Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

Every day the news seems more fraught and frightening. Children and innocents both human and more than human are dying in wars, disasters, droughts, and other climate-related changes to our beloved home, Mother Gaia.

A looming election threatens to carry us into autocracy, violence, or both.

And each of us with any level of empathy can feel all that pain, suffering, and chaos if we allow ourselves to do so.

We have choices.

Some of us might choose to retreat into spiritual bypass. It is beyond our ability to change, so we’ll leave it to God.

Or maybe we harden our hearts with cynicism or other emotional armor, and simply pretend we don’t see it.

I don’t fault or judge anyone for the choices they make to protect themselves, but I want to share a practice that I have found to help me stay grounded and present in that chaos without ignoring it or pretending it’s not there.

After all, I believe that we are all an intrinsic part of a large mycelial network, connecting us spiritually, emotionally, and even physically to all beings and to the earth and universe. If that is true, then ignoring the suffering is choosing to ignore a part of myself.

I can’t do that.

So, I offer this practice.

It is a Sufi-influenced version of a Buddhist Tonglen practice by Joanna Macy that she calls “Breathing Through”

Settle into a comfortable position, feet on the floor, imagining and truly feeling your connection to that mycelial network. Hold that in gratitude and allow yourself to experience that connection as much as possible.

Place your hands on your heart and feel the warmth and vibration of that network rising up inside of you.

Allow your arms to reach out as wings of your heart. The heart and wings is a Sufi symbol.

With your arms held as wings, allow yourself to deeply feel the suffering, pain, and trauma of all of our beloved siblings, human and more than human. Truly feel and hold those feelings in your left wing.

At the same time, deeply imagine and feel and remember the incredibe beauty all around you in nature, that amazing sunset, those incredible Autumn leaves, those children’s faces, and hold that and compassion, love, caring, and forgiveness in the right wing.

Allow yourself to deeply feel both wings and feel the constant flow that is happening between each of those wings. You are riding the currents of all that is, both good and bad, dark and light, uplifting and distressing. Feel it all, and allow it to flow and be balanced on your wings.

After you feel you have held it long enough (it need not be long), smoothly and with deep love and compassion, fold the wings of your heart back by placing your hands back on your heart.

Breath through all of this that your heart is now holding. Breath love, compassion, caring, patience, and presence into your heart.

Now, drop your hands toward the earth, and let it all go with a final long sigh.

Give it all to the Mother. She can hold it and she will heal it.

Imagine all that you have held flowing back into the earth to be alchemized and broken down into the enriching soil of our collective being.

You can do this once, or repeat it as you feel called.

For me, this practice reminds me that we are held, and that I have some agency and power to at least imagine healing for all of the suffering. It reminds me that we are always capable of noticing and staying in balance and groundedness and presence, even if we are not able to physically change or help those who are suffering. It acknowleges our connection to all and honors it.

May it bring you blessings and rest.

See you in the mycelia!

For our Jewish siblings it is the time of the high holy days. Rosh Hashanah marks the New Year and asks us to look deep within to see what might need to be cleaned up.

I think of the all important need to forgive ourselves and others, accept forgiveness and grace, and to grant and receive reconciliation.

Especially as we approach the Day of the Dead and remember that all of us are mortal, and since we don’t know when our time will end, we truly can’t afford to leave any “I love you’s” and ‘I’m sorry’s” unsaid.

Consider deeply anyone you need to reconcile with and don’t wait.

Rosh Hashanah reminds us of the importance of this introspection. But it need not wait for a special time of year.

I received this beautiful poem in an email post from Keah Calluccie (she/her), Multifaith Program Manager for Earth Ministry.

I share it here as a Rosh Hashanah blessing.

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The Offering: A Tashlikh Prayer

by Rabbi Jill Hammer

I cast this gift to the water.

It is my past: blessing and regret.
It is my present: reflection and listening.
It is my future: intention and mystery.

It is what I did
and did not;
it is yes and no and silence.

It is what was done
and what arose from what was done
and what arises in this body remembering.

I let it all go. I own
neither the sting nor the sweetness.
I hold on to nothing.

The river has no past.
Each moment of rushing water
Is a new beginning.

Harm that has been:
heal in the rush of love and truth and time.
We who are lost:
let the current take us homeward.

May these waters churn what is broken
into what is whole.
May each separate droplet
reach the ocean that is becoming.

The journey awaits.
I have no power to refrain from it;
only to steer it when I can.

