Category Archives: gratitude

Beautiful!

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in beauty, grace, gratitude, Spirit, Uncategorized

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BeautifulCambriaWe heard the word Ugliness and have been seeing it demonstrated over and over in the last weeks on the national political scene. Even the most experienced and enlightened are nonplussed at best, and most are horrified at the behavior and language choices on display in what is supposed to be the center of reasonable and moral leadership in our country. It is hard to overcome Ugliness–visually and aurally and emotionally–once we have encountered it. But I believe that Beauty is one way we can resist, defy and countermand that ugliness we meet.

Older versions of Hebrew Scripture tell us that God made everything Beautiful in its own time (Eccl. 3:11). So, I am seeking ways, in this time where so much Ugliness abounds, to see Beauty, to celebrate it and to share it. In this week of Thanksgiving I am cataloging Beauty as I find it:

  • the music of Bach sung last night by the Los Angeles Master Chorale, “The Magnificat”
  • the stalks of 12 white bearded iris that greeted me when arrived home from my trip last week
  • the complete absorption in singing “Count You Blessings” by the little girl at the end of the row in the Children’s Choir
  • the elegant and startling prose of Gretel Ehrlich as she invites me into a part of our country that is unfamiliar to me
  • each step of newly minted personhood that each grandchild is taking he and she become who they are meant to be
  • the sunset on Cayucos Beach, as I am wrapped up in sweatshirt and blanket
  • the outpouring of generosity and caring and love that neighbors, friends and strangers are proffering to those devastated by fire and disaster
  • the memories of a high school friend who left us this week–her joie de vivre, her persistence, her luminous laughter
  • the faces of those with whom I sit weekly who are intently listening and looking for Spirit presence in their life
  • the dignity and grace with which some participants in political striving carry out their calling, despite so much opposition

As I write I feel that the list is endless!!! Thanks be to God!

In an unexpected synergy of friendship and celebration, I was able to see the musical “Beautiful,” telling the story of songwriter and singer Carole King through her music. The title anthem has become my marching song in this season of celebration, deep grieving, of resistance, of call to be Light in the world:

You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile in your face,

and show the world all the love in your heart.

Then people gonna treat you better; you’re gonna find (yes, you will)

that you’re beautiful as you feel.

As the Beauty of the Holy One fills me with this invitation, I can be an increasingly potent antidote to the  ugliness that seeps through the waves of of communication and discourse in our world. May I be given the Grace to be Beautiful in this season..and always!

 

 

 

 

May Gray

01 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in beauty, darkness, gratitude, Light, paying attention, shadow, Spirit, Uncategorized

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We are accustomed to June gloom in Southern California, but this year we also have had May Gray! The skies are overcast from the time we wake up until midday or beyond. We get an inkling of the intimations of mood that those who live in more northern climes experience, and how it can affect their dispositions with seasonal affective disorder syndrome. It seems symbolic of the times in which we are living as well.

The news is full of doom for the vulnerable and gloom for the faithful who are wounded by the insensitivity and cruelty of others. Headlines are made daily about the disappearance of of familiar places and institutions, and the imagined replacements with something more new and shiny. Lovely, friendly people are stricken with accidents and ailments that are game changers in their daily sojourn. The outlook is not rosy.

One of my favorite children’s books is by Arnold Lobel called The Great Blueness. A wizard lives in a town in which all is gray, covered with the Great Grayness. He is sure that this is a sign that something is wrong, so he descends to his gray cellar to see if he can concoct something that will remedy this. By mixing, probing and experimenting with what he already knows and has, he discovers first blue, then yellow, the red, one at a time, all of which he shares with the town to their amazement and delight. They discover shade and hue, brightness, passion and energy with the diversity of colors. They even find that they can take the colors to mix and discover new colors and shades and tints, bringing variety and contrast. all parts of life that they can experience.

That story has prompted me to dig and delve in my own cellar of provenance, words and images which have been life-saving to me in the past–from sacred texts, from mentors and companions, from practices which I have put aside for awhile. What can I recover and put to use in the Grayness that surrounds me and our world? What mixture of resources can i call on to give me imagination, energy and love to brighten the Grayness in others? I am dusting off my gratitude journal to begin with, prompting me to pay attention every day to the gifts that surround me. I am perusing the Psalms yet another time, finding both voices that articulate the Grayness and voices that bring color to the  Hope that in in process of coming true.

And I learn from the wizard in that Gray Town that color is not mine to hoard and keep for myself alone, but it is to be shared with others, so that they can find their own combination of colors that lightens their Grayness and keeps them going when the gloom seems to be winning. I am so grateful to live in the ages of rapid connection through phone, internet, social media, that allows me to respond to and share with those given to me the colors that have brightness and glory and beauty.

