithful Catholics who support full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people both in the church and in civil society. Equally Blessed includes four organizations that have spent a combined 112 years working on behalf of LGBT people and their families:  Call To Action, DignityUSA, Fortunate Families, and New Ways Ministry.

Cat-emplation

I Know Your Address

(This is something I wrote in the early 1990s, while at the Squaw Valley writer's conference near Lake Tahoe. I planned on revising it but never did.)

I was a dog in my last life. I'm sure of it. These days dogs sense I've known that world of secret smells, spoken their native language, pissed on priceless rugs. I was a big and noisy dog, a wild-haired mongrel. I will never live it down.

One day I am walking home alone. A big-eyed dog, some kind of shepherd-lab youth, comes bounding out of the meadow. Oh no, I think. It's happening again. Dogs catch my scent and want me to join them in some semi-domesticated version of a pack. Of course I pet him. I can't help it. He licks my hand and I resist my canine urge to lick him back. No, sweetheart. I look into his sad face. I'm a woman now, not your mate in heat. He won't listen. Instead, he trots along the busy thoroughfare, revelling in our meeting, forgetting his street smarts, darting onto the road. Damn you, dog! I call to him, Get out of the street! He leaps back to safety, a spasm of brute ecstasy: he has found the key to my attention! Don't get all excited, I snap. Just keep your ass out of traffic. His tongue drips sweat onto my shoes. I resent this responsibility.

Okay, fool, what's your name? I look at the tag on his collar: BUBBA, it says, #96104. Well, Bubba–his ears perk up–you have to go home. I point across the meadow to our original meeting place. Go home. Bubba hangs his head, but doesn't budge. I turn my back on him, continue my walk. Heedless, Bubba follows.

Human suitors might pick flowers. Bubba proudly pees on them, choosing my favorites: tall daisies, asters, forget-me-nots. This is the world we can share together, he says with the tilt of his tail. Then he smells a nearby creek, rushes to dive in. Yo, Bubba, I say. I didn't know you were a water sign. He's happy in the water and I use his intoxication to attempt an escape. If I just run fast enough, I tell myself, Bubba will forget I ever existed. I pound the road's shoulder with my two human feet, raising dust, and when Bubba catches up with me–as of course he would–at even higher levels of dog-gasm he bounces and leaps and shakes the creek sludge onto my skin. But Bubba, I'm tired, I want to take a nap. Bubba just pounces and flaps. Please, Bubba, the mosquitoes are eating me alive …

Eventually I win this argument. Bubba is unable to tempt me back to the meadow and follows me home instead. I feed him half of my beef burrito, then sit out on the porch with him dozing under my feet–such loyalty, trust, and charm. I'm in a mongrel reverie, relishing how late the sun sets during these dog days of August. I feel the slow rhythm of Bubba's breathing, relax into the softness of his fur at my feet …

Suddenly, police car sirens disrupt our canine communion. Bubba's up in a snap, haunches ready for the chase, snout eager for long-toothed retaliation against cop-car interruptions. At last I'm free, I say to myself. Go on, sweetheart, I look into his eyes, you got yourself some cops to chase. But Bubba's last green glance shoots me a warning: You're mine, baby. I know your address.

Small Moves

Another "greatest hit" from my previous Gaia blog -- written for the May 2007 Integral Blogopalooza.

I love that scene near the end of the movie Contact, after astronomer Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) has been tesseracted through several wormholes to meet with an alien intelligence. This intelligence has "uploaded" her memories, appearing as her beloved father on a starlit beach - a wisely hospitable gesture that, the alien explains, makes such momentous meetings easier on the newbie, the one who is having her first close encounter. Ellie has many, many questions she wants to ask: who are you, what is the history of your species, how did you create this traveling machine, to which the alien answers -- using a well-worn phrase of her father's: "small moves, Ellie. Small moves." In other words: this is only the initial meeting, a first step of many. Let us take our time on this journey, foot by foot, bit by bit. There is no need to know everything, say everything, solve everything, at this particular moment. Answers and actions unfold in the by and by ... Even then, don't they usually lead to more questions, more uncertainties, more wild and woolly paradoxes...?  And though evolution and transformation does have its grand cataclysmic moments, much of it seems to occur through seemingly small, even hidden, moves tucked deep within the folds of time. Imagine the countless adaptations and mutations it took for humans to become what they are now. Or how a drop of water, which, joined with millions of other drops over the eons, carves great canyons into rock.

