Dear Friends ~ Spring, with all its re-greening, heralds stirrings of hope. Whether you see the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature as reciprocal or destructive, whether you feel despair at the impending sixth extinction or confidence that we can restore our connection to one of mutual respect and healing; the earth still waits, still sends forth green shoots, still pulses and burbles and sings. Nature can be our teacher, our portal into wonder, a practice of communion rather than dominion, a path of encounter and reckoning with our true self. Above all spring is a season rife with the promise of renewal, a chance at transformation. Step outside, turn your face to the warming sun, listen for the song of the goldfinch—and begin again.
It sometimes seems to me that holiness, the quintessence of holiness, is as elusive as that strange fragrance in the air which heralds spring. We cannot define precisely where the scent lies, nor analyze exactly the color of the bird, nor yet assign to an
invisible musical scale the plaintive bleat of the lamb, nor to a paint box the fleeting blue of the sky: a stirring in the blood, an impulse toward adventure, rough
moorland, woodland paths... No, holiness is not to be defined. It is a living, glorious rebirth...an active condition, not a struggle with or against self, but a struggle for self, to bring oneself back, back to that pure and fragrant spring of our creation.
The earth is a living, conscious being. In
company with cultures of many different
times and places we name these things as
sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. Whether
we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and
the body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts
of a Creator, or as symbols of the
interconnected systems that sustain life, we
know that nothing can live without them...
To honor the sacred is to create conditions in
which nourishment, sustenance, habitat,
knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive.
To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will,
our courage, our silences, and our voices. To
this we dedicate our lives.
Every day is a fresh beginning.
Listen my soul to the glad refrain.
And, in spite of old sorrows
And older sinning,
Troubles forecasted
And possible pain,
Take heart with the day and begin again.
Gardening can provide an opportunity to slow down, be still, breathe, and connect with
another form of life. For me, it is an experience of communion; I become one with this
precious life in my garden and it heightens my experience of love in the world. And
that is what spirituality is all about: growing in love.
All around us, life arises and decays in complicated, in-between spaces. The human
challenge is to make a similar confident, quiet passage through the paradoxes of life.
If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has the power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Human consciousness, then, should not be
what utterly separates us from the rest of
"nature." Rather, consciousness is where this
dance of energy organizes itself in increasingly
unified ways, until it reflects back on itself in
self-awareness. Consciousness is and must be
where we recognize our kinship with all other
beings. The dancing void from which the
tiniest energy events of atomic structures flicker
in and out of existence and self-aware thoughts
are kin along a continuum of organized
life-energy...
To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing
universe—to participate in the dance of life
with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it,
organs that draw nourishment from it—is a
wonder beyond words.
~ Joanna Macy and Molly Brown in COMING BACK TO LIFE: THE UPDATED GUIDE TO THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS
Throughout my life, by means of my life,
the world has little by little caught fire in my sight,
until, a flame all around me,
it has become almost luminous from within.
Such has been my experience in contact with the Earth.
The diaphany of the divine at the heart of the universe on fire.
~ from THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Teilhard de Chardin
Dear Friends ~ Spending five weeks in India has made me acutely aware of how much I take for granted and even expect from life. Being able to drink clean water, a shelter with heat in winter, breathable air, space to walk, trash out of sight, food in my belly... When I was little my mother used to repeat a line I suspect she may have heard from her own mother, "I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." At five or six years old I didn't get it. Seeing up close abject poverty, unbearable squalor, and folks dragging useless legs on filthy ground with flip flops on their hands—it begins to sink in. I did nothing to deserve being born into this life of mine any more than the forlorn toddler hanging at her imploring mother's side did to be born into a slum beside the railroad tracks. Here's another saying: "There but for the grace of God, go I." Yet why should I have been extended the grace of God and not them?
The word humility, like the human, comes from humus, or earth. We are most
human when we do no great things. We are not so important; we are simple dust and spirit—at best, loving midwives, participants in a process much larger than we. If we are quiet and listen and feel how things move, perhaps we will be wise enough to put our hands on what waits to be born, and bless it with kindness and care.
The discipline of gratitude is the
explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
~ from THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON by Henri J. M. Nouwen
The way of hubris . . . pretends that we can be well by
dispersing, by breaking down life's oneness into entirely
unrelated compartments. And it pretends that we can be well by depriving, by denying to others and to other species what we ourselves most cherish. "By way of contrast," says Hildegard [of Bingen], "humility does not rob people or take anything from them. Rather, it holds together everything in love." The way of humility . . . remembers the sacred Ground of being within us all. And it knows that we will be truly well to the extent that we love one another.
Cooperation and humbleness always go together. Humbleness is seeing that
everyone's path through earth school is as difficult as yours, and as important. It is not pretending that you are meek, or inferior. It is making the music together that cannot be made alone, and that cannot be made without the music that only you, alone, can make.
We need a coat with two pockets. In one pocket there is dust, and in the other pocket there is gold. We need a coat with two pockets to remind us who we are.
If we will only learn silence, we will learn two things: to pray and to be humble. You cannot love unless you have humility, and you cannot be humble if you do not love. From the silence of the heart God speaks.
A humble attitude requires an agile spirit, one that "shakes the dust off" and moves on. The modern world equates humility with submission, which breeds nothing but guilt or self-loathing, that leaves one preoccupied with "worthlessness" and stuck in a
narcissistic loop. True humility liberates and produces self-love and love of others, not guilt or resentment... And authentic humility generates power by taking radical
responsibility for ourselves, even responsibility (though not blame) for things beyond our control. Humility is a discipline in search of the true spiritual goal—to love.