Today turned to June, and I expect we can see some June Gloom on some days. But I feel more hopeful that I can wend my way thought that gloom and the other days with the colorful practices that keep me tethered to the Holy One and keep me energized by the Spirit to share hope and love with others. The Grayness cannot overcome the light ultimately! Thanks be to God!

 

 

 

 

Change and Decay

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in change, darkness, gratitude, grief, Hope, Uncategorized

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-I go to my appointment, and the pipe shop that has been on the opposite corner for as long as I can remember is boarded up and fenced in.

-The sandwich place next to the coffee shop has gone out of business, and the department store I counted on has moved to another mall.

Much worse then all of these are the images of destruction by mudslides of parts of  the sacred retreat center where I have gone so many years on pilgrimage. I grieve for what was, what was dear and holy.

And since the festival season, there have been so many losses: death of a colleague, a neighbor, the spouse of a college friend, a former parishoner.

And the world, the nation! How hard to fathom what they seem to have come to!

Changes, changes changes! it’s been said that we as humans experience all change as loss. And I am feeling it this January! With each medical appointment, I feel the loss of what I used to be. With each encounter in the faith community, I am aware that we are in  liminal place with unclear agendas and sensibilities. With each report on the news, I see time-held axioms of thought and behavior disappear, some for the worse, and irreparable loss of public lands, public generosity and public civility.

So I am pressed to know how to navigate each day when there are so many variables before me. I find that I need to fall back on some organic principles of Spirit with more attention and intention in these days:

–Give my grief all of its due, but only its due. Etty Hillesum challenges us to remember that it is a “spiritual bypass” to go straight to counting blessings when we have not grieved the loss. I mourn the loss of people and places that gave me life and love. I remember wistfully the ways and means of comfort and compassion I have experienced. I lament the destruction that lays waste our planet and that thoughtlessly removes the beautiful and the good. I cling to the Word that my tears are precious to the Holy One.

–Give thanks for what is blossoming and healing. My border of white irises has not ceased to be in bloom, one plant after another, since early November. There is a new one every morning. And God’s mercies are new every morning, if I am paying attention. Random  and intentional acts of kindness still abound. Fred Rogers has reminded us that in times of catastrophe, we are to look for the helpers to see the presence of the Holy One. They are everywhere–the ones who welcome the displaced, the ones who give rides, the ones who provide food, the ones who go more than one extra mile, but tens and hundreds of extra steps to care for others, those who give generously over and over for the healing and preservation of the world and its fragile ones.

–Give room for the Light to shine in. If I focus only on the reports of doom and gloom, of murder and mayhem, my own heart gets clouded, or “rubbled over”, as Jurgen Moltmann says. So I need to keep practice looking for the “cracks when the Light gets in” and make them a little wider. I celebrate the one who sat by the bedside of the dying one, so she could go in peace. I delight in the one who has learned to turn away anger with a soft answer. I rejoice in those who at great cost give themselves to generosity and thoughtfulness. And I cheer for those who are willing to speak truth to power, to affirm the good and call out the evil when it appears.

Things will change, they always have. In this world many institutions, places I hold sacred, precious relationships will fade and decay. However, as long as I have life and breath, I need to remain one who hopes, who engenders hope in others, and celebrates the reality that with the Holy One there are no final defeats.

Change and decay in all around I see/ O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

 

 

 

Traveling with Saints

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in gratitude, Light, open heart, saints, Uncategorized

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I am getting ready to honor All Saints Day this coming week, and I usually begin with a litany of saints who have gone before me into the unseen vistas of eternity–family members, teachers. pastors, friends and soul mates, heroines and heroes. But this year I am aware of all the saints with whom I come in contact daily, weekly and episodically. My definition this year of a saint is someone who brings Light (to borrow from Leonard Cohen) though the cracks in everything, cracks of grief, abuse, venality, hopelessness. And there are many!