A few years ago the French Carmelite mystic Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897) paid me a visit in one of my dreams. Therese, often referred to as the "Little Flower," is a kind of saint of "small moves." Fresh from an Air France flight, camouflaged in a wool cap and Nirvana T-shirt, Therese a la grunge, she wanted to take a tour of my life - touch all its tiny little details, the textures of my day to day existence. I was a little ashamed to let her see my messy home office, our sink full of gummy dishes, our backyard overgrown with half-dead weeds. What must this young nun, accustomed to a neat and orderly convent life, think of all this mess? But Therese seemed to enjoy the external disorder of my life. With a grin, she peered at one of my disheveled bookshelves as if it were a field of exotic wildflowers.

Therese's "mission" in her short life was to teach the "little way," that is: the way of spiritual childhood, the path of trust and surrender - a way that we find right where we are, day by day, in the messy sacredness of the small, the momentary, and the ordinary. Although there are New Testament references, in the gospels, about the necessity of "becoming as little children," Therese usually referred to texts from the Hebrew scriptures when explicitly teaching her little way: "Whoever is a little one, let him come to me" (Proverbs 9:4). "For to him that is little, mercy will be shown" (Wisdom 6:7). There is nothing cloyingly sentimental about spiritual childhood. It is a situating of oneself, with awe, reverence, and curiosity, before this wild Mystery that births us and surrounds us, with a trust that the Kosmos is quietly unfolding as it should, in us, through us, and with us. It is the delighted recognition that we arrived here through a Mother and Father, through forces beyond our grasp. From this perspective, then (referred to by integralistas as "the second face of God") humility is never a demeaning of oneself. It is an embracing of what is.

These days my life is characterized by small moves rather than grand cataclysmic shifts. (Though of course, that could change at any moment!) Living with dysthymia - an on-and-off mild depression that I currently manage with supplements, frequent walks in sunlight, talks with a spiritual director, laughter, and prayer - is teaching me to focus my limited energy into small projects and tiny disciplines: toothbrushing as a spiritual practice, writing as prayer, editing as cognitive workout and income, the yoga of napping with cats, small-group contemplative volunteer work, and - when ambition has got the better of me - dishwashing and pulling weeds.

And bathing. I really dig bathing: soaking in the sacrament of the present moment.

Lectio Divina

She would never have defined it as such, but back in the day my mom practiced Lectio Divina ("divine reading") in the bathtub - often with the bathroom door open, so that a passerby might catch a glimpse of her relaxing in the hot water, reading her leatherbound King James Bible and smoking Kent cigarettes. What long, luxurious, holy baths! She usually kept her bathing Bible on the shelf underneath the medicine cabinet. I'd open it sometimes while using the toilet. Its water-wrinkled pages were full of tiny little pencil marks - apparently she kept track of where she started and ended her readings. I saw that she would read just little bits at a time - from a few verses to a few paragraphs.

Long after she'd lost patience with churchrules, until the day she died, my mother maintained a downhome devotional life by sitting and smoking and soaking in the Word.

Lectio Divina is an ancient art - apparently practiced at one time by all Christians and kept alive in the monastic tradition - involving a slow, contemplative praying of the scriptures. Monastics divide Lectio in to four "movements": lectio (reading/listening), meditatio (meditation), oratio (prayer), and contemplatio (contemplation).

