Vessel of Invocation

The first law of spiritual life is that if one is to know Spirit, then one needs to have (or be) an appropriate vessel in order to receive Spirit. Spirit must have a proper carrier, a vessel, or a temple in which to dwell. St. Paul understood this when he said, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels,” and “your body is the temple of the sacred Spirit.” In each case, Spirit is embodied, and the body, far from being inimical to Spirit can become a temple or a carrier saturated with Spirit. This is the first law.

The second is that the sacred Spirit is not some abstract force, it is Presence with mind, will, heart, and consciousness in the same way that the people around us possess personal presence. When we engage another human being, we invoke (or call out to) that same presence inside of them that we ourselves possess. The presence in me calls out to the presence in you, and we form a bond of relationship. The Psalmist said that the depths in me calls out to touch the depths in you—this is the second law of invocation.

The Spirit, therefore, will be present if invoked by an appropriate receptacle in which to receive it. Since, when Spirit manifests itself, we can only recognize its presence through the power of our own consciousness, consciousness is itself revealed, in the human sphere, as the primary means and receptacle of Presence. A conscious being as a body or temple prepared, calling out to Spirit, is the central vessel of invocation.

Natural Mysteries

We live within a web of natural wonder, whether or not we are totally cognizant of it at all times. However, we have woven another blanket of human affairs, social construction, and technology around ourselves, which often hides the “first world” of nature to which we are webbed. Without that first world, all other life would be impossible including civilization itself and our own personal existence… and we forget this.

Jim Kimmel has brought all of this back into focus for me with his concerns for spiritual ecology and the work of the Order. I am grateful for the constant reminder that he and Jerry provide in this regard by being who they are in relationship to the world. This morning I was reflecting on these themes, when a line of a poem by Mary Oliver stood out strongly to me:

Take care you don’t know anything in this world
too quickly or easily. Everything
is also a mystery, and has its own secret aura in the moonlight,
its private song.

The world of nature is full of mysteries and song. We are webbed to it to learn these mysteries, to hear this music, and to learn slowly as we listen with “both ears.” We are privileged to be here within the web. The world of natural mysteries awaits our attention. One of our fundamental tasks is to learn the wisdom that is all around us.

The Real

To the question, "What is real? What is reality?" we often talk about facts and history and what is proven to be true? We want to know "what really happened" as opposed to what is unproven or a mere figment of our imagination. The issue of illusion and becoming delusional often comes up in common discussions about the issues and people around us.

Our spiritual ancestors also discussed this in relationship to things of spirit. They spoke about ignorance and sleep, about dreaming and awakening into Reality. Let's imagine, then, that there are layers of reality and illusion all around us and even inside of us.

Let's think, then, that at the heart of existence (and at our own hearts), there lies the most Real Thing--like a treasure, like a secret, hidden pearl around which there are less real things. We live in these outer layers of "the less real," which mirror and image the Most Real. But because there exists the Most Real Thing at the heart of All, and at our own deepest core, we can wake up and go there into that place, and as Yeshua said in his teaching, begin to do business in the outer world based upon its supreme value and availability to us. Notice this:

The divine Realm is like a man who owned a field with treasure hidden away in it. Unaware of it he died leaving it to his son who also knew nothing about it. After taking possession of the land, the son practically gave it away for nothing. But the one who bought it began plowing and discovered the treasure, and immediately started lending money at interest to whomever he pleased. (Thomas 109).

Sensitivity to Holiness

The great contemporary Rabbi, Adin Steinsaltz of Jerusalem, points out that one of the features that makes humans unique in the universe is that they have a particular “sensitivity to holiness.” What he means is that we can detect the Other, the divine, and that this capacity is both a gift, but also a curse for us.

Since our days in the mythical Garden of Eden, humans have been on a quest to know God, and even to become like God—to have God’s capacities, to know the divine qualities. It began when we were “tempted” by the notion that we too, like God, could know good and evil (which indeed we have come to know). But, as the Rabbi says, “The only thing that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge seems to have brought us is the heartache of being, at once, more aware of God” (through our sensitivity to “otherness” or holiness), but also of realizing that we are not any closer to God.

