Tag Archives: paying attention

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Give Me A Word

14 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in paying attention, Uncategorized, Word

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The ancient spiritual desert dwellers called Ammas, or Abbas, received people who sought them out, and were met with a plea: “Amma, give me a Word!” The Words that came, as they have been collected and handed down, usually came in in a sentence or two, very general, very abstract sometimes, but possibly right to the point of the seekers deepest longing:

  • We carry ourselves wherever we go and we cannot escape temptation by mere flight, Amma Matrona
  • Salvation is exactly this–the two-fold love of God and of our neighbor, Amma Syncletica
  • It is good to give alms for people’s sake. Even if it is done only to please others, through it one can begin to seek to please God, Amma Sarah

I know that many of my friends find it helpful to choose a Word for an entire year that then becomes the plumb line for their discernment and aspiration. Yet, my life and times seem to defy the boundaries of just one word in a year; too many things change, too much is added, too much slips away. So I need to find a Word for the moment in which I find myself. And I am finding it as I go, in many places, forms and tones.

These days I am wishing for a Word, weekly, daily, hourly. There are so many words in the atmosphere–media, conversations, blogs, podcasts, billboards, sermons, radio chatter. The first challenge is to filter out the words that do not fit me or belong to me. I am aware that there is so much information and opinion out there that is not necessary for me, sometimes is even harmful. So the Word I am seeking is one that grounds, nourishes and directs me.

I am hearing it most often these days in poetry:

  • from Bonnie Thurston: We are all healed/in passive voice/and from the inside out.
  • from Belleruth Naparstek: My heart is pierced with gratitude.
  • from David Monteith: Breathe, then share your thoughts/ like paper lanterns on the /river of your breath.

Sometimes it comes in sacred text or liturgy:

  • lift heavy sorrow
  • forgive. forgive yourself.
  • speak the truth in love!

And then there is the Art–from Pompeii before Vesuvius, from our nation Black artists from the 60s forward. There is the natural world–roses abloom again, the ocean, calm and clear, the tree on the block with one branch of red leaves amidst all the green of the rest. These are wordless, yet full of the Word!

So I am learning to look, listen, attend to the Word for the moment whenever and wherever I find myself. These Words came this morning:

  • Pope John XXIII: See everything; overlook a great deal; correct little.
  • Rachel Naomi Remen: May I trust that the way You have made me is the way that is needed.





Those words will get me through this day, possibly tomorrow and a few days after that! The Word is very near! Look, Listen, Open my heart!


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What’s New? Eastertide!
										

			17
			Friday
			May 2019
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in Breath, Easter, Hope, Uncategorized		

		

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I had imagined that that at the beginning of Eastertide, I would be primed to write about the new things that Easter was bringing that made me rejoice. Instead the ensuing days have included a torrent of the unexpected that has required persistence, elasticity and trust in events that were frightening, disheartening and some just sad. So once again I see that Easter is not a magician’s wave of the wand of Resurrection, but a token in trust that after sadness, there is also comfort, after darkness, there is also Light, after despair, there is also Hope. 





Blooming on my deck!





The Hope peeks out in the new flower on my deck that I have never had before, a rock purslane, I am told! Each morning and evening it brings joy to my eyes, reaching down to my heart. I have also encountered Hope in the story of someone who did something never before accomplished, never before achieved, and now done once. I met Hope in a conversation that I entered with fearful trepidation, only to discover that Grace had preceded me, and that the way was open for friendly sharing. I saw Hope shining in the long slow process of healing and curing in one with a tenacious malady. And I saw Hope in the developing growth of wisdom, love and beauty of each of my grandchildren. All new gifts of new life this Eastertide!





I have 3 1/2 weeks of Eastertide to go, plenty of time and opportunity to look for ways in which Hope co-exists with the hard, dark things. Today I am looking for the places where Hope is shining in a complete change of plans. I am looking for it in the anticipated end-of-school-year fray, with parties, graduations, relocation and endings. I would love to discover it, even as I grieve that loss of the familiar and the anticipation of the new, even as I mourn the passing of  beloved ones to their new life. I would like to sit with Hope, even when the days are gray, the conversations are flat, and all the air has gone out of the inspirational bromides!





