Reflections for January 26, 2011

A Garden For Daily Living

PLANT THREE TOWS OF PEAS:

Peace of mind

Peace of heart

Peace of soul

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF SQUASH:

Squash gossip

Squash indifference

Squash intolerance

Squash selfishness

PLANT FOUR ROWS OF LETTUCE:

Lettuce be faithful

Lettuce be kind

Lettuce be just

Lettuce truly love one another

NO GARDEN SHOULD BE WITHOUT TURNIPS:

Turnip for service when needed

Turnip to help one another

Turnip the music and dance

TO NURTURE A GARDEN YOU MUST HAVE THYME:

Thyme for others

Thyme for self

WATER with patience and CULTIVATE with love

author unknown

Reflection for January 19, 2011

What's In The Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.

It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.

The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.

The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.

The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.

The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.

If she stands still it will catch up with her. Pause with us here a while.

Put your ear to the wall of your heart.

Listen for the whisper of knowing there. Love will touch you if you are very still.

Tom Barrett

Reflection for January 12, 2011

To be tormented by restlessness is to be human. But in accepting, truly, that humanity we become more easy in our restlessness. Why? Because, as Karl Rahner puts it, in this life there is no finished symphony, everything comes with an undertow of restlessness and inadequacy. Peace can come to us only when we accept that fact, because it is only then that we will stop demanding that life – our spouses, our families, our friends, our jobs, our vocations, our vacations – give us something that they cannot give, the finished symphony, clear-cut pure joy, complete consummation.

Ronald Rolheiser, Against an Infinite Horizon

The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless.

N. Gordon Cosby

Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

St. Augustine, 355 – 430

Reflection for January 5, 2011

EPIPHANY CELEBRATION

This is the link to the u-tube that was presented during meditation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg

Be sure to hit the screen twice in order to fill the entire screen with the picture.

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)