Lectio - the first movement in the prayer, requires us to quiet down and read slowly - usually just a few lines, perhaps a couple of paragraphs. Since the voice of Spirit often speaks very softly and intimately, one reads with an attitude of silence and reverence. In this receptive mode, we listen for one word or short phrase that attracts us, that speaks to us in a personal way. During meditatio - the second movement in the prayer, we take that chosen word or phrase and ruminate on it, ponder it. We turn it over in our minds, and allow it to mingle and simmer with our inner world of memories, concerns, and ideas. Thirdly, during oratio, we inwardly speak to God, interacting honestly with the Spirit as you would with a deeply loving other. Depending on the selected word or the phrase, one might express yearning, gratitude, anger, desolation, love, sadness, joy, peace, etc. Finally, with contemplatio, one rests in silence with the chosen word, simply being present to Presence.

Lectio Divina has alternative forms, and can be adapted in a variety of ways for practice with small groups. Today practitioners see it as a way to open up and "pray with" a sacred book. "Sacred book" can be broadly defined -- the New Testament, a collection of Rumi's poetry, a non-scriptural text, the realms of nature, a painting, events in history, one's own life experience. . .

Most often I practice Lectio with the written word - and once in a while with song lyrics. On occasion I'll keep a book or journal of the phrases I've chosen for pondering. I may spend several days or a week or more with a particular phrase, listening to various nuances, inquiring into its meaning, hearing its truths, responding or reacting to it, observing with interest when it synchronistically resonates with some event in my life, perhaps encouraging me to take some action, offering me a long-awaited answer to an inner dilemma, or even kicking me in the ass.

A few of my past lectio phrases include:

"Seek, and you will miss." (Anthony de Mello)

"Love one another as I have loved you" One-word version: "Love." (gospel of John)

"There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." (Rumi)

"How long must I climb?" (Coldplay)

"You came out of nothing, isn't that something?" (Fr. Thomas Keating)

"Faith is the bird that sings in the night" (Tagore)

"Persevere" (Hebrews 12:1)

"All I need is your extra time and your kiss." (Prince)

"Jesus wept." (John 11:35)

The practice of Lectio can allow a single word or phrase to bloom and release its hidden fragrances into our lives. It can also liberate myth. As Beatrice Bruteau writes in Radical Optimism: "The [biblical] stories are about us. It is to us that the angel of the Anunciation proclaims that through the power of the Holy Spirit we will bring forth from our emptiness divine life...

 
"It is to us that the baptismal voice is addressed, saying, ‘You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.' And if we really hear that, we will be driven into a wilderness wherein we will struggle with the question of what that means and what its implications are. And eventually we will find, as was foreshadowed at our birth, that we are lying in the manger as food for the world."

I most often use the Bible for both solo and group Lectio. Over the years, its wisdom has washed through me and through my Lectio comrades like a cool subterranean stream. Or perhaps we're... luxuriously soaking in it. I guess I really am my mother's daughter.

Centering in the Hood

For several years, I facilitated a centering prayer group at a Catholic church in a poor neighborhood near downtown San Diego. We would meet once a week to do a 20-30 minute centering sit together, followed up with group Lectio Divina, informal sharing, or one of Thomas Keating's Spiritual Journey videotapes. (An excellent series of videos, by the way, which elucidates the Christian journey in light of recent understandings about development, spiritual stages, psychology, etc. These videos are where I first heard about Ken Wilber).

It was a lively little group of diverse folks leading busy lives. And the church, situated just a few yards away from a busy trolley stop, was never a quiet place. We'd sometimes use electric fans to create white noise while we meditated, but usually the sounds of the city would come through - the trolley horn, police sirens, young men yelling and breaking out in fights. The Ballet Folklorico used the church's rec room to practice, so there would usually be Latin beats coming through the walls. Kids ran up and down the hall outside of the room where we met. So we often joked that we were getting in some very good centering practice - learning to sit still and let all those wild distractions come and go as we inhaled and exhaled ...

