Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

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!

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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.

From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

Dear friends, it has been too long and there has been so much going on in our world. Part of the way we can find our peace in the chaos is to understand the true meaning of simplicity and living in poverty, as the Franciscans and Beguines modeled.

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The beguines, like their Franciscan contemporaries in Italy, chose to live in poverty, simplicity, and service to those in need. Father Richard points to how we might embrace a life of “poverty,” even in times of sufficiency and abundance:

Letting go of our own small vantage point is the core of what we mean by conversion, but also what we mean by Franciscan “poverty.” Poverty is not just a life of simplicity, humility, restraint, or even lack. Poverty is when we recognize that myself—by itself—is largely powerless and ineffective. John’s Gospel puts it quite strongly when it says that a branch that does not abide in Jesus “is withered and useless” (see John 15:6). The transformed self, living in union, no longer lives in shame or denial of its weakness, but even rejoices because it does not need to pretend that it is any more than it actually is—which is now more than enough! [1]

Mechthild of Magdeburg echoes this teaching:

Those who wish to know but have little love 
Remain forever at the beginning of a good life…. 
Those who simply love and know very little 
Are opened to great things. 
Holy simplicity is the physician of all wisdom. 
It causes the wise [person] to see [themself] for the foolish person [they are]. 
When simplicity of heart dwells in the wisdom of the mind, 
Much holiness results in a person’s soul. [2]  

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2014), 71.

[2] Mechthild, The Flowing Light of the Godhead 7.43, trans. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 312, 313.

I’m Here, I’m Listening

Spoken word poet Amena Brown responds to the question, “How do you know when you’re hearing from God?”

She said, “How do you know when you are hearing from God?”  
I didn’t know how to explain … 
My words never felt so small, so useless, so incapable  

I wanted to say  
Put your hand in the middle of your chest 
Feel the rhythm there 
I wanted to say you will find the holy text in so many places 
On crinkly pages of scripture 
In dusty hymnals 
In the creases of a grandmother’s smile 

God’s ears are here for the babies 
For the immigrant, for the refugee 
For the depressed, for the lonely 
For the dreamers 
The widow, the orphan 
The oppressed and the helpless 
Those about to make a mess or caught in the middle of cleaning one up 
Dirt don’t scare God’s ears 
God is a gardener 
God knows things can’t grow without sun, rain, and soil … 

I want to tell her God is always waiting  
Lingering after the doors close  
And the phone doesn’t ring  
And we are finally alone  
God is always saying  
I love you  
I am here  
Don’t go, stay  
Please  

I try to explain how God is pleading with us  
To trust  
To love  
To listen  
That God’s voice is melody and bass lines and whisper and thunder and grace  

Sometimes when I pray, I think of her  
How the voice of God was lingering in her very question  
How so many of us just like her  
Just like me  
Just like you  
Are still searching  
Still questioning, still doubting  
I know I don’t have all the answers  
I know I never will  
That sometimes the best thing we can do is put our hands in the middle of our chest  
Feel the rhythm there  
Turn down the noise in our minds, in our lives  
And whisper,  
God  
Whatever you want to say  
I’m here  
I’m listening 

Amena Brown, “She said, ‘How do you know when you are hearing from God?’,” in A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal, ed. Sarah Bessey (New York: Convergent Books, 2020), 7, 8, 9, 10–11. Used with permission of author. 

Once again, gratitude to sister Amina who posted this on her blog, Love, Harmony & Beauty #134, this week.

Is the soul solid, like iron?

Or is it tender and breakable,

like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?

Who has it, and who doesn’t?

I keep looking around me.

The face of the moose is as sad

as the face of Jesus.

The swan opens her white wings slowly.

In the fall, the black bear

carries leaves into the darkness.

One question leads to another.

Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?

Like the eye of a hummingbird?

Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?

Why should I have it, and not the anteater who loves her children?

Why should I have it, and not the camel?

Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?

What about the blue iris?

What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?

What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?

What about the grass?  

~  Mary Oliver

Gratitude to FR Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation. This meditation was posted in their most recent Daily Meditations blog.

Breathing in Enoughness

We share a guided meditation from Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former resident of Plum Village and student of Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022), to help readers settle into a moment of “just this” awareness. 

Let’s begin our practice by finding a comfortable position of dignity and ease.  

Let’s really take our seats, let’s really occupy this moment. If there are parts of ourselves somewhere else, in some other time, past or future, invite them all to come back. We’ll be here, we’ll be now. Settling into just being here. With all the tumult that may be in your life, still you can breathe in and out, with presence, recollecting yourself.  

Feel the contact between your body and the floor, whether through the soles of your feet or your legs, knowing that the Earth is supporting you in this moment.  

Allow the in-breath and the out-breath to flow naturally. Experience how the breath arrives, what happens as you breathe in. Feel how the out-breath just does what it does, quite naturally.  

Breathing in, aware of the body. Breathing out, allowing the body to rest, calming the body.  

Aware of the body with the in-breath. Calming, resting, with the out-breath.  

If you notice that your mind wanders into thinking, planning, worrying, acknowledge that it is happening, knowing you can return to focus on your thoughts later. For now, engage again with the exercise of attending to this moment.  

Inhale and open up to the awareness that this moment is enough, that what we need, it’s already here.  

As you exhale, practice to accept that life is as it is in this moment. Allow it to be here, just as it is. Inhaling the sense of enoughness, of contentment, that actually things are okay right here and right now, we don’t need anything more. Exhaling acceptance of how things are.  

Breathing in enoughness, breathing out acceptance. 

Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons on Moving through Change, Loss, and Disruption (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2021), 34–35.

I’m a conditional atheist

God does not exist for me on
the tip of a sharpened sword

or on the lips of a sermonizing
hate-evangelist who is foaming at the mouth

or in the licking flames of a torch held
by a marching bigot

or in any dogma that have been soaked in the ancient poison of guilt and self-shame 

the divine doesn’t
exist for me anywhere
where wounds are being
caused in its name

I don’t know about
how any of this works
but I’ve never found
much of God in the towering
hierarchy of unchecked power

the Great Mystery isn’t a cracking whip
or a flag or an internet manifesto
or a pointed finger or a political party
or a dividing line or a box of ammo
or a corvette driven by a tv preacher
or a specific gender or a book bonfire

Creation is more of a florist
than she is a fundamentalist

the Weaver of Life is more interested
in stitching us together into a quilt
than how to separate us into metal bins

to come into relationship
with Unending Love shouldn’t
require us to loathe ourselves

~ it should be the exact opposite

to know ourselves
is to know God

to love ourselves
is to love God

my love,

I believe that the divine
is just about everywhere

~ except in the slow-poison
sands of fear and control
where so many have built temples
for us to worship inside

~ in those places
I am an atheist

but everywhere else

there is so much
fertile soil

where we can let the sunflowers
of empathy grow wildly in
the spaces between us

and I’ve heard
that if we remain still

and listen so very closely
these evangelizing sunflowers
will whisper to each of us
a secret we once knew while we
were cooking in the cosmic womb:

“We are all loved equally.”

~ john roedel