A few keep popping up:

  • the soloist who gave embodiment to the human grief as she sang “Lacrymosa” from a contemporary Requiem
  • the newly widowed faithful partners as they navigate their way into a new normal with gravity and grace
  • the caregivers who show up to comfort, clean up and be present to those whom they are called to love
  • the neighborhood conscience who keeps us from tripping on sidewalks and losing our mail
  • those who arrive on the doorstep with flowers or coffee bread or just a “hi” when days are bleak
  • the one who always at the drop of a hat says, “Come on in!”
  • the place holder in the pew where she as always sat for years, through pastoral changes, political wrangling and waning societal interest in “religion”
  • the poet who sees, then articulates, the beauty of the created world and calls us to celebrate
  • the persistent one who tenaciously refuses to collapse into despair, even with diminishing strength and agility
  • each one who stands up to bullying, whether it occurs around a dinner table, a private office, or a public arena
  • the writers for hope and justice–in blog, book and op-ed pieces, who keep calling me to Live Into Hope
  • the preacher who faithfully speaks the truth in love–transparently, courageously, in spite of slings and arrows of cranks and critics
  • the children who remain delighted with Halloween, bugs and dogs and soccer games, no matter the weather–political or meteorological
  • and, after Mr. Rogers, the helpers, the ones who see what needs doing and do it, after calamity, after tragedy, in ordinary time.

I am so grateful to be aware of the saints who course around me like a stream of mercy never ceasing, even as I am grateful for the saints who have gone on ahead–who saw in me things I could not see, then allowed me to become all I was meant to be. I am grateful for the saints who always allowed the Light in, no matter the cracks in everything that I could see, without “spiritual bypass,” without rigidity and judgmentalism, without giving up. I intend to be one too!

 

Christmas Joy!

25 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in beauty, Christmas, earth, gratitude, joy, Light

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Anne Sexton proclaims that there is Joy in all! What more evidence can there be than the blossoming of five irises, with at least five to come amid the long-desired rainfall that appeared in these last days of Advent! Christmas comes replete with tidings of comfort and Joy in the arrival of the Baby Jesus, who at this celebrated moment is only a hope, a possibility and a dream! And I have done all that I can, both to make my beloved ones comfortable and Joyful, and to enter into the Joy myself, sometimes with mixed success. Yet the signs of Hope throughout Advent have kept pushing me to stay awake to the places and ways which, in the words of C, S. Lewis, “…cheerfulness keeps breaking in!”

The signs and the blooms of Joy on this day are everywhere–children singing loudly, even on key, the old Christmas carols with open hearts and wide eyes; thoughtful and prophetic pastors who don’t settle for the same old/same old messages and routine; caring friends who acknowledge my limitations this year, and come round in message or person anyway; posts from those who are feeding the hungry, expanding their giving on behalf of the vulnerable, writing and marching for both justice and mercy for the little ones.

Yet, many among my acquaintances want to make sure that I know that there are many for whom Joy is not readily accessible, and I am deeply aware of that. Hospitalizations, freak accidents, sudden losses, fractures of personal connections that can’t seem to heal, all make Joy a slippery commodity. And the “weary world!” Good grief! what can we say to the callousness, the arrogance, the brutality and the self-absorption that makes up the Slough of Despond through which we are muddling these days!

I submit once again the Joy–the Joy that is heralded by the angels–is not connected to the era in which we live, the location we inhabit, our status within or without families, even our body’s frailty. It is a gift from the Holy One, reflecting that above, around and through all we are created by God. The write of the Psalms remind us that in Holy Presence is fullness of Joy (Psalm 16:11). Two themes go throughout sacred testament–1) Joy is gift of God, even as it was when Christ was born, and 2) humans have the capacity to choose it, even when they are in dire straits and unhappy. I cannot choose for anyone else, but  I can make it my aim in my quest to keep the Light shining to choose joy. Karl Barth says, ” Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”

And so on this Christmas Day I again commit myself to choosing and practicing Joy–in the healing process my body is in, in the disappointment in what people do and don’t do, among the miasma of doomsday prognosticators–Joy because in Holy Presence is fullness of joy, and Christmas comes to tell me that the Christ will never leave or forsake. That belief and ground in Joy is what keeps me centered when I am called to lobby for mercy for the poor, to protest injustice for the displaced, to advocate for those who do not have the privilege I have as a white, heterosexual person with education. .

Joy to the world…God has come and given me power to share and spread that Joy!

 

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The Turn of the Year

06 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in beauty, body, creation, grace, gratitude, Mindfulness, Mystery, paying attention, presence

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Two years ago as the season turned from summer to fall, I was driving through Colorado and northern New Mexico, and saw the stunning harbingers of the season in the forests of aspens.

plazaresort

Last year as the summer became fall I was on the west coast of Florida to see my children, the beauty of a completely different order, serenity of a different hue and promise.

These summer and fall seasons I have felt sidelined from the turning of the season because of surgery and recovery. I watch as the children go back to school through my front window. I follow the many adventures of my friends and colleagues as they take their sojourns to exciting or exotic locations. I notice that committees and kick-off events are happening without me. Since here in Southern California there are not critical changes in the weather, I look up our current predictions for the day, all usually well within the temperate zone, which tell me that Fall has come.