May the One who is
the great Crossroad
guide my turning.

Three times I declare:
It is finished.
It is born.
It is unending.

Three times I listen:
It is love.
It is the river.
It is before me.

May my offering go where it is meant to go
and may the one who offers it
find the way.

Amen.

“Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart”
~ Mary Oliver

I’ve been thinking about patience this week.

In my younger years, I tended to be very impatient with God. I figured there was no reason I shouldn’t just be enlightened because I wanted to be! What’s all this practice stuff?

Maybe it’s part of eldering to finally notice that where you are is where you need to be. The beauty of each moment, each prayer, each exchange with our human and more than human beloveds, and indeed each breath is a gift and is enough.

In this beautiful season of change, I am reminded by the leaves turning to gold and red, to treasure each gift of each day before I fall into that final dance back to the earth.

One of the 99 names or aspects of the Divine in the Sufi/Islamic tradition is Muqaddim. It reminds us that everything is happening in its own time and in perfect sequence. Using that as a mantra has helped to inculcate the sense that I can let go of the feeling that anything needs to be pushed. Like the old gestalt book reminded us, “Don’t Push the River.”

Sitting beside the creek at my sit spot, and praying that mantra, I physically notice myself letting go and remembering patience, with myself, with God, and with others.

St Mary Oliver (of course) has a beautiful poem to help us feel this even more:

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What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon’s white crescent

rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle–

the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.

There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart

as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.

~Patience by Mary Oliver .

This is an auspicious time in many ways. We just had a full harvest moon and a partial eclipse, and even some northern lights. Of course, as is often the case here on the Salish Sea, the view looked a lot like grey clouds… their own beauty of course!

This is a month when my daughter, my father, my mother-in-law, and my ex-wife all have birthdays. And it is very shortly after the birthdays of another daughter and my mother in late August. All but the daughters have passed the veil but it brings them all to mind in these days of transition.

As the cool winds begin to pick leaves from the maples and alder, and the flowers droop and fall away, I am reminded and celebrate the time of elderhood and letting go. The poems below give a wonderful sense of this season.

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September by Helen Hunt Jackson

The golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian’s bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook.

From dewy lanes at morning
the grapes’ sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather,
And autumn’s best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

‘T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

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A Continual Autumn, by Jalal Al-din Muhammad Rumi

Inside each of us there’s
a continual autumn.

Our leaves fall and are
blown out over the water,

a crow sits in the blackened limbs and
talks about what’s gone.

There’s a necessary dying, and
then we are reborn breathing again.
Very little grows on jagged rock.

Be ground.
Be crumbled
so wildflowers will come up where you are.

---

Song for Autumn
by Mary Oliver

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

---

Winter Apple by David Whyte

Let the apple ripen
on the branch
beyond your need
to take it down

Let the coolness
of autumn
and the breathing,
blowing wind
test its adherence
to endurance,
let the others fall.

Wait longer
than you would,
go against yourself,
find the pale nobility
of quiet that ripening
demands…

Isn’t it wonderful and profound how the Universe and the Ancestors circle around and bring us exactly what is needed? And then remind us again and again!

My lovely daughter called it the “new car syndrome” where you start noticing all the cars that look just like the one you just bought. 😉

Maybe so, or perhaps this is just the most important message for us all right now.

I would tend toward the latter, as that has been my experience – the lessons I need most tend to show up and keep sending reminders.

Thus, this week’s post comes from one of my favorites, Father Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, which not surprisingly had the theme this week of forgiveness and mercy!

Enjoy – and let me know your thoughts.

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When we forgive, we choose the goodness of others over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own goodness in a way that surprises us.  
—Richard Rohr 

Grace re-creates all things; nothing new happens without forgiveness. We just keep repeating the same old patterns, illusions, and half-truths.  
—Richard Rohr  

I once saw God’s mercy as patient, benevolent tolerance, a kind of grudging forgiveness, but now mercy has become for me God’s very self-understanding. Mercy is a way to describe the mystery of forgiveness. More than a description of something God does now and then, it is who God is. 
—Richard Rohr 

Practice – Praying to Forgive

Brian McLaren identifies how prayers of petition help us to experience forgiveness:   

Since being wounded or sinned against is a terribly common experience, I suspect we need to pay more attention to it. In fact, being wronged is directly linked in the Lord’s Prayer to the reality of doing wrong; we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  

Father Richard Rohr says it well: Pain that isn’t processed is passed on. Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted. So we need to process our woundedness with God, and that processing begins by naming the pain and holding it … in God’s presence: 

Betrayed. Insulted. Taken advantage of. Lied to. Forgotten. Used. Abused. Belittled. Passed over. Cheated. Mocked. Snubbed. Robbed. Vandalized. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. Excluded. Disrespected. Ripped off. Confused. Misled.  

