Sacred Sunday

Today I am pulling one out of the archives - prompted by my pleasure of being associated with two amazing women, Christine Paintner and Betsey Beckman, who are working on their new book about the Awakening the Creative Spirit program. Their writing reminded of a poem I penned almost three years ago during that program. It seemed perfect for this Sacred Sunday.

Enjoy!

Six Senses of God

No old man in flowing robes and long white beard for me. My God looks like the wind, the rain, the sun & moon. He is creation all around--both seen and imagined.

Rainstorm beating on a tin roof & brook gently babbling through the forest. The laughter of children and screams of childbirth. Tinkling bells and booming gongs. These are the voices of Majesty.

God smells like spring after the first rain. Roses, old and fragrant. Wet dog and fresh baked bread. Homemade cookies & pie.

Taste the sweet nectar dripping from fresh berries. Complexities of a gourmet meal. Chinese food and take out pizza. Communion wine. God pours flavor into life.

Experience God with the touch of a newborn’s bottom, a soft kitten or the bark of a gnarled tree. The suede of a child’s head and the crepe of a woman’s weathered hand.

A presence that embodies pain and sorrow, joy and laughter. A tugging of the heart and a whisper in the ear. The flutter of stomach and the pounding of heart. Our God is the feast of eyes and the fullness of soul.

photo by lucy

consider this...

“I no longer seek any perfection from my own efforts…but only the perfection that comes from faith and is from God…We who are called perfect must all think in this way” (Philippians 3:9,15).

Where the text finally points, leads and calls is to the total mystery of divine union—and nothing less.

You don’t have to figure it all out or get it all right ahead of time. You just have to stay on the journey. All you can do is stay connected. We don’t know how to be perfect, but we can stay in union. “If you remain in me and I remain in you,” says Jesus, “you can ask for whatever you want and you’re going to get it” (see John 15:7). When you’re connected, there are no coincidences anymore. Synchronicities, coincidences, accidents and “providences” just keep happening. Union realigns you with everything, and things just start happening. I cannot explain the “chemistry” of it all. Some people call it “the secret.” All I know is that the “branch cut off from the vine is useless” (John 15:5), yet on the vine it bears much fruit (15:5, 7). The True Self is endlessly generative, in touch with its Source; the false self is fragile, needy and insecure.

--Richard Rohr

Do I Need a List to Get It Right?

Have you ever noticed how certain themes pop up in your life from time to time? A recent one for me is the theme of petitioning God. There is a part of me that calls petition “the laundry list” or “I need fill-in-the blank.” Each time I have recently encountered the idea of petition, I have felt resistance and in those circumstances I am called to consider why.

Pondering this notion, questions arise in my mind: Do I believe in a God who answers lists? Do I consider myself above petition? Or is it resistance to the notion of somehow needing a list to get it right? The first time this came up was while meeting with my spiritual director. I felt the resistance again on Sunday in a potentially self-righteous, but curious kind of way. The priest was encouraging us to spend time with God without the need to bring “the list,” i.e. to be grateful, to honor God, to be in God’s presence. I felt very smug at that moment because currently "being" is more my style. I feel like every breath is prayer. In and out. Yah…weh…I have thrown away my list.

So where is the balance? Do I believe in a God who answers prayer? How can I not? But/And how can I believe in a white-bearded man who sits at a desk in heaven and follows each of us like Twitter? God’s magnitude is beyond description. I continue to experience Her presence most when I am in nature and times of just being. In those moments, there is no need to ask. Still I wonder about the notion of petition. I hold others in my thoughts and prayers – safety for travel – healing of sick – hearts to be protected. It no longer feels like a list (or petition), but breath. One movement.