Our inner “God detector” works. We have that strange inner sense of the divine, but the divine does not seem any closer, necessarily, because of that sensitivity. And thus the heartache of being a human caught between these two awarenesses.

The reconciliation of these opposites comes when we continue our journey to seek the hidden face of God, but also when God “journeys” toward us, bridging the inevitable gap, and out of love, and in a way that is truly related to our own unique growth of awareness, manifests directly to us when we are ready and the time is ripe. This is the game of “hide and seek” that we play throughout life, both delicious in its own way, and maddening in another. But it also the inevitable outcome of having our own in-built “sensitivity to holiness.”

Visionary Journeying

This past weekend, due to the encouragement and generosity of Gail and Alec Wiggin, I made a pilgrimage to NYC for a conference on the life and teachings of Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Sufi Way of Compassion. It was an extraordinary conference held at historic Riverside Church and well attended. Ibn al-‘Arabi was a 12th century Muslim mystics, and one of Sufism’s greatest teachers. His work is voluminous and much of it is based upon the “Meccan Openings” (a visionary treatise of revelations made to him while in Mecca). Born in Spain, Ibn al-‘Arabi traveled East and made the rest of his life a spiritual and physical journey to the roots of his own deep seeing. His work and sight was the subject of this conference, and I hope to make postings on his life, work, and thought in the future.

In addition to the conference, we visited three separate exhibitions on display at various museums throughout the city, each carrying this underlying theme of visionary journeying. The first was the original works of William Blake on display in NY, clearly showing how a modern visionary sees the world as it is unfolding around us. Blake was one of the first of the modern visionaries who contemplated the fate of modernity and its aftermath through his etchings, drawings, poetry, and prose.

The second exhibit featured the recently discovered and published Red Book, of Carl Jung. Both the original and copies of it were on display and available for examination. What was striking was how Jung’s thought had evolved into visionary seeing concerning his own transformation as a human being and the ultimate transformation of humanity. His hand painted illustrations were compelling and beautiful and if you have not seen any, visit the Rubin Museum of NY’s website and see these powerful illuminations of Jung’s vision.

Finally, before the conference, we visited the NYU’s gallery to see a display of the iconic art of the Aboriginal peoples of western Australia. Again, these images from the dreaming past of these ancient peoples were an amazing manifestation of a men and women who made visionary journeying a part of their seeing and their “songlines” across the inner and outer landscape of the world.

I am reminded again of Yeshua’s words. Blessed are those who possess clarity of heart, for they shall see God.

Advent Song

I just returned from visiting with friends in Canada, among them, Robert and Helen Pynn. Bob is a wonderful poet who has sent me this fine piece, which I wanted to publish in the blog. Thanks Bob.

We sing
the lament of life
in the flatland
of either/or --

where walls divide
and the abhorrent is
preemptively removed.

Everything is set
in the clear and distinct air.
Judgment is without suspension,
thought without reflection,
action without consideration

until
a voice cries out in the wilderness
and the boundaries shift in the desert wind --
as the law repents of its letter.

Suddenly, spirit blows hot like refiner’s fire,
uncovering the abhorrent and the good
burning together in our souls.

The knife is stayed
as the mixed orb intersects the plane.

Prepare the way for mercy’s child:
straight will be made crooked,
plane spiral into exultation,
smooth ways into the wonder
of fierce landscapes.

Torrents of fresh water
will pour onto parched ground;
drowning former ways
in rivers of metamorphosis.

Come now, come, die before you die,
rise up in the new skin of mind beyond mind-
alert in the eternal disturbance of coming glory.