Once again I am invited to pay attention, to look, to listen, to wait, even in Eastertide, where the promise of all things are new has been given life. But not yet everything, Carrie Newcomer gives me words: Do you see, do you see, do you see it? Take a breath,/ Oh. the restlessness, The beautiful not yet.





So, I look–on my morning walk, in the erasures in my Dayrunner, in the new texts or e-mail. And I breathe: Breathe on me, Holy Spirit, breathe in me, Breath of God. And I open my heart to Hope wherever she is waiting to appear! 

					


	





	

								
Lent 5: Taking Delight in Grace
										

			04
			Thursday
			Apr 2019
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in delight, grace, Lent, paying attention, Uncategorized		

		

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photo taken in Trois-Rievieres Quebec





I found myself in a very large gathering of people I had not seen for a long time. Each of them had a personal history and a history with me that was checkered and some of which included a great deal of brokenness and pain. While the main text of the gathering was going on, a deeper part of me was reliving and evaluating those narratives, listening to my own judgements and critiques of past events. Mercifully, (and I do mean that literally), as the day wore on, I began to relax into what Denise Levertov describes  this way: into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,/knowing that no effort earns/that all-surrounding grace. It wasn’t necessary for me to carry the darkness of the past: in Grace I could let go, and take delight in what Grace had brought into those stories that meant healing, freedom and redemption for everyone involved. 





My journey has been revolutionized by coming to recognize Grace, and to continue to learn over the course of my years, “even into old age,” the depths and heights of that Grace. I seldom have had as graphic and audible an encounter as the one I just described, but Grace abounds in daily and dramatic of my life, if I am awake and taking delight in it. I think of this week alone–an accident averted, a garden in bud and about to bloom, the poetry of Lucy Shaw, cards and notes of friendship, acts of kindness by the clerk when I was confronted with automatic checkout at the grocery store. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in their wonderful book of reflection called Spiritual Rx  call those things “gracelets” this signs of God’s presence that indeed feel like gifts. 





I am half way through Lent now, remembering to take delight is becoming a little more intrinsic in my daily routine. However, training my senses to discover Grace is a little more challenging. The banner lines and news shouts emphasize “gotcha” moments, bleat out dire predictions, and revise history in a way that frightens, demoralizes and leads the ways to despair. So I need to be vigilant in seeking with grace-filled eyes where Grace is happening. As I sat down to compose this blog entry, a tiny article, clipped long ago by me, surfaced from under the stacks of paper on my desk. The author is Bryan Doyle, and it was included in The Best Spiritual Writing of 2001. Here is is:





             First rule of grace: grace rules. Grace lifts, it brings to joy. And what, as we age, do we cherish and savor more than joy? Pleasure, power, fame, lust, money, they eventually lose their fastballs, or should. At our best and wisest we just want joy, and when we are filled with grace we see rich, thick joy in the simplest of things. Joy everywhere.





             Notice how many saints–whom we assume were and are crammed to the eyeballs with grace–are celebrated for their childlike simplicity, their capacity to sense divine joy in everything: the daily resurrection of light, the dust of sparrows. 





Grace indeed! I am delighted!

					


	





	

								
Take Delight–in Creation
										

			13
			Wednesday
			Mar 2019
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in creation, delight, paying attention, praise, Uncategorized		

		

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Lent I==All creation cries!





A group of us reflected this week on knowing God through creation and how it is leading us to a deeper and wider connection with everything that God has made. We did this in readiness for being open to what we are invited, even mandated, to do for the sake of the created world. We had planned to go on retreat to a nature preserve, but the weather (yes, even here in Southern California!) was cold, gloomy, and even though it wasn’t raining, the threats seems imminent. We huddled in my living room over hot drinks and coffeecake at first, shared times when the Holy One had seemed very present to us in nature–the sacred places, the “aha” moments, the times when out of doors, when the Spirit gobsmacked us with Mystery and Grace! Then we went into silence, with the choice to go outside, parkas, shawls and all, to encounter holiness! As we reassembled, the energy was palpable–the ornamental plum trees, the birds chirping, the bee, tracing his bee-like way through the blue flowers, and the spent camellia with a yellow leaf and abandoned twig making a collage for the focus of our contemplation and prayer–all had called us into love, wonder and praise for the Creator. 





Then, as if we had not been bathed in praise already, as one of our number drove home, she was showered with a migration of a host of Painted Lady butterflies, on their way north. Another person encountered them farther on, and then another, and the next morning, as I sat in my living room, I watched them parade for over an hour on their appointed route to the north. Amazing!





