Category Archives: Spirit

Eastering

02 Thursday Jun 2022

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“Practice resurrection.”

Wendell Berry, “Manifesto:A Mad Farmer’s Liberation Front”

I have long thought of Easter as one time annual celebration, when in fact this year I have clung to the liturgical season, Eastertide, lasting from Easter Day six weeks until the coming of Pentecost, which this year comes next Sunday. This season is also contiguous with a host of our family celebrations–some significant birthdays, an important graduation, Mothers’ Day, and the opening of parade of visitors from out of state, feeling free to move around the country again.

This year the season has also coincided with a string of tragic and poignant events in the world and out country: war in Ukraine, an early start to hurricane season, long lasting fires, the continuing trajectories, up and down, of COVID, mass shootings, and personal losses, hurts and slights. So to be “eastering,” for me has been to keep learning to look for signs of new life, to dare to risk new life in my own dailiness, to celebrate them, while at the same time grieving for the individuals and communities and states and environment of the world that God made.

My “eastering” observations became the noticing over the whole six weeks of Eastertide of the slow, sweet ways in which life, new life, was emerging in dailiness and usual experiences of those I met (primarily on-line or in written communiques). I saw the process of mourning become one of resolution and deep gratitude. I watched hope deepen, windows of the soul open, new identities claimed, in spite of the grief and horror all around. There was slow healing in body and Spirit taking place. And there was a letting go of “old stories” that no longer were useful. I was amazed to see energy given to finding community, working for justice and peace. I loved the witness of those who are persisting in hope, reaching out to and for those who are ill-treated, neglected, oppressed and excluded. And it all happened right along side the terrible things!

I will honor the celebration of the coming of the Spirit this weekend, but recognize that She has been at work all along, teaching, healing, encouraging, giving wisdom and power. For my part in this turn into this extraordinary, Ordinary Time, I am brought back to this word of wisdom from Marvin Hiles that I have carried with me for many years:

To live sweetly in the bitter day,

to shape beauty among the grotesque,

to exult in the littles and to declare in the midst of brokenness a wholeness that comes now and ultimately!

May the Spirit descend on me and all of us to empower the quiet work of “eastering!”

Spirit, Where She Wills

24 Monday May 2021

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The Spirit lands where it wills…

I have been waiting for Pentecost, the day when the Church celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit. As many of the other liturgical landmarks in this past season, the actual time and place of celebration has felt ambiguous and amorphous. will the Church gather? where and when? Will people congregate or continue to sit with their screens and watch from afar?

With those questions in my heart, I began to pay attention to the way the Spirit has made Her presence known in my quotidian life already, since it is my conviction that the Spirit is already here, everywhere, in everyone, and Pentecost is the simply day when we celebrate it together. As I cast my eyes over my daily meanderings, I remembered the mornings when I woke with real energy to make something happen, the afternoons when I rested in peacefulness, despite the chaotic winds in the world around me, and the healing of past hurts and slights that I recognized has come to my hearts and soul over time. This is Spirit in my life! I celebrated the acts of courage and wisdom that I have witnessed in the lives of people I know and those far away, who do justice, love, mercy and walk humbly with the Holy One. I reveled in the grace and beauty of those who step up to the moment to bring resolution to sticky situations. The Spirit at work! I made notes of words of wisdom, breadth of perspective, that were spot on. And I mused with joy at the Mystery of ways being made where there had seemed to be no way. Again, the Spirit on the move!

All spring our reminder of last year’s joyful hummingbird family remained on top of our wind chimes in the patio, an empty nest. And although we had been told that a hummingbird will return to her nest, ours remained vacant, even when two other nests attached themselves to our rafters around Easter time. But then! the night before the date of Pentecost, there she was! Last year’s Mother Hummingbird, feathering, then sitting on her nest., exactly where she had left it last year! I am overjoyed! She’s not a traditional dove. as picture in so much sacred art, but she represents to me the beauty and surprise of the Holy Spirit–coming when she is ready, adjusting her normal warp speed to the constancy of still presence to the eggs beneath her as they grow and become who they will be.

The pastor preached yesterday: Pentecost is an ongoing event; it is a constant filling… I know that to be true! And how grateful I am for the particular images of the Spirit’s presence–moving, sitting still, surprising, nourishing, energizing–and giving wisdom and beauty as she does so! Blessed Pentecost!

A Prayer for Energy

31 Sunday May 2020

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You will receive Power…

Come, Holy Spirit!