Robert Pynn

Equanimity

The teachings of both the twelve steps and the Buddhist path have distilled for me into one idea: equanimity, accepting what is as what is. But that doesn't mean I just roll over. Equanimity is not passivity. On the contrary, it creates a firm foundation for me to take action. For when I accept what is, I am not clinging to what used to be or wishing what might be, and I can step into doing what I can for myself and others, which helps bring me peace of mind, the antidote to despair.

Anonymous

Change

The nature of our world is transitory-always has been, always will be. Change occurs every second. Breathe it in, then breathe it out. But despite the interconnectedness of everything, we still have a say on how we handle the weave of the fabric. We can let the status quo confine us to a narrow thread, or we can cut through that fabric to see our true nature. Our lessons cannot be learned if the sun is shining every day. And on rainy days, we might share our umbrella with another.

Michael Shillingford

Mindfulness

The essence of mindfulness is to see, to understand, and to find freedom within everything that feels intractable and clouded by confusion. Mindfulness is a present-moment experience, concerned with embracing and understanding the entirety of each moment with tenderness, warmth, and interest. In the light of this engaged attention, we discover it is impossible to hate or fear anything we truly understand, including the judgemental mind. We begin to see that the greatest barrier to compassion and freedom is not the pain or adversity we meet in our lives but the ongoing tendency to criticize and fear the simple truths of the moment. Instead of just wanting the judgemental mind to go away, we could begin to ask what it is teaching us. Liberate the tendency to judge yourself as being above, below or the same as others. By penetrating deeply into judgement, you will live at peace.

Christian Feldman

Judgemental thoughts

In the Sufi tradition it is suggested that our thoughts should pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask of our thoughts, "Is it true?" If so, we let the thought pass through to the second gate where we ask, "Is it necessary or useful?" If this also is so, we let the thought continue to the third gate where we ask, "Is the thought rooted in love and kindness?" Judgemental thoughts, which are neither true, helpful, nor kind, falter at the gates.

Christina Feldman in "Shabala Sun"

Blindness

A friend of mine, Clay Houston, has sent me this powerful reflection on blindness that affects our interior sight within space-time.

A blind man "believes" in light: the rest of us see it with our eyes. "Faith" is the hi-jacking of causes and conditions, a non-reality. Existence is verbs. Delusion is nouns. Suffering comes, in part, from discrimination, judgment. This is always linked to thought. The human mind breaks up the normal chain of being into suffering by worshiping permanence, which does not exist. If a man believes in permanence, he deceives himself. All reality, everything, is built of compounded entities. All entities are impermanent.. Everything is changing: it is the rate of decay that deceives. All entities are interdependent. Ethic follows this Wisdom. Thus says this Most Noble Senator.

What is Needed

This piece of deep reflection comes from David Stringer who has been attending to his mother's terminal illness in Lubbock, Texas.

No longer do I search for the meaning
of life. No longer do I explain myself.
No longer to explain another. Why seek
to explain something in terms of something
else? Context has become tiring; explanations
shallow. History provides pictures, but not
the light of heaven. What something means,
its significance or importance lives peripherally
to what matters. So, at best, they are rational
lies, at worst our lost self.

What I want is some one to tempt me
into being, into an authentic City of God.
Less dogma, less doctrine – even less beliefs.
These are born from a lessening of soul. Lost
is recognition of our impoverished thirst. Look!
The human City is an eclipsed City, an eclipsed
Kingdom. Please, won’t someone live with me
into the threshold between the human and divine?
Anything less shortens the breath of Truth. Someone
press me to look into the homeless eye; press me
to feel the hunger that is soul-less, the suffering
that is unafraid of death and can stare into the eye
of whatever the gods have the courage to see.

No longer to live on the periphery, for that is nowhere.
The Center is everywhere, awaiting an awakened eye.
We need not hurry anywhere. The All is within reach;
only open to the wisdom of Being. All holy thought
is nearer than the calmest of seas, nearer than the Big
Brown Pelican carried on the thermals, than the dolphin
gamboling between the trough and crest of the next wave.