It’s important not to rush this process. We need to feel our feelings, to let the pain actually catch up with us…. I’ve found that it takes less energy to feel and process my pain than it does to suppress it or run away from it. So, just as through confession we name our own wrongs and feel regret, through petition we name and feel the pain that results from the wrongs of others…. We translate our pain into requests:  

Comfort. Encouragement. Reassurance. Companionship. Vindication. Appreciation. Boundaries. Acknowledgement.  

It’s important to note that we are not naming what we need the person who wronged us to do for us. If we focus on what we wish the antagonist would do to make us feel better, we unintentionally arm the antagonist with still more power to hurt us. Instead, in this naming, we are turning from the antagonist to God, focusing on what we need God to do for us. We’re opening our soul to receive healing from God’s ever present, ever generous Spirit. 

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a lot recently. It has come up in several conversations.

In fact on our ‘End of Life Conversations‘ podcast, my co-host, Annalouiza Armenderiz and I just recorded a video episode talking about the best ways to support people grieving any kind of loss. We spoke about what kind of things you can say that are helpful and comforting and appropriate. And we considered words that wouldn’t be appropriate.

A theme that kept coming up was forgiveness. You’re going to do it wrong sometimes despite your best intentions. And you’re going to witness others messing up as well.

It requires grace to remember forgiveness for yourself and others. The first verses (Suras) of most every part of the Quran begin with Bismallah A Rachman A Rahim (in the name of the Divine who is all compassion and mercy)

I received the following prayers that I share with permission from the Anohki Institute run by my friends Ted Falcon and Tovah Zev.

Please enjoy:

A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness

If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions I forgive them.

And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions I forgive myself.

RIBONO SHEL OLAM

Opening Beyond Forgiveness – An Evening Practice Ribono shel olam. . .

Source of all Being, I now seek to forgive all who have hurt me, all who have done me wrong, whether deliberately or by accident, whether by words, by deed, or by thought, whether against my pride, my person, or my property, in this incarnation or in any other.

May I release the desire for anyone to be punished on my account. May I be free from energies of anger, resentment, and guilt that keep me bound to the illusion of egoic identity.

And Source of all Being, Eternal One, my God and the God of my ancestors, may I no longer be bound by my own forgetting, when I have fallen into the illusion of separateness. May I remember always the One I AM and live into my interconnectedness to others and to all Life.

Let my words, my thoughts, my meditations, and my acts flow from the fullness of Your Being, Eternal One, Source of my being and my Redeemer.

This is a favorite of mine.

My sanctuary, my church is the forest. I deeply appreciate the words of Hazrat Inayat Kahn when he says, “There is One Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.”

So, she had me hooked when she suggested we take our busy hearts to the forest and remember the songs the leaves have been singing forever.

My Sufi teacher and friend, Saladin, early in our relationship, took me out into the forest and had me listen carefully for the whispering trees singing “Ishk Allah, mabud lelah” – God is Love, Lover, and Beloved.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-one
And the leaves are singing still.
Alhumdulillah!

---

What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

~ “What Can I Say” from Swan by Mary Oliver ~

Hello friends,

It has been a long time and my life had become so full of wonderful things that I let this endeavor go.

But then, the world turned upside down when in early June, my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Suddenly I only had one job. To hold her and care for her as we walk this journey together. I let go of many of my responsibilities and dedicated all my time to her care, as should be.

Yet, as we begin to get into a rhythm and find our way toward acceptance and balance, I am again considering what parts of my life are important and which I might pick back up.

This site and the opportunity to share some of the beautiful insights and teachings that I find, or that come through this new journey, seemed like a good use of my time. Time that is more spacious now.

So, to start us off again – here is a profound and moving teaching that I received from my subscription to Fr Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations blog. It resonated with me and I thought about the best ways to share it. That inspired me to pick this up again. Hopefully, I can keep adding content regularly again going forward.