But my focus is here where I am, with the resources that I have this moment, looking over the place where I have been planted.

backyardlabyrnth

It is a lovely place, a place of stability that I have been given to savor and to share, even as the world turns. It has many moments of deep stillness, a capacity to invite and enjoy host of beloved ones or just one. I have a window to the street and another window to the sunrise. Many birds visit, along with our dog, the squirrels and the occasional unwelcome possum. I live in God’s world, as well as God’s season, God’s time, God’s rhythm. I have been reminded again in this season of relative confinement that it is all Grace, and that the only appropriate response to Grace is gratitude–for bringing me safe this far–in Love, in Beauty, in Joy. So let the season turn–in me, around me!

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A Simple Song

14 Sunday Aug 2016

Posted by in beauty, blessing, gratitude, listening, presence, singing

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Too much happening to create complex songs. Singing in snatches from the x-ray machine, the waiting room, the middle pew, the far bedroom, the backyard; but the singing must continue! “Sing a simple song,” writes Leonard Bernstein in his Mass.

Simple songs this week:

“Safe am I, in the shelter of God’s love…”

“Bless the beasts and the children…”

“Wait for the Lord..”

“…lost in wonder, love and praise.”

“You have called me by name, and I am yours.”

“Loving God, here I am…”

And so I keep singing–a little off-key, a little shakily, but singing nevertheless.

Bernstein also added the line, “Make it up as you go along…God loves a simple song.” This week my songs will take place inside me with a neighbor, with a visiting friend, with a line-up of doctors and other care-givers, probably with hospital staff, with family and friends far and near by media of various kinds, but the song must go on in me–for my sake, for the sake of those I love, for the world’s sake, and for God’s sake

Singing a simple song:

 

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The Green Spirit

15 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in blessing, creation, earth, gratitude, Mystery, reflection, refreshment, renewal, Spirit

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images-4And so Pentecost comes! Traditionally the liturgical colors are red with yellow, reflecting the fire that alighted on the heads of the faithful in Act’s story of that event, signifying the illumination and power of the Holy Spirit. But Maren Tirabassi, contemporary liturgist and prophet, has called our attention to the fact that in some circumstances, this year, for instance, flame and wind are not positive and encouraging symbols; in the case of the horrendous fire in Alberta, Canada, and in other places around our planet, fire is only a force for destruction and devastation. So she in her winsome and provocative blog, Gifts In Open Hands, has lifted up other metaphors for the Holy Spirit. Her musings immediately pointed me to that earlier medieval liturgist and prophet, Hildegard of Bingen.

From one of her visions Hidegard sees God declare:

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green…I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grass to laugh with joy of life…I am the yearning for the good.

It is the greenness of the Spirit I am longing for this year. Dr. Rebecca Button Prichard in her book Sensing the Spirit (Chalice Press, 1999), says:

The Spirit of greenness is visible in a way that transcends metaphor, analogy and imagery. The Creativity that causes leaves to unfold and buds to flower is the Creator Spirit, the One who broods over creation still. (50)

So many people and places in life I encounter need the greening from the Spirit inside to bring life back, to bring healing throughout, to spring back into fruitful encounter with the Holy and the world. And I feel the need of it in places in me. I often pray that poetic voice of T.S. Eliot, “Oh, thou Lord of Life, send my roots rain!”

I am looking at new plantings of a more drought resistant grass in the small patch of lawn in my back yard. They are bright green as they take root, and they need much less water than our previous sward. They remind me of places where I would invite the Spirit to bring her nurture into greenness–my energy for coming alongside others, my patience for sitting still and listening as the Holy One speaks, my perseverance in doing those things that will bring good for others, now and in the future, my openness to hearing, seeing and sensing what is new. I would love my life of prayer to become jade green, shining and gem-like in its consistency and beauty. I would like to wander down forest green paths of Mystery that I have not yet discovered. I pray that my encounters with those I meet be bright kelly green, sparking with mutual compassion and  appreciation. The colors of all life will be brightened with a fresh infusion of the greening of the Spirit.

After this Eastertide past with equal shares of Light and Darkness in our world, I find myself needing to sing this hymn for Easter and beyond:

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain, wheat that in the dark  earth many days has lain; love lives again, that with the dead has been: love is come again like wheat arising green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, your touch can call us back to life again; fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green. (John M.C. Crum, 1928)

Come, Holy Spirit, green my heart!