My critical voice steps in and speaks. Am I getting it right? Have I evolved? Look at me! So, where is the balance? Do I need to be doing something different? Is it ok to simply be? Can I merely be in the presence of this God I cannot name and yet know throughout every cell of my bones? The paradox is huge. The belief is strong and the unknowing and questions run side by side. I continue to seek even though I have already found. I continue to grow even though I am an adult. I continue forward – most days. Do I need a list to get it right? Do you?

steeple in the clouds - bermuda 7.09

sacraments and flowing water

“We are asked to pour ourselves out, trusting that in this act we will be refilled.” Christine Valters Paintner

“The universal call to holiness is an invitation to be ourselves. It’s also an invitation to remember the sacramentality of every day life.” James Martin, SJ

Pouring out. Seeing all things as sacraments. These themes swirl and spin around my mind challenging me to continue to reach for the unknown. I do not know what will fill me, but I know that in order to be refilled, I must make space by pouring out. I stop and consider the times I have emptied myself out of obligation rather than love. When it has been duty rather than sacrament. The “filling” looks quite different – resentment and loneliness instead of peace and sanctity.

Where are the places I dam my flow of love? Where do I allow old hurts to get in the way and feel myself building dams rather than letting the springs flow? Where is God in all of this? Am I so self-sufficient that I tell God to get lost? How ludicrous is that – the impossibility of even trying to lose God since God surrounds me in the very air I breathe?

Sacraments and flowing water. God is calling me to be more fluid. Fluid with acts of self – allowing love to fill in the cracks and crevasses rather than building a dam or trying to patch them with illusions. Seeing life as daily sacrament.

Yesterday was a Sacred Sunday – filled with small acts of kindness. And, in those acts – providing a ride, preparing a meal, folding laundry, listening to others, reading a manuscript – I was indeed refilled. I listened to the call to be fluid. In this unplanned response, the crevasses were washed clear and I was reminded of the truth that resides within.

photo © h3images

safe landing

Moving toward my morning meditative routine – candle, music, journal…I chose a play list I did not recognize called, Prayer. My husband discovered this music by a Native American artist named Douglas Spotted Eagle. My journalling began with the words transition, transformation and trapezes. Life lately feels like that space just before you really let go and fling yourself into the air. I am reminded of my skydiving adventure just before stepping out of the plane. I clung to the door and bowed my head in frenzied prayer. It is that place just before you let go. You know it’s coming. You know you have to let go or you will forever regret it. I had no choice really, but to release my fingers and fling myself into the unknown. It seems that in order for life to keep moving forward that is exactly what I must do: let go, trust the unknown, and pray for a safe landing.

My writing traveled through many transitions as it so often does until I landed on that old topic of having compassion for myself. I am excellent at having compassion for others (most of the time), but one particular liminal space – the space 'in between' of loving my teenager and really disliking her a lot – keeps getting in my way. My anger and resentment rise. The classic words of a mother ascend in my throat, but not quite out of my mouth: “I’ve done so much for you. How can you not appreciate me?” And then I get mad at myself for even thinking that way and then she acts maddeningly teenager-ish and I get mad at her, but more myself (‘cuz I have compassion for her) and the cycle continues…

So, I kept writing and did a little reading and landed here: “…the quest both to understand oneself and finally accept oneself was a key journey for me…” I felt like God had a bullhorn to my ear. But, I didn’t really want to stay there and listen so I kept moving and opted to look once again at the Merton prayer I passed over last night:

"Be still
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak Your

Name.
Listen To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?"

And so I chose to be silent and still. The music played softly in the background. The candle quietly burned across the room. I considered compassion for me. My mind drifted. I gently invited it back. I found myself following the rhythm of a drum. The call of the silence. The stones of the earth speaking to me. Somewhere in there, “my name" was spoken. I "understood and accepted." I moved a little closer to myself.

The name of the song I had never before heard? Coming Home.

How might things be different for you if you let go of the trapeze and flung yourself into the unknown? Do you expect a safe landing or do you assume you will crash & burn?

p.s. After writing this post, I wanted to give credit to Douglas Spotted Eagle. Here is one of the links I found. He is a skydiver!!! Coincidence? Synchronicity? God stuff?

p.p.s. Here's another one. Check out enCouragingBliss: Return to your Garden of Eden. It's yet another way of Coming Home.

soul collage by lucy