Reflection for June 29, 2011

Mother and God

Mother and God, to you we sing;

wide is your womb, warm is your wing.

In you we live, move, and are fed

sweet, flowing milk, life giving bread.

Mother and God, to you we bring

all broken hearts, all broken things.

Miriam Therese Winter

Is this not the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the throngs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and to bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindication shall go before you,

the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

The Lord will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Hebrew Scripture, Isaiah 58:6-9, 11

I have found powerful love among my sisters, I have shredded every veil

and still believe in them.

Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

Reflection for June 22, 2011

I surrender...

Reflection for June 15, 2011

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes

darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

– David Whyte, The House of Belonging

Reflection for June 8, 2011

Deep Peace of the Running Wave To You

A Gaelic Blessing

To access the latest information on UN protection of the ocean

http://www.iucn.org/?7612/Breakthrough-at-the-United-Nations-hopes-grow-for-the-high-seas

Reflection for June 1, 2011

Note: Richard Rohr’s book, “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life”, speaks of the classical hero/heroine’s journey.

The first task, which the hero or heroine thinks is the only task, is only the warm-up act to get him or her to the real task. He or she “falls through” what is merely his or her life situation to discover her Real Life, which is always a much deeper river, hidden beneath the appearances. Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events. This deeper discovery is largely what religious people mean by “finding their soul.”

(Father Rohr would identify this as our task in the second half of life.)

No one can keep you from this second half of your own life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid. My conviction is that some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship, physical handicap, gender identity, economic poverty, or even the tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, desire everything good, true, and beautiful.

Reflection for May 11, 2011

A Monk

Striking his bell day after day

a monk remains in his pale grey deep dream.

The traces and shadows of so many past years

appear in memory like a patch of incense smoke

that spreads everywhere in the old temple.

The remains of sorrow stay in the censer

together with the grief of devout men and women.

boredom meanders perpetually

round and round in the sutras.

Sleepy words trickle from his mouth,

a man talking in his dream.

His head nods along with his knocking

of the wooden fish,

both so empty yet so heavy.

Stroke after stroke, the hills and rivers

are lulled to sleep.

The hills and rivers sleep lazily in the afterglow,

as he finished tolling the funeral bell

of another day.

1931, The Han Garden

Pien Chih-lin

Pien Chihlin (born 1910) came from the Chinese coast near Shanghai, to enroll

at Peking University in 1929. He loved the ancient city, yet his verses were not

choked in its dust. Some of the passages seem obscure, but most of his poems

breathe a clear, pure air. They represent life through a series of impressions, often

quiet but never trivial as they may seem at first reading.

--Anthology of Twentieth Century Chinese Poetry, 1963

Edited by Kai-yu Hsu

- Wooden Fish: hollowed wooden box which a monk strikes with a stick while

chanting sutras. It owes its name to an old legend about about some original

Buddhist sutras being swallowed by a marine monster on their way to China.

Striking the wooden fish therefore, becomes a gesture demanding the monster

to disgorge the Word.

Reflection for May 4, 2011

Embody peace___

become a witness

to the word.

Let it flow

from the core

of your being

out into the world.

Let every muscle,

bone, fiber, cell

speak

of the deeper truths.

Become

a prayer for peace.

Nancy Gibbs Richard

From: A Small Steadying Sail of Love

Poems, Meditations and Photographs