My friend Mirabai posted this today and it felt like a good companion and antidote to the feelings expressed in my last poetry. This poetry was inspired by her friend Andrew Harvey, in a book she did many years ago in collaboration with her dear friend and renowned iconographer, Fr. Bill McNichols, Mother of God Similar to Fire.

MOTHER OF GOD, SHE WHO HEARS THE CRIES OF THE WORLD ​​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​​
Mother of Mercy, ​​​​​​​​
the cries of the world keep me awake at night. ​​​​​​​​
I rise from my bed, but I cannot locate the source of the wailing. ​​​​​​​​
It is everywhere, Mother, coming from all directions, ​​​​​​​​
and my heart is shattered by the sheer intensity of suffering. ​​​​​​​​
You of boundless compassion, ​​​​​​​​
expand my heart so that I can contain the pain. ​​​​​​​​
Focus my mind so that I can arrive at viable solutions, ​​​​​​​​
and energize my body so that I can engage in effective action. ​​​​​​​​
Give me the courage to follow the crumbs of heartbreak ​​​​​​​​
all the way home to the place where I can be of real service. ​​​​​​​​
Let me dip my fingers into the dew of your compassion ​​​​​​​​
and scatter it now over the fevered brow of this world.​​​​​​​​
​​​​​​​​
(Mirabai Starr)

These times are deeply challenging and I know that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the greed and blindness and pain and death that seems so persistent and unending.

Out of these feelings, this poetry arose. Yet in the end, I do still remember that I am connected to the soul of the earth and the cosmos that was never born and never dies. And though I consent to hold and experience the despair and suffering, I am also blessed with each breath and each scent of blossoms, each cuddle of baby goats and each seed pressed into rich damp soil.

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How do we sing the end
Of this precious
Pulsing planet?
How do we dance this fading
Fragile future?

How do we pray these delusive
Desperate desires???
How do we cry our wounded
Wild weeping?

How do we sing
With trembling chins?

How do we dance
When our knees grow weak?

How do we pray
When all seems lost?

How even do we cry
When tears drown our hearts?

I simply
Do not know.

Maybe…

Our songs are
Screams, growls, howls
Or a deep humming surrender
Like the rumble of earthquakes in the roiling earth.

Our dance is
Writhing, twisting, lurching
Or a bent broken persistence
Like a deep-rooted oak tree in a raging hurricane.

Our prayers are
Embattled, beseeching, imploring
Or a humbled prostration
Like the corpses of the forest after the overwhelming volcano.

And our tears…

We weep and drool
A million billion
hot salt tears
Into the frigid, warming oceans,

Where they are held,
absorbed,
And lifted
into radiant, pregnant, silver clouds.

Like our pulsing
Fragile
Desperate
Wild

Ever-present
Everlasting
Never dying
Soul.

To fall
and rise
again.
Without end.

Amen.

Maybe.

From Fr. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation blog.

“If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great earth in the bread. . . . You eat it in such a way that you become alive, truly alive.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“This is the purpose of the sacraments, of the church—to help us see, to point to the bread and wine, the orchids and the food pantries, the post-funeral potlucks and the post-communion dance parties, and say: pay attention, this stuff matters; these things are holy.”

—Rachel Held Evans

Practice – Remembering the Creator

Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) is a beloved Canadian indigenous writer whose life was transformed by returning to his Ojibwe family and culture after being separated from them for most of his young life. In his final book Embers, he shares meditations, reflections, and prayers that came to him during times of ritual and morning silence. He writes:

“The words in this book are embers from the tribal fires that used to burn in our villages. They are embers from the spiritual fires burning in the hearts, minds and souls of great writers on healing and love. . . . They are heart songs. They are spirit songs. And, shared with you, they become honour songs for the ritual ways that spawned them. Bring these words into your life. Feel them. Sit with them. Use them.”

Wagamese invites us to remember prayerfully both creation and the Creator:

“Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.”

Experience a version of this practice through video and sound

As this beautiful practice reminds us, all that arrives in our life brings important lessons for which we can hold gratitude. Even (or maybe especially) the challenging, painful, and sad moments can be welcomed.

