A Springtime Prayer

As we head into Easter this year I know more than a few of us are longing for more vibrant signs of spring. I am looking out the window of my office at a cherry tree that has only a few buds popping out. Even this treeIt seems to be looking longingly at the sky for any sign of the warmth that would cause it to bust forth with spring time joy! So this morning I offer a prayer from Joyce Rupp.

A Springtime Prayer

Ever-renewing and energizing Creator,

come, stir in my dormant spiritual limbs.

Wake up my tired prayer.

Revive my weary efforts of care.

Sing hope into my discouragement.

Wash my dusty, drab attitude

with the cleansing rains of your vision.

Go deep to my roots and penetrate my faith

with the vibrancy of your grace.

Shake loose the old leftover oak leaves

of my tenacious ego-centerdness.

Coax joy to sprout from my difficulties.

Warm the buds of my relationships

so they bloom with healthy love.

Clear out my wintered debris

with the wild breeze of your liberating presence.

Nudge me, woo me, entice me, draw me to you.

I give you my trust and my gratitude

as you grace my slowly thawing spirit.

Light-filled Being, my Joy and my Hope,

let the greening in me begin!

- Joyce Rupp

Winding Down

Lately my life has felt pretty much unretired, or maybe just tired!  It gets that way sometimes - I tell myself it has to - and I let it happen.  I know it will calm down in time, again.  So when the reminder came from Brenda “It’s your turn” I went to my book shelves, since my spirit felt too frenzied in the midst of the stuff I’ve been about today.  Pretty quickly I found the reminder I need in the midst of the “stuff” of today.  Maybe you need it too.  If you do - then we might spend some time “together in spirit” with the truth of these words from the wisdom of Ann Weems:

We run around the world and church

like wound-up toys,

looking for a way to get to Easter

without reading the instructions.

When we wind down,

we lie on the floor

on our faces,

unable to move.

Perhaps, in the still and the silence,

God will give us the courage

to see our souls

and give us the chance

once more

to choose Life:

faith, rather than frenzy.

Choose life!  I’d say also, choose love!  God is always loving us with a love that is strong beyond our imagining, refreshing as gentle rain on the parched earth, near as the air that holds us and fills us. 

God invites us to be still, and know this love is ours... and rest in this love.

Soak it up!

Just Be!

Sharon Copeman

So Much is in the Bud

Like Treena’s picture of the Balance Rock that has captured her Lenten imagination… a reading by John Leax has captured mine. 

John lives on a small farm in New York State and teaches writing at Houghton College. There is never enough time to do all the work on the farm, and the old orchard, planted long ago by someone on a hillside, is neglected and overgrown. One day John was driving through the large, carefully groomed orchards of central Ontario, and found himself vaguely depressed by the endless rows of well-ordered trees. He reflected on his feeling, and on the sense of being at home in his own little, poorly tended orchard. “Why was that?” he wondered. It had to do, he finally concluded, with the way a small orchard fits into the scheme of creation, with many people caring for their tiny plots of ground. The huge orchards of the conglomerates, on the other hand, were sad reminders of the commercialization of the land.

"Perhaps this is why," he wrote "though I feel my failure to bring the old orchard to fruitfulness, I feel no real guilt, why in fact I feel a sort of pleasure in watching it turn wild and useless. When I walk in it, it tells me that one's caring comes to an end. It tells me that life is lived within the boundaries of extremes, of wildness and domestication. It tells me that my order is not the only order. And in its message I feel comfort."

"We have only begun 

to imagine the fullness of life.

  How could we tire of hope? 

         So much is in the bud."

~ Denise Levertov

 photo taken March, 2007

Rebellion dogs

There’s a line in the AA Big Book that I love, that speaks of the difficulty of staying on a spiritual path: Rebellion dogs our every step.

I recently spent time as a rebellion dog.

Don’t ask me why—I could give you reasons galore; but the fact of the matter is one day last week I stopped meditating, stopped praying, stopped eating my vegetables. These are the outward signs, if you like, of inward resistance.

And then one day I stopped stopping and got back at it, started doing all the things that actually make me happy and cause me to feel like part of the human race.

Yesterday I ran into a woman who was dithering about going to a meditation workshop. She told me, I am undisciplined and can’t maintain a practice.

My answer to that was, So what? That’s what it is to be a human. We stop, we start; we rebel, we return. I believe that my deepest work is to RESIST judging myself about this. Engaging in judgment, feeling like a pile of poo about myself, is the best way I know to prevent my return to practice. To close out the love of God.

So if you, like me, are feeding the rebellion dogs these days, why not come on back to yourself with gentleness, tenderness, and forgiveness? After all, that’s the Christian message, isn’t it?

Therese

Enlightenment !?

Lent is about enlightenment.

Not about privation or hardship, we already have those in abundance!

The human condition we live with is a state of disconnection from God, ourselves and others. A shadowed world which has us convinced that we see clearly, but we “see through a glass darkly”. Privation and hardship in abundance, and we don’t see it.

Jesus heals a man blind from birth (John 9). The Pharisees (and there is that in each of us) are rigid and legalistic, preferring their ‘sighted’ world. Clear evidence that they were ‘blind’ spiritually. (9:41)

These ‘Catch 22’ realities become a glimpse of Jesus as the way, or path, out of the dilemma of our human condition. The only way out is on the path taken by the one born blind.

I suggest you read the story again, attending to the qualities of humility in that disciple.

How do you bring those attitudes to your spiritual discipline? Even if only for a moment!

-Knowing you see in the dim light of self, rather than in the radiance of Jesus.

-Having the desire to wait in simple attentiveness.

And the amazing result is that we will not only ‘see’, but will become light.

“... but anything (eg our blindness) exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated becomes light. That is why it is said

‘Wake up from your sleep,

rise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you’ “

(Eph 5:13,14 italics added)

Choose (and do!) your spiritual practice with the awareness that it is ‘waking you up’.

I find that Centering Prayer is doing this in me. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes not, but it is working.

And this story from Anthony deMello in “One minute nonsense” p.48

‘The Master always taught that Truth was right before our eyes and the reason we did not see it was our lack of perspective.

Once he took a disciple on a mountain trip. When they were halfway up the mountain the man glared at the underbrush and complained, “Where’s the beautiful scenery you are always talking about?”

The Master grinned. “You are standing on top of it, as you will see when we reach the peak.” ‘