4 September 2009
Lubbock, TX

Spiritual Ecologies

This summer I have been privileged to visit and experience two distinctly different (some would say “opposite”) ecologies almost back to back in time. First, Jackie and I were in the Davis Mountains of West Texas—the wild desert beauty of that stunning landscape. And then we were for a week on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where I experienced the “tropical paradise” of that lush land. Both are beautiful, both are unique, both have flora and fauna exquisitely adapted to the particularities of the local geography. One can, of course, compare and contrast each, but it would be a mistake to use the yardstick of one ecology to measure the “truth” of the other. Each has to be seen in its own right, its own fullness, its own amazing interdependent complexity.

The Davis Mountains are a rugged volcanic landscape filled with amazing cactus flowers and even ferns (yes, back in the valleys). Hawaii was another rugged volcanic landscape filled with ferns and flowers of an entirely different order unknown in West Texas. The whole system in each locale “worked” to the advantage of the entire ecological systems—and so it is spiritually.

We live, we grow up in, we benefit from a “spiritual ecology” adapted to a unique time and place in the history of humanity. Most who are reading this grew up within the spiritual ecology of the Christian tradition (with its many Islands of uniqueness, like Hawaii)… but reflecting a particular adaptation to the overall Life of the Spirit as it is expressed on this human planet. But there are other ecologies that seem exotic and “odd” to us… and yet which are perfectly normal and adapted to the particularities of a people, time, place, and history from which they benefit and which they serve.

If one ecology is not overly disturbed, if new invasive species are not set lose to over-run the delicate balances, then that ecology stays strong and healthy. But if there are too many “tourists” (experience junkies), who flock to view the exotic sights and sounds, unaware of the balances and delicacies, then what happens is a degradation of the whole system… something else emerges that begins to look like a hybrid that is neither one thing nor the other. Sometimes that new hybrid can adapt and become useful, but often it either overwhelms the whole, or unbalances the parts.

We each live in delicate spiritual ecologies. We can “visit” other realms and benefit from those visitations, finding delicious new aspects that will compliment our own understanding. But when we return to our own “land,” we can then see through new eyes into the beauties and balances into which we are inextricably interwoven.

Action and meditation

In dark night live those for whom the world without alone is real; in night darker still, for whom the world within alone is real. The first leads to a life Of action, the second to a life of meditation. But those who combine action with meditation cross the sea of death through action and enter into immortality through the practice of meditation. So have we heard from the wise.

- Isha Upanishad

The Chosen

I have been reading through the Gospel of Thomas once again, and each time I do I make new discoveries—or, perhaps its better to say, Thomas “unveils” itself to me in some new way. Reading this time, among other things, I noticed how the word “chosen” is used quite frequently and in such interesting ways.

For example, in Logion 23, Yeshua says that he chooses us from a multitude, and the choice is made in order that we might stand, like him (L28), on our own two feet, single and whole. It is a choosing for a purpose. If you’re a follower of Yeshua, then the Master has one purpose for the choosing—a mind, a will for you.

Then, in Logion 49, a beatitude is spoken… any who is chosen and unified (becoming single and whole) already possesses the Realm of the Kingdom. So this awareness is experienced in a state of knowing that comes from an actual process of unification (the healing of the split in duality) that has occurred. Perhaps, also, this is a choice we participate in. It is our choice that makes this happen.

More importantly, though, there seems to be another choice having been previously made, and this is suggested in Logion 50, about finding ourselves “here” and “where we came from” and “how we got here.” It is clear from a reading of this text that there is a progression: we came from “out of the Light at its source” into manifestation as Icon or Image, and then we are somehow “chosen” for something more, and find ourselves here learning to manifest “movement and rest” as a complimentary opposite.

So the point seems to be this: if you find yourself in space-time learning to do this, then you were “chosen” for space-time and for this learning. A choice was made that you might come here for this crucial, vital learning.

Three kinds of choosings, all related but a part of an eternal unfolding in time in which we are embroiled.