Image created by Marcy Hall for Abbey of the Arts

What Love’s Got to Do With It

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in blessing, gratitude, Love, presence

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On this 49th anniversary of my wedding, I am taking note of how Love looks at this stage of the journey:

  • it is honoring each other’s rhythms of waking and sleeping
  • it is helping the other look for the things that have been lost–glasses, the keys, the list you just had in your hand
  • it is taking the puppy for a walk together almost every morning
  • it is reminding each other that this is the day that the trash goes out, the flowers need watering or the tax bill is due
  • it is taking quick trips to the bakery, bagel store or coffee shop for morning treats
  • it is sharing memes from Facebook with each other
  • it is reading aloud from books that nourish and challenge
  • it allowing the one with the most limber back on that day to unload the bottom shelf of the dishwasher
  • it is laughing aloud at the jokes the other tells, no matter how humorous they are
  • it is reaching those places behind where the other cannot reach to bandage, to scrub, to connect a clasp
  • it is sitting with the other as a silent presence when there is grief too deep for words
  • it is taking naps together in the late afternoon
  • it is making tiny things into the “lark of the week,” like getting new passport pictures taken or discovering the way to get the destination without running into the President’s motorcade
  • it is listening carefully to the words not spoken, that fill up the space
  • it is talking seriously about the unknown ahead without undue fear or anxiety

And so much more. It is a gift,  a gift of Grace and Love. We are having a happy anniversary, and I am very grateful! And with e.e. cummings, as calligraphed by Corita, I am holding it with care.

 

 

Blessed is She Who Believed

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in blessing, gratitude, grief, Spirit, spiritual direction, wisdom

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I sit each morning at my window that faces east toward the rising sun. Behind and  sometimes around me is an antique quilt, passed down to me by Betsy, my spiritual director of nearly 25 years, who died suddenly on Good Friday. She had been in a process of recuperation for the past five months, and we had spoken a few times on the phone, but we had scheduled face to face appointments for the next three months. Instead of seeing her in person, I will be sitting with her spirit in  the space she blessed for me with her generous gift.

She embodied the spiritual director as a Quilter in my life, taking ragged, old pieces of experience and belief, and with skill and patience helped me to envision and live into my own ongoing present life with the Holy, a wholeness, a work of art. We came from differing faith traditions. Initially our callings were very different–mine in public ministry, hers in intimate spiritual direction. Our family systems were a contrast in culture, size and sensibility. Yet from the start we were united in our quest for an intentional life of Spirit.

I have been musing these past days over all that I learned in my hours with Betsy. With the gospel writer I could say that if I were to recall everything, the world itself would not be able to contain it. However, as I grieve and remember, I keep assembling “squares”in the quilt that was gathered together in the years of our shared spiritual journey.

  • She expanded my perception of the spiritual to include the visual arts. We began by using the sand tray, a tool from Jungian psychology which helps the seeker choose objects in her own arrangement that reflect the journey of the soul. I did not feel at all adept in this exercise, but I did begin to see that the material world could be an outer image of my interior one. Then as I risked trying to express my soul in collage, she encouraged me enthusiastically often pointing out things that I had not observed about where my heart was.
  • She did not use the word Grace freely, but for me, she embodied it. Her welcoming presence, her compassionate listening, her gentle course correction when I got tangled up in my own frenzy, sadness and despair, were all manifestations of the Grace of the Holy One. After a life full of experienced judging and criticism, I found a place of Spirit where I was my longings for the Holy One were accepted just the way they  were; she offered more compassion for me than I was able to have for myself.
  • She was generous with her time, her space and her resources. Often after we met she would follow up with a notation on something we had pondered about together or readily loaned a book or resource. I never felt hurried or rushed in her presence, except by my own tight agenda.
  • She exemplified for me what a spiritual director actually was, not someone who “directed,” but someone who accompanied me as my life unfolded, and helped my see how the Spirit might be at work in and through me.
  • She trusted the Holy One implicitly and explicitly, and knew that “all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” When my mother died, she was able to companion me in a way that both acknowledged the loss and gave hope for the days ahead. When I wrestled with the unknowing future, she brought a serenity rooted to the Spirit that allowed me to rest in the unknowing.

She often remarked on the fact that we were two Elizabeths seeking a spiritual path in the Christian tradition together. And in her loss I have peace as I mourn in the words of the Elizabeth in the gospel of Luke, who when entrusted with the momentous event in the life of her cousin Mary who was to be the Christ-bearer, sang with joy: Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of that which was spoken to her by the Lord. (Luke 1:45). Betsy believed that she was in the hands of the Holy One in all parts of her life, and her belief nurtured and nourished my belief. When I sit on my couch each morning, I will believe that Betsy’s life here has been fulfilled, and is still being fulfilled in my own. I am grateful!