Today we as a community acknowledge Your Presence in, among and through us! Our life and breath is dependent on You! So much of our own thought and action relies on You! Yet, my prayer today is in particular for that power, that energy, that is promised in Your coming.

I feel out of power, out of energy. This calendar year has brought a sequence of personal physical recovery, a worldwide pandemic, the dissolution of familiar landmarks and institution, the continual barrage of misdeeds and violence, the overlay of great gray loss of trust in process, in fairness, in justice. So today I ask that once again I will be infused with an awareness of Your power in me for the days in which I am living:

  • I need energy to continue to shelter in place, to be vigilant about protecting others and myself from the virulent virus that has swept through the globe.
  • I need energy to keep imagining ways for me to contribute to the healing of the world from the limitations of my age and stage, from confinement, from my location of privilege, with my shortcomings and inadequacies.
  • I need energy to listen deeply and continually to the pain–individual and collective–of the suffering of people I love, those given to my care and the many sectors of the community who have no helper, no advocate, no voice.
  • I need energy to reach out to those who are lonely, isolated, without a community, to bring the gifts of hope, grace and love to them that reflects Your love and presence to them.
  • I need energy to trust that with You there will be a way that “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

Come, Holy Spirit, breathe on me, breathe in me, give me Your power and energy for the living of these days!

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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GreatGrayness

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!

 

 

 

 

Mothering Spirit

19 Saturday May 2018

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Betsysrainbowquilt                  Betsysmourningquilt

I am right between Mother’s Day and Pentecost. Our pastor gave a trenchant sermon last week on the “mothering” aspects of the Holy, taken from the first story of the creation, allowing that to neglect the feminine force of God means we are missing out on part Hebrew word, Ruach, Spirit, present at the creation. This week we are anticipating celebrating Ruach once again, this time when She came visibly and audibly on the gathered ones to create a community called Church.

I am wondering what is particular about the Mothering Spirit this week. Our new-ish hymnal gives many choices:

  • Mothering Spirit, nurturing one/in arms of patience hold me close. (Jean Janzen, 1991)
  • Womb of life and source of being, home of every restless heart,/ in your arms the world’s awakened, you have loved us from the start. (Ruth Duck, 1986)
  • Like a mother you enfold me, hold my life within your own…(Shirley Erena Murray, 1986)

As a daughter and as a mother and grandmother, I recognize what it is like both to give and receive that kind of care. However, I must say in honesty that that kind of care was not only offered by  women, or by mothers. I have been graced to receive it from surprising places, from unpredictable places.

So what is it? In conversation with a friend this week, we tried to identify one who embodied a mothering Spirit in our faith journeys. Our attention fell naturally and the easily on the woman who had been our spiritual director for many years, Betsy, whose “Rainbow Quilt” and “Mourning Quilt” are attached. Words like Grace, hospitality, welcome, wisdom, joy, creativity, bubbled up between us. But more than anything else was the sense that she saw us and knew us for who and what we are and loved with unconditional graceful regard, without judgement, categorization or label. That was evident in many ways, and led me to recall others who have “mothered” me along the way.

In the days that followed I am thinking of other persons of mothering spirit:

  • a college counselor who took delight in me and imagined my future accomplishments
  • a pastor who was not threatened by my questioning struggle, but challenged me to pursue being all I was meant to be
  • a couple in my church who subsidized a trip to my first Christian feminist conference when I was a new mother of two small children
  • that one who sat with me as I wept over a deep, deep loss
  • that one who saw my mistake and helped me try over again
  • the one who taught me certain kinds of knowledge and skills with patience, always believing I could do it
  • the ones who listened without censoring to my stories, sometimes over and over again

So as I prepare to celebrate the Holy Spirit tomorrow, who gave birth to the Church and to all people, I am grateful for all the “mothering” I have had, whether it came from a man or a woman, an elder or child or peer, from a source I had hoped for or a complete surprise. All of them were holy. All in that moment saw me for who I was right then, and all were cheering me forward. I am blessed by that Mothering, and I want continue to keep Mothering, in Spirit and in Truth!

 

Come. Holy Spirit

04 Sunday Jun 2017

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Come. Holy Spirit! Today we celebrate your presence in our lives, in the Church and in the world.

I pray to meet you in the depth of my heart where I am so prone to fear and anxiety, so quick to forget that I am committed to Hope, to Love, intending to believing and acting on the principle that “all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

I pray to let you heal me–body and spirit–of those wounds and scars that are left over from old memories, early traumas and the hurts and slights that keep popping up in the course of my daily rounds.

I pray to feel your energy surging in my recovering body, in my brain that too often forgets things these days, in my praying spirit that bogs down with the enormity and complexity of this sad world.

