Reflection for December 29, 2010

Some don’t believe in miracles.
The say, “What happens is by chance”
They rush through God’s creation,
Without a passing glance.

But for those that look and listen
Throughout each precious day
They will find the tracks of Angels,
As they move along their way!

Andie Hellem

May you create a wondrous
2011 full of fun, joy
and laughter.

Reflection for December 22, 2010

And then that girl the angels came to visit,

she woke also to fruit, frightened by beauty,

given love, shy, in her

so much blossom, the forest,

no one had explored, with paths leading everywhere.

They left her alone to walk and to drift

and the spring carried her along.

Her simple and unselfcentered Mary- life

became marvelous and castlelike.

Her life resembled trumpets on the feast days

that reverberated far inside every house;

and she, once so girlish and fragmented,

was so plunged now inside her womb,

and so full inside from that one thing

and so full – enough for a thousand others—

that every creature seemed to throw light on her

and she was like a slope with vines, heavily bearing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Reflection for December 15, 2010

WHEN I WAS THE STREAM

When I was the stream, when I was the forest,

when I was still the field, when I was every hoof,

foot, fin, and wing, when I was the sky itself,

No one ever asked me did I have a purpose,

no one ever wondered was there anything I might need . . .

for there was nothing I could not love.

It was when I left all we once were that the agony began,

and the fear and questions came and I wept. I wept.

And tears I had never known before.

So I returned to the river. I returned to the mountains.

I asked for their hand in marriage again. I begged––I begged

to wed every object and creature.

And when they accepted,

God was ever present in my arms.

Meister Eckhart

(1260-1328)

Reflection for December 8, 2010

Meditations with Meister Eckhart

What good is it to me

If this eternal birth of the divine Son

Takes place unceasingly

But does not take place

Within myself?

And

what good is it to me

If Mary is full of grace

And if I am not also full of grace?

What good is it to me

For the Creator to give birth to his/her Son

If I do not also give birth to him

In my time

and my culture?

This, then,

is the fullness of time:

When the Son of God

is begotten

In me.

We are all meant

To be mothers of God.

God does not ask anything else of you except

That you let yourself go

And let God

Be God

In you.

Every single creature is full of God

And is a book about God.

To grasp God in all things,

That is the sign

Of your new birth.

Reflection for November 24, 2010

Thoughts on Gratitude

While we cry ourselves to sleep,

gratitude waits patiently to console and reassure us;

there is a landscape larger than the one we can see.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

*

Darkness deserves gratitude.

It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand

that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Joan Chittister, Uncommon Gratitude

*

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant,

to enact gratitude is generous and noble,

but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

Johannes A. Gaertner

*

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;

they are the charming gardeners

who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

Reflection for November 10, 2010

Welcome Morning

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry "hello there, Anne"

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

~ Anne Sexton ~

(The Awful Rowing Toward God)

Reflection for November 3, 2010

The Reike Ideals
(Rea-Key means Universal Life Force)

Just for today - do not anger.

Do not worry, and be filled with gratitude.

Devote yourself to your work.

Be kind to People.

Reike Founder - Usui Mikao

Quilts by Larissa