Several traditions tell us that God is revealed to us both in sacred text and in nature. I felt that I had encountered the Holy in a number of ways in the created world. Certainly I observed the Beauty–of color, shape, variety, process, growth, texture. And I felt the way that Beauty–in all of it manifestations–activated and sharpened my senses, in the words of the hymn, “tuning my heart to sing God’s praise!” But, I also felt some of the teaching of God through nature in the metaphors it offered–the connected-ness of the vines, the cycle of rising and falling, blooming and dying. I found that John Calvin, Reformer and pastor had said, “As soon as we acknowledge God to be the supreme Architect, who has erected the beauteous fabric of the universe, our minds must necessarily be ravished with wonder at his infinite goodness, wisdom and power.” (cited in Easter Gospel, by Sam Hamilton-Poore).





So this week for Lent I am taking delight in God’s earth, as I walk, go places, peer out my windows, with two questions: 1) what am I seeing about the creativity of the Holy One? and 2) how am I being invited to steward this web of creation of which I am apart?  Taking Delight! Indeed!

					


	





	

								
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!


 


 


 


 

					


	





	

								
Points of Hope: Signs and Symbols
										

			24
			Friday
			Mar 2017
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in beauty, grace, joy, Lent, paying attention		

		

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Even though the Lenten journey is a serious one, leading to an intense Holy Week, I am also looking for signs and symbols that point me to hope along the way. Because Lent and Easter are so late in the calendar year this year, the days are accompanied by the signs of spring, even in our supposedly “season-less” Southern California.


My irises in the drought resistant garden are thriving, especially with the unusual rainfall. There has been a constant parade of beautiful blooms beginning in Advent (white) and continuing on with Lent, all purple, four come and gone, four to about to burst forth. The liquid amber tree and the fig tree next door have tender green leaves and shoots multiplying each day. The ornamental plum tree and the peach tree are showing their tiny flowers. All of them remind me that after the winter, after rain, after the Great Grayness there is Hope. The Creator has made each thing beautiful in its own time.


Another sign of hope has been discoveries of missing things. In my clearing out and de-cluttering, I have found things that I believed to have vanished–some pairs of socks, a quotation that I had written out on a card with decoration, some pairs of old shoes. I am reminded, even in the simple nature of the retrievals, that with the Holy One, nothing is lost, there are no final defeats. Hope can spring up.


Some signs locate me. Some creative people in the neighborhood painted the power boxes on many corners with folk art, reminding us of who we are, where we are, a gathering of people from many nations, places and beginnings. And we are people who in proximity to the freeway are people on the go, working, traveling, walking the dog. It is important to me as I journey, not to forget where I am grounded, where I am heading and whence I have come.


In the providential movement of this season, I have been engrossed by three memoirs, chosen without intentional theme, that have reflected to me a part of my beginnings that still shape me, but from which I have moved. Each writer comes from a different place than I have geographically, and each one is younger, but we have in common a shared religious heritage that gave us great gifts and enormous challenges. As I watch and listen to each voice, I am filled with hope. Thought there have been moments of pain, or disorientation, of wandering without a map, each woman has found her spiritual center, her place of belonging and her traveling mercies. I have found joyful hope in locating myself at points on each journey, and sharing moment  of  Grace.


I am finding that Lent is not only solemn and gray, but is also alive with reminders that Light and Darkness together are part of our human pilgrimage. This year it is profoundly important for me to remember that here on earth, although there is tremendous grief and suffering, there is also the whimsy, laughter, cheer, surprise of hope that manifests itself, sometimes daily–in the smile of the server, the grace of the responsive leader, the compassion of the helper, the delight of the discoverer, the unfettered laughter of old friends, remembering the way we were, and how it is Grace that has led us safely this far. I have taken on as a Lenten practice to look for those signs.


I am reminded of an old Brian Andreas drawing in which the angel appears to him in tights, he laughs and then knows that when signs appear, if there is no laughter in them, they are not for him. Nor are they for me. And neither are they for me if there is no Grace, no Joy, no Hope. On our way through Holy Week I am like the faithful one singing Psalm 126 of Ascent: ..our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy…the Lord has done great things for us, as well as small ones, in tiny but unmistakable signs. In Lent, I can rejoice.


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