I pray to allow your wildness keep opening my heart to finding ways when there seems to be no way, to taking in the most unlikely ones who cross my path, to putting the resources I have to the healing of the fragments of this world where I can make a difference, however small.

I pray for the wounds of so many in so many places, with its accompanying fear that we can’t know where terror will break out next. I pray that You will keep up Your powerful attack on the minds and wills of those who are heartless, greedy and self-serving only, and transform their hearts to ones of compassion and caring. 

I pray for Your Presence in the created world, that as it struggles to survive and thrive, you will teach me how to cooperate with that healing, with Your power to give me words and actions that will preserve and respect the beauty and sustainability of Earth’s resources.

I pray for Your Wisdom for all people of faith as they wrestle to know how to be observant of their commitment to You in times and events that are muddy and messy.

I pray that You, Holy Healer, will touch the bodies and spirits and minds of those who suffer, and where there is despair, replace it with hope and peace.

And for all those areas for which I have words but can’t get them out, and for those things deep inside me for which I have no words, Spirit, turn them into creative and cogent expressions of my heart to the Holy–for what is loving. joyful, peaceful, kind and generous, and faithful in my walking and talking, singing and dancing, working and giving, hoping and living each day with imagination, energy and love.

Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

 

 

 

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Points of Sorrow: Valleys and Shadows

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in compassion, dryness, grief, Lent, sanctuary, Spirit

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I have been comforted on my Lenten journey to encounter Holy Presence in signs and detours and delight. However, I am deeply aware that I am also daily faced with other phenomena: valleys–of the shadow of death, of dry bones, of tears; and of depths–sorrow, fears and despair. I am of that era in my life where news of death, of troubling diagnoses, of unbearable losses are so regular that they are almost routine. Not a day goes by without another request for prayer–for the world, for the nation, for the Church, and for people who are loved and cherished. And so I travel the Lenten way on a road of mourning as well as rejoicing.

The “valley of the shadow of death” becomes more real to me each year. I have been helped greatly by reading the two volumes by Marilyn Chandler McEntryre for those traveling in that valley, those who are facing death themselves, A Faithful Farewell,
and for those losing someone they love, A Long Letting Go. The author herself, no stranger to grief, gives some perspective, some comfort and some practical helps is the process of mourning:

To mourn is to open ourselves to comfort, which is a unique dimension of love. To mourn is to make our sorrow hospitable to those who are willing to enter into it…Our work is to accept the sorrow, to live it, to suffer it, and finally in humility to let it be drenched in the healing waters of love that come to us from as many sources as we allow–great wells of it, great waves of it, and daily infusions from old friends and from strangers who may be angels sent to walk us through the valley of the shadow. (A Long Letting Go,pp. 84-85)

Part of my Lenten journey is to do this work of mourning, on behalf of those whom I have lost, and on behalf of those who are in the valley of the shadow themselves right now. Yesterday I heard of two more friends who have lost parents, always a turning point in each person’s life. I now know that grieving is holy work, an important piece of giving sanctuary to those I am given in the world.

Others within my ken can only see a Valley of Dry Bones when they look at our world–few life givers, few Spirit breathers, few points of Light. I resonate with that. If I only read headlines, banners and listen to sound bites, I know that dry bones might be all that I could see also. But I feel strongly that even as I look at the Truth, with as much clarity as I can, I must point to and witness to a bigger reality than the current state of things in the universe, the nations, the Church, even in the microcosms of deadness in our personal lives. I believe that in God’s providence, there are no final defeats. Therefore, I plant myself in that reality as a starting place on my Lenten journey, and then pray, as I weep over the Valley of Dry Bones, that the Spirit will breathe Life back into them. I ask also what my part will be in that; to whom do I speak? to whom do I give? am I invited to bear witness in a way that is public and noticeable?

And with those whose losses can seem less tangible, less noticeable, less dramatic, but who like the Psalmist have experienced that “tears have been my food day and night, while people say continually, ‘Where is your God?'”, I am to be a friend listening to their truth with respect and without judgement, and without letting their sorrow become my sorrow, only holding them with compassion and hope.

These valleys and shadows are not the easiest part of the Lenten journey. And once again I turn to a British hymn set to a French carol:

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 that riseth green.                                               (John Crum, 1928)

I hold this as I continue on my Lenten way, for those I have lost, for those I love, and for myself.

 

 

Personal photo of street art in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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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

Blessed is She Who Believed

02 Saturday Apr 2016

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

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Betsy'sQuist

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!