This welcoming prayer is from Fr. Richard Rohr’s blog. Enjoy

Welcoming Prayer

Father Richard recommends the Welcoming Prayer as a practice to help us surrender to God, Reality, and Love with each moment:  

Spiritual teacher Mary Mrozowski (1926–1993) composed and first taught what is now called the Welcoming Prayer, which many have found to be life-changing. The Welcoming Prayer helps us find serenity through surrender in the midst of messy, ordinary moments. When feeling triggered or caught by something unpleasant, begin by simply being present to your feeling, experiencing it not just mentally, but also emotionally and physically. Don’t try to rationalize or explain the feeling, but witness and give attention to this sensation. Welcome the feeling, speaking aloud, if you can: “Welcome, [anger, fear, hunger, longing, etc.].” Repeat this as many times as you need to truly sense yourself embracing and receiving the feeling. Some people pray the Welcoming Prayer regularly—even daily is probably not too much! Popularized by my dear friend and mentor, the late Thomas Keating (1923–2018), it is this simple and this hard:  

Welcome, welcome, welcome.  

I welcome everything that comes to me today 

because I know it’s for my healing. 

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,  

situations, and conditions.  

I let go of my desire for power and control.  

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.  

I let go of my desire for survival and security.  

I let go of my desire to change any situation,  

condition, person, or myself.  

I open to the love and presence of God 

and God’s action within. Amen.

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Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.

This beautiful poem reminds us that we can only live this moment with compassion, forgiveness, and acceptance.

THERE IS NO PATH THAT GOES ALL THE WAY

Not that it stops us looking
for the full continuation.

The one line in the poem
we can start and follow

straight to the end. The fixed belief
we can hold, facing a stranger

that saves us the trouble
of a real conversation.

But one day you are not

just imagining an empty chair

where your loved one sat.
You are not just telling a story

where the bridge is down
and there’s nowhere to cross.

You are not just trying to pray
to a God you always imagined
would keep you safe.

No, you’ve come to a place
where nothing you’ve done

will impress and nothing you
can promise will avert

the silent confrontation;
the place where

your body already seems to know
the way, having kept

to the last, its own secret
reconnaissance.

But still, there is no path
that goes all the way,

one conversation
leads to another,

one breath to the next
until

there’s no breath at all,
just
the inevitable
final release

of the burden.

And then,

wouldn’t your life
have to start

all over again


for you to know

even a little
of who you had been?

…

There is No Path that Goes All the Way
From ‘River Flow:
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
https://davidwhyte.com/collections/books-cards-and-audio/products/river-flow-new-selected-poems.

In Fr. Richard Rohr’s weekly digest this week they share a timely practice for living in crisis through a spiritual lens.

First, this quote from Pope Francis:

In the midst of crises, a solidarity guided by faith enables us to translate the love of God in our globalized culture, not by building towers or walls . . . but by interweaving communities and sustaining processes of growth that are truly human and solid. —Pope Francis 

Spiritual Practice for Crisis

The Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes offers pastoral comfort and prophetic challenge in times of crises:

The crisis begins without warning, shatters our assumptions about the way the world works, and changes our story and the stories of our neighbors. The reality that was so familiar to us is gone suddenly, and we don’t know what is happening. Where there is no understanding, we create it. When we are anxious about our lack of control, we conjure theories that quell our anxiety. The truth of the matter is that we live on a mysterious planet, with other living beings whose interiority and spiritual realities are just beyond our cognitive reach.  

Embodied contemplative practices allow us to meet the challenges that crises bring to our lives. Today, we invite you to try one or more of these practices suggested by Dr. Holmes: 

1. Breathe deeply and exhale slowly three times. 
2. Your ancestors survived many crises. What were the crises of their days that required a communal response? 
3. What is the crisis of your day that requires a communal response? 
4. Sit for ten minutes. Feel the “troubles of this world.” Breathe deeply, exhaling your sense of helplessness, inhaling Ella Baker’s strength, channeling Rosa Parks’ quiet resolve. (Substitute exemplars as needed, but include one exemplar from a cultural community that is not your own.) 
5. Remember an instance of oppression against a group that is not yours. 
   • What, if anything, did you feel called to do as an ally? Did you do it? If you did something in response to the crisis, what did you do and what happened as a result? . . . 
   • If your community were under siege, what help would you need or want?