Mystery and Metaphysics

Sometimes its important to be reminded that our individual and particularized experience of life here in space-time is but a tiny sliver of the total experience of Transcendence which lies at the core of our deepest existence. By that I mean, our present awareness, though real in its own way, is a dimmed light of consciousness. The Fullness of Consciousness can hardly be spoken, but to remind us, there are the works of the great metaphysicians of Spirit, among them Meister Eckhart in Christianity, Ibn al-‘Arabi in Islam, and Shankara in Hinduism. A contemporary writer, Reza Shah-Kazemi has written a text comparing these three thinkers called Paths to Transcendence. In it he writes to remind us of the Transcendent ground of our being in words that are hard to grasp, but “true food” nonetheless. Here is a sampling:

To say “transcendence” is to say “union”; a union in which consciousness persists, but in a mode which nullifies the individual condition. If consciousness itself were nullified, then the mystics would not be able to assert that duality was in fact transcended; and if the individual condition is not nullified, the claim to have attained the degree of absolute transcendence is undermined.

According to Eckhart: if there is to be a true union, one of the two agents so unified must lose its “whole identity and being”—failing which there will be “united-ness” but not union; this crucial point must be seen in connection with the claim … that he “breaks through” in his “return” to the Essence, for it is there—and there only—that … the “whole identity and being” of Eckhart as individual is lost, and what is found is transcendent identity and being in and as the Godhead: the identity attained is so completely one that Eckhart is able to claim, again most elliptically, that he “begets his begetter.” (205).

This language is just at the edge of “thought,” but it represents something of Yeshua’s own words that “I and the Father are One,” and anyone who follows him, Yeshua says, must, in the end, “lose” him or herself. Yeshua was also speaking “on the edge of language.”

A Tree Full of Angels

All summer long we have been working on imagination and the imaginal. In English the word imagination has multiple meanings, but the way we were using it in our summer's work was to focus primarily on our ability to "play with images." At the various wisdom schools and academies the question was on how we do this using the earliest and original images found in our sacred texts. Playing with images is a distinctly different activity than analyzing words or ideas rationally. One is a kardial function, and the other is a logical function. Using the heart we can begin to extract truth from images. We can move dimensionally "higher" than the rational mind not only to detect truth, but to ingest so that it becomes soul-food.

This morning I was "taken" by the word-pictures in Logion 20 of the Gospel of Thomas where the students ask Yeshua to describe the Realm (Kingdom) of the Heavens. He does so by using a series of images. He says that the Kingdom is like a tiny seed being placed into prepared soil which then grows up into a great tree able to shelter the birds of the sky. Its an innocent enough image until you see that "heavens" and "sky" (cognate words in Coptic) are talking about the same realm (transcendent to earth) and that the "birds" may in fact be the "birds of heaven" which, using the imagination, are more likely its winged messengers. So imagine that in us, the divine seed comes to rest and then as it grows out of the ground of being here, it moves vertically until it becomes a habitat for Angels.

Could our own soul-work contain such possibilities? Using our capacity to "play with these images" what would it mean to us?

Reality

As for those who seek the transcendental Reality, without name, without form, contemplating the Unmanifested, beyond the reach of thought and of feeling, with their senses subdued and mind serene and striving for the good of all beings, they too will verily come unto me.

- Bhagavad Gita

Light

Wisdom is the table, not bread or meat. Wisdom is the light, food for the soul. No nutriment can compare to the nourishment of light. Nothing can nourish the soul but light. Rid yourself of material needs and be set free. Taste the original victual, the dainty morsel of light.

- Rumi

My nature is light, Nothing but light. When the world arises I alone am shining.

- Ashtavakra Gita

Where is God?

God is in the water of the lake; he is also in the cracked bed of the lake when the lake has dried up. God is in the abundant harvest; he is also in the famine that occurs when the harvest fails. God is in the lightning; he is also in the darkness when the lightning has faded....Brothers and sisters, you pile up stones to make shrines, imagining that God will make himself present there. Then you are surprised when these shrines do not ease your cares and worries.

