Mysticism and Spirituality Circle

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. 

If I say the word God, people run away. 
They’ve been frightened–sat on ’till the spirit cried “uncle.” 
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name. 
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found, 
But there is all this stuff in the way. 

I can’t talk about God and make any sense, 
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense. 
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God. I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God. 
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur, 
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death. 
You see there the consequences of carelessness, 
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived. 
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh. 

We don’t build many temples anymore. 
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained. 
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building. 
Buildings crumble. 
It’s the spirit that lives on. 

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart, 
What would you worship there? 
What would you bring to sacrifice? 
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies? 

Go there now. 

~ Tom Barrett ~  

(Keeping in Touch)

Please enjoy this practice from Fr. Richard Rohr’s Action and Contemplation blog.

It uses the Christ Jesus, but it works equally well if you wish to substitute Buddha, Mohammed (PBUH), Vishnu, Quan Yin, Atman, or simply all-present energy.

Practice: Word Becomes Flesh

I invite you to read these Daily Meditations contemplatively, going deeper than the mental comprehension of words, using words to give answers or solve immediate problems and concerns.Contemplation is waiting patiently.It does not insist on quick closure, pat answers, or simplistic judgments, which have more to do with egoic, personal control than with a loving search for truth.

Try reading the following ideas in a contemplative way:

Christ is everywhere.

In him every kind of life has a meaning and a solid connection.

Every life has an influence on every other kind of life.

Jesus Christ came to earth so that “they all may be one” (John 17:21) and “to reconcile all things in himself, everything in heaven and everything on earth” (Colossians 1:20).

Pick one idea and linger with it. Focus on the words until they engage your body, your heart, your awareness of the physical world around you, and most especially your core connection with a larger field. Sit with the idea and, if need be, read it again until you feel its impact, until you can imagine its larger implications for the world, for history, and for you. (In other words, until “the word becomes flesh”!)

Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe(Convergent Books: 2019), 4, 7, 8.

A Brave And Startling Truth 

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet 
Traveling through casual space 
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns 
To a destination where all signs tell us 
It is possible and imperative that we learn 
A brave and startling truth 
And when we come to it 
To the day of peacemaking 
When we release our fingers 
From fists of hostility 
And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

***
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet 
Whose hands can strike with such abandon 
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living 
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness 
That the haughty neck is happy to bow 
And the proud back is glad to bend 
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction 
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

When we come to it 
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body 
Created on this earth, of this earth 
Have the power to fashion for this earth 
A climate where every man and every woman 
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety 
Without crippling fear 

When we come to it 
We must confess that we are the possible 
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world 
That is when, and only when 
We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~   (A Brave and Startling Truth)

This is a meditation created by and for children, but it is a sweet meditation that can be done easily and by anyone. Highly recommended.

Here’s a YouTube of a teacher reading about this meditation:

From our dear Jamal Rachman

Starlings in Winter 

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings, dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star

that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again;
and you watch
and you try

but you simply can’t imagine how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life. 

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it; 

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard.  I want 

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings. 

~ Mary Oliver ~ 

(Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)