Barbara A. Holmes, Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village (Albuquerque, NM: CAC Publishing, 2021), 19, 37.

Explore the Daily Meditations

The inimitable St Mary Oliver reminds us with this poem, of all the sacred music and phenomenon that are always singing to us but especially in the forest. This reminded me how,, in “The Spell of the Sensuous” David Abram opens our hearts to the conversation of the more than human that surrounds us if we only listen.

With gratitude to sister Amina Janet who posted this lovely poem in her blog, “Love, Harmony, and Beauty #87”

************

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.
― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Our culture is suffering gravely and terminally from our illusions of separateness. There is a more than human conversation taking place that we have forgotten to notice in our arrogance and patriarchal fear. As spiritual seekers, our work is to remember unity, administer palliative care to all those suffering harm as the culture of modernity collapses, and midwife a return to the precious oneness that is our true inheritance, what Fr. Rohr calls our True Self.

This blog post from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations illustrates with sound and image the way forward.

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The inner space where God dwells can often be uniquely accessed by the arts. To bring Father Richard’s message of the True Self into a deeper consciousness, we invite you to watch and listen to this music video as a contemplative practice. To practice audio or visio divina (sacred hearing or seeing) is to allow our hearts to be fully receptive to sound and image. The song and video are from Birdtalker, a Nashville-based musical group [1], that was featured at CAC’s CONSPIRE 2017: A Conspiracy for God. 

[1] Birdtalker also contributed the theme music for the first two seasons of the CAC podcast Another Name for Every Thing.  

Birdtalker, One, official lyric video, June 20, 2017, YouTube video, 3:59.

I so much enjoyed this post today by Terry Kylo on the Paths to Understanding site that I wanted to share it with all of you.

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This weekend I will be speaking with a Christian youth group about how multi-faith relationships, partnerships for the common good, and public solidarity is a faithful expression of the Christian wisdom tradition.

The sad reality is that for many Christians, the answer is that it is not possible to be faithful to Jesus and to respect, relate to, learn from, and partner with other traditions. What I hear from many Christians is the “salvation” is to be recognized as a part of an exclusive in-group. They don’t say it quite this way, at least at first. But when you press them this is where it goes.

I spoke to a person lately who asked why I was supporting and working with people of other traditions. She told me that if I wanted to be faithful to Jesus, I should be working to convert them “because you can’t get to heaven unless you follow Jesus. It’s okay that you are being nice to them but if you love them you must try to convert them.” Love, it seems, was for her only a strategy to make others like her. As she said this her face, voice, and body resonated with a kind of superiority and certainty. I could tell she enjoyed it.

I have met people of many traditions who have a similar attitude: everyone from Atheists to Zoroastrians. (Well, actually I have never heard this from Zoroastrians, but you get my point:). Indeed, I have felt the rush of superiority and certainty in myself many times, and for many years.

I responded to her this way: “I am so grateful that the Creator has found me and encountered me through the Lutheran Christian and Episcopal Christian traditions. But I think it is simply beyond my pay grade to tell the Creator how to find and encounter others. If you want to walk up to the Creator and tell her how to do her work, well, go ahead. But I won’t be doing that.”

This seemed, at least for a moment, to give her pause. In fact, she seemed quite disturbed. I was too.

My wife and I saw a beautiful sunset recently. (Pictured) It went on changing from color to color for over an hour and a half. We saw the light of the sun, but that does not mean we own or control or possess the light.

• We may be encountered by the Divine.
• For those who don’t do God: We may be encountered by a Meaning beyond our imagination or effort.
• But that does not mean it is only for us, or that all people see the same colors.

As the sunset was ending we saw the shape of a grey whale and heard the sound of its breathing. On that magical evening, I wondered, “Was not the sunset for the whale, too?”

The word “faith” in the Christian Scriptures really means “trust” in the One who is beyond our idea of God. Understanding this, exclusive in-grouping is actually the result of a lack of faith, a lack of trust that the Divine has agency to reach out to all the human family in a way that each needs.

Just because the Divine has reached out to me in a particular way does not limit how the Divine will reach out to others.

Unless, you want to walk up to up to Creator and tell Her how to do things….  In that case, let me just back away a bit as the sound of a Holy Laughter reminds us how small and beautiful we are – and others, too.

Photo by Terry Kyllo