-Hallaj, "Tawasin"

Spirituality is a separate department of life?

Sometimes people get the mistaken notion that spirituality is a
separate department of life, the penthouse of existence. But
rightly understood, it is a vital awareness that pervades all
realms of our being.

- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is merely an impersonal happening. We give it the taint of personal achievement. Therefore the question arises, "What is an enlightened being like?" There is no such thing as an enlightened person. Enlightenment is merely another event. There is a flood, a fire, an earthquake; there is enlightenment, just as one happening in the whole process, all part of the phenomenal process.

- Ramesh Balsekar

Solitude

Wilderness memories are ballast in my life but, to find peace in the human world, something more is needed. Peace comes from knowing what you want out of life, paring down, simplifying, focusing on a few important things. Do works of beauty. Serve something bigger than yourself. Pour yourself into satisfying work. Then, deep relaxation. Make an art form of deep relaxation.

Nurture your friendship with yourself, with your inner world. Minimize the extraneous. Minimize the number of moving parts. Be careful of who and what you let into your life. Protect your time. Do creative work. Be gentle on yourself. Make room for love in your life. Build close friendships with good people. Read. Think. Spend time alone.

"The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone."

- James Baldwin

A peaceful life requires a center point, a place of balance. Everything unique and beautiful grows out of the still point, that place of quiet reflection, meditation or prayer.

No matter how extreme my experiments and adventures, everything is fine in my life if I make sacred room for a quiet center. It needs to be nurtured, paid attention to. If I do that, it will guide me through troubled waters. When I lose touch with it, my life spins out of control. To nurture a quiet center, we sometimes need to be hard on ourselves, hard on our attraction to trivial and insignificant things.

Whenever I’ve been alone for more than twenty-four hours, my mind has become preoccupied with my screw-ups, my embarrassments, the things I should have done differently. There are a lot of those things. I’ve bounced up against boundaries all my life. But others have told me that they experience the same. After three days, a deep peace takes over, but in the interim, I encounter anger towards myself and others — others in the broadest sense, including the systems of power in human world. My mind, operating in a vacuum, is simply looking for something to do, something to focus on. After three days, I’m fine. I’m free.

The human mind solves problems. That’s what it wants to do because that’s what it is good at. It is all about the world out there; it is uncomfortable turning inward. It doesn’t want to be alone with itself in a room or a forest. It wants activity, controversy. Conflict excites it. It is constantly searching for something to worry about, something to fear, something to get excited about. It likes human relationships. It craves distraction from the truths at the center of our lives.

Nothing is more controversial, nothing more avoided, nothing more threatening to our self-constructed narrative, than the truth. We certainly don’t want to be alone in a room or a forest with truth for any length of time.

But art and writing and all creativity, including creating a full, deep experience of life require a relationship with that quiet center. There’s always something more important to do. The house needs cleaning. Bills need to be paid. There’s a great show on television. No, no, sit there alone in a room. Confront that scary silence, that aloneness. Make friends with it. Your creative work requires that.Everything beautiful grows out of that.

Roderick W. MacIver

Sorrow

I asked David Stringer to let me post this poem of his created in the aftermath of last week's events. Beautiful and prescient.

What is the Reason for Sorrow?

This week, they crossed over to the realm
of the Unmanifest, where nothing
is lost. Here is the illusory, tempting
us into blindness. We are never allowed

to see through the illusion, that this vesture
as a garment of skin is only a semblance
of a lesser inviting us into a Greater.
Farrah, Michael, and Ed shed their garments

this week. Veiled as they were in beauty,
song, and humor, the lesser gave
way to the greater. Few will see
into this great crossing. There is a loss

of sight, and this a far greater death. Opaque
to the light, the culture stares strident
into an abyss of darkness. Fooled
by the iciness of death, the luminosity

of greater life is lost. Quickly, send for Father
Abraham, and have him touch our tongue
with his tears of joy that we may weep
a proper weeping, and stop this infernal charade.