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Saying Yes to Life

Writer-activist Lydia Wylie-Kellermann considers how children offer us an opportunity to both give and receive wisdom necessary for life to flourish:

We all find the life that calls to our bones. Perhaps we nourish life by putting pen to paper or hands in the dirt. Perhaps we help those who are dying to walk with joy, or a classroom of kids to sing a little louder, or by feeding the birds. Perhaps we have claimed the title of aunt, uncle, godparent, neighbor, or friend to a beloved child. All of it is necessary.

Having kids has been one way for me to pour out my love in celebration of life. It has not made the grief lighter … perhaps it has deepened it. But it has also expanded my hope, my joy, my longings, and my insistence on what is possible in this moment. Community and imagination are powerful forces and gosh do these kids know how to call upon it. Don’t look away from death, but in its midst, choose life. Choose life. Choose life.

Wylie-Kellermann offers these words of wisdom:

Dear friends,
ask the hard questions.
Give thanks for uncertainty.
Trust yourself.
Lean into the wisdom of community.
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Know that the arc is long.
Lean on the ancestors.
Ask the creatures for advice.
Follow the wind.
Know that there is no right way.
Trust others on their path.
Find yours.
Embrace the mess.
Give your life to a
holy, undeniable “Yes!”
Whatever that yes may be.
And know, that this “had to happen.”
How lucky we are to be alive!

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Yes… give thanks for uncertainty and don’t take yourself too seriously! Words that feel important in this new journey as a caregiver.

Blessings to all of you dear readers, and welcome back.

My emphasis in these days of gratitude has been remembering our interconnectedness with all beings, human, more than human, and those entities that are vibrating at any level. The indigenous phrase, All My Relations, doesn’t exclude anything. We are not and have never been separate, so how can we not spend every breath finding our way toward healing, regeneration, and sustainability?

The following were posted last week on Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations and, as always, speak eloquently to our place on this garden planet.

“The great chain of being was the medieval metaphor for ecology before we spoke of ecosystems. I view it as a philosophical and theological attempt to speak of the interconnectedness of all things on the level of pure “Being.” Today we might call it “the circle of life.” For me, it speaks of the inherent sacrality, interconnectedness , and communality of creation. ” —Richard Rohr

“The natural world is its own good and sufficient story if we can only learn to see it with humility and love. That takes contemplative practice, stopping our busy and superficial minds long enough to see the beauty, allow the truth, and protect the inherent goodness of what is—whether it profits or pleases us or not.” —Richard Rohr

“Every single living life form has been given a seat on this sacred hoop of life, this medicine wheel … and that includes us. Every single member has a methodology for upholding its part of the sacred hoop. Every single member must uphold their part of the sacred hoop, or the integrity of the hoop begins to fail.” —Pat McCabe

“Francis of Assisi claims all the world as family. Everything becomes brother or sister. I think that comes out of a mystical and contemplative insight that recognizes we are all part of this great chain of being, that these are brothers and sisters, and therefore we may not disrespect them.” —Richard Rohr

Kinship with Creation

In the book Rooted and Rising, editors Leah Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas suggest a practice to embody our connection to creation: 

The insights of science accord with the wisdom of religion: human beings do not exist in isolation. We exist within an interconnected web of relationships. This meditation invites us to exercise our imagination and deepen our understanding of our place in the universe. How would our behavior change if we were more keenly aware that we are brother-sister beings with the rest of life and spring from the same divine Source?… 
 
Go to your sacred place.
 
Find a position on your chair or cushion in which you feel comfortable, relaxed, and alert.
 
Close your eyes.
 
Notice that as you breathe in, you are taking in oxygen, which is released by trees and all green-growing things. As you breathe out, you exhale carbon dioxide, which in turn is being taken up by trees…. Let yourself feel your connection to the air, to the trees, and grass, and everything green.
 
Now let yourself feel the weight of your body in the chair…. You are as solid as the earth and made from the same atoms of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen that make up the earth….
 
Now let yourself sense the inner motions within your body…. Maybe you are aware of the gurgling in your belly or the throb of your beating heart. Maybe you sense the circulation of blood as it moves through your body…. It is as if within your body you are carrying rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

Now scan your body. Get a sense of your body as a whole…. Now consider this: all the elements that make up your body came from stars that exploded millions of years ago…. 

Our bodies connect us to the air and to plants, to the earth, to waters and the sea, to the animals, and to the stars.
 
Let yourself appreciate the goodness of the amazing body that God has given you and feel your kinship with the whole Creation. 

“Questions to Ponder and a Spiritual Practice: Kinship with Creation,” in Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis, ed. Leah D. Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 76–77.