Centering prayer involves consistently consenting to the presence and action of the Spirit within. Consent is anchored through the use of a short "sacred word," (not the same as a mantra) which is silently repeated only when meditator becomes actively engaged with thoughts - including sense perceptions, feelings, images, memories, reflections, etc. The idea is to gently let the thoughts come and go while maintaining the intention. With practice, one eventually "falls into" contemplation, a state which, in Keating's words, involves "the opening of mind and heart - our whole being - to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions." It can be a deeply restful time; it also helps folks become more present to the present moment during their lives outside of the sit. As one practices nonattachment by letting the thoughts come and go (sometimes simply letting go of one's ability to let go) one can more readily offer her mind and her heart to whatever the moment requires.

Anyway, I just have to share this other little story. I know this is long already.

We had been listening to taped discussions on the relationship between contemplation and action. I think we had also recently done a group lectio on Matthew 25: 31-46: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you ... a stranger and make you welcome ... sick or in prison and go to see you?" ... "In so far as you did this to one of the least ... you did it to me." 

Dennis, the attorney-saxophonist in our group, and our most steadfast contemplative, suggested that we needed to do something active together as a group. Our church was surrounded by the sick and the hungry: homeless people who slept on nearby sidewalks, not too far from the trolley tracks. Why not gather some items to hand out to them, and have this gesture become the "active" part of our group contemplative prayer?

I resisted. I already had my neat, tidy, and safe ways of serving the destitute - by donating to charities and giving old clothes to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul. And since I was the facilitator of this group and all, I took it upon myself to explain that activity per se was not really the purpose of a centering prayer group. Although our contemplative practices should naturally weave themselves into our actions - into our lives outside of the two 20-minute sits a day - that "weaving" need not take form as a group activity in any explicit way. And I did my spiel of: "Ultimately contemplation is not personal and private, even though we usually practice the prayer solo. True contemplation is never ‘kept to one's self,' but instead charges all our interactions and becomes a part of everything we do, whether we are eating, changing a diaper, teaching, nursing a dying friend, playing, suffering through an illness, managing a business, fighting injustice ...." Etcetera., etcetera.  In other words: Um, let's not get that close to the homeless people.

But Dennis gently persisted. And when Rosie, everyone's favorite Mexican tia, felt persuaded toward this group action, I figured: well, I suppose there's nothing wrong with giving it a try, as long as we still do the centering prayer. Group members can choose whether or not they want to participate in these giveaways. We might solicit donations from friends and congregants, and pass out goods every other month or so.

Dennis had a very simple plan. It turned out that this was kind of his thing, giving odds and ends to homeless people. He often kept extra blankets in his car, and on a cold night, if he was driving around and happened to see a street person who looked like he needed a blanket, he'd offer it to him. "They also like bottled water and new white socks," he told us.

So we began gathering bottled water, crew socks, nutrition bars, and plastic grocery bags. On the day of the handout, we'd place two waters, two pairs of socks, and two food bars in each bag, pile them into the back of Dennis' van, and drive around to the variety of "street camps" nearby. (San Diego has a lot of them, comprised largely of the mentally ill, alcoholics and addicts - and the occasional family with children.)

As a group -- generally it was just three of us who did the handouts -- we would slowly approach people, and simply ask, "would you like some water and some new socks?"

Almost always, folks really, really wanted the water and the socks. (And only one time did a man ask for more. Reeking of alcohol, he slurred, "baby, what I want iz a hug!" Dennis and I simply grinned, but sweet aunt Rosie took him into her arms. She told us later that he licked her ear.) Especially, heartbreakingly, the street peeps rejoiced over the socks. I was completely undone during that first handout trek, to see the looks of sincere gratitude for a pair of new cotton socks. You would have thought we were giving away gold. I actually felt an odd, sad, shame - oh dear people, can these socks, these small things, make such a difference in your day? Oh please do not thank me so much for these few paltry items - I'm giving you nothing, really ...

I had not expected their gratitude to bring tears to my eyes. Socks! Such ordinary things. Such small moves.