David Stringer
30 June 2009
Norcross, GA

True Worship

It is in love that religion exists and not in ceremony-in the pure and sincere love in the heart. Unless a man is pure in body and mind, his coming into a temple and worshipping Shiva is useless. The prayers of those who are pure in mind and body will be answered by Shiva, and those who are impure and yet try to teach religion to others will fail in the end. External worship is only a symbol of internal worship, but internal worship and purity are the real things. Without them, external worship would be of no avail.

- Vivekananda

Two Weeks of Wisdom Academy

We have just completed two weeks of Wisdom Academy here at the Praxis Retreat and Learning Center. The first was focused on Theopoetics, the understanding that poetic symbol and metaphor are the convergence and coincidence of opposites--and where they meet is the creative new that is born from the tension between dualisms. Poetry is the major prophetic expression of that new coming into being. David and DaAnna Stringer led us conceptually and experientially through these fertile fields of thought and expression. The second week was devoted to the Keys to the Kingdom led by Ward Bauman. It was an in-depth exploration of the traditional "Sermon on the Mount" seen through the eyes of non-duality. Yeshua taught a profound experience of oneness which is a life beyond dogma into a Realm of consciousness that is unitive rather than separative. Our work was based on a new translation published by Praxis this year.

Below is my own poetic expression of the Lord's Prayer found in that "Sermon" based on the week's work:

O Beloved Source transcendent
your sacred Name we raise
and praise the One whose rule and realm
is home for us on earth as in the heavens.
You know our need
so let us feed today on heaven's bread,
and untie the knots and set us free from error's ways
as we release all who have wronged us.
Guide us from temptation's path
and free us from its evils,
for the Realm of strength and beauty
and all Reality is yours
both now and through the ages

Very ordinary actions

It is quite possible to perform very ordinary actions with so high
an intention as to serve God therein better than in far more
important things done with a less pure intention.


... Jean N. Grou

O Abyss

O abyss, O eternal Godhead, O sea profound, what more could you
give me than yourself? You are the fire that burns without being
consumed; you consume in your heat all the soul's self-love; you
are the fire which takes away cold; with your light you illuminate
me so that I may know all your truth. Clothe me, clothe me with
yourself, eternal truth, so that I may run this mortal life with
true obedience, and with the light of your most holy faith.


... Catherine of Siena

Passover Remembered

Recently Meg Grant from San Marcos sent me this excerpt which some of you may have received, but it is worth reading. A powerful re-telling of the Passover. -- LB

Pack nothing. Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free. Don’t wait for the bread to rise. Take nourishment for the journey, but eat standing, be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind – fear, silence, submission. Only surrender to the need of the time – to love justice and walk humbly with your God.

Begin quickly, before you have time to sink back into old slavery. Set out in the dark. I will send fire to warm and encourage you. I will be with you in the fire and I will be with you in the cloud. I will give you dreams in the desert to guide you safely home to that place you have not yet seen…I am sending you into the wilderness to make a new way and to learn my ways more deeply.

Some of you will be so changed by weathers and wanderings that even your closest friends will have to learn your features as though for the first time. Some of you will not change at all. Some will be abandoned by your dearest loves and misunderstood by those who have known you since birth and feel abandoned by you. Some will find new friendship in unlikely faces, and old friends as faithful and true as the pillar of God’s flame.

Sing songs as you go, and hold close together. you may at times grow confused and lose your way…Touch each other and keep telling the stories…Make maps as you go, remembering the way back from before you were born.

So you will be only the first of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas. It is the first of many beginnings – your Paschal-tide.
Remain true to this mystery. Pass on the whole story…Do not go back. I am with you now and I am waiting for you.

- Alla Renée Bozarth

Reality

"The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal."

Deepak Chopra