Consider the Hands that Write this Letter BY  ARACELIS GIRMAY after Marina Wilson Consider the hands that write this letter. Left palm pressed flat against paper, as we have done before, over my heart, in peace or reverence to the sea, some beautiful thing I saw once, felt once: snow falling like rice flung from the giants' wedding, or strangest of strange birds. & consider, then, the right hand, & how it is a fist, within which a sharpened utensil, similar to the way I've held a spade, the horse's reins, loping, the very fists I've seen from roads through Limay & Estelí. For years, I have come to sit this way: one hand open, one hand closed, like a farmer who puts down seeds & gathers up; food will come from that farming. Or, yes, it is like the way I've danced with my left hand opened around a shoulder, my right hand closed inside of another hand. & how I pray, I pray for this to be my way: sweet work alluded to in the body's position to ...

  Light has been architecturalized in many ways in shaping sacred space and invoking the ineffable. Diana Eck I am sharing something I wrote following the funeral for my daughter in law's grandfather. I was tremendously moved by the service, its beauty, its grace, its hope. I also found myself gathering my own memories of loved ones and dropping down to another level of glorious grief, embracing the sadness as well as the joy. The experience seemed to be magnified by entering some fuller sense of being a witness to a Mystery filled with love and promise.  To witness it to engage in a kind of seeing or perceiving, often ineffable. To witness as in this service was indeed to apprehend a sacred space, transformed by all the elements of prayer, music, memory and benediction. It was also to appreciate the role of the architecture: those floor to ceiling windows which caused the outside to come in and the internal to go forth. So I am still pondering the word Witness and t...

  Sabbath Space “Wonder — that edge state on the rim of understanding, where the mind touches mystery — is our best means of loving the world more deeply.” Maria Popova I come this Sabbath to the dawning of a morning at the lake The calming water pleads for peace The stillness is pierced only by the call of the loon A call to worship Pleading for me to turn every atom of my being   Toward this sacred moment When I do, or try to, Something like honey begins to trickle into me Soothing the wounds Sweetening the sadness This is Beauty Eternal and beheld. This is Grace Gift given to be received This is Sabbath Sacred space in divine time.

    Prayer by Steve Garnaas-Holmes As if prayer is something you go to like a place or a meeting, and not ruin, or                 seed. As if prayer is something you can be in like a room or a mood, and not poverty, or                 love. As if prayer is something you do, like speaking, and not what happens to you, like                 sickness, or surprise. As if prayer is something you get up from like a chair or a chore, and not sex or                 a grave. No, let my prayer storm into me, or digest me, or dawn in me, from which I rise risen,                   ...

  Sanctuary of Kindness I am looking for signs of kindness in this often cruel world. I am looking for those strong, silent, standing stones of grace, the blessed assurance of hope. There in the lush and vibrant greens of July  Is a flash of red It flits from branch to branch almost imperceptibly, Unless one is still and paying rapt attention. It notices me. Stares me right in the eyes. As a chill of recall runs through my body I know a memory of tenderness, of she who modeled it . I knew in that instant that kindness was coming into me, surrounding me, holding me, like the pine branches outstretched in orans position providing altar for the cardinal bearing memory, the memory transporting the sanctuary of kindness MT

  Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower        Written by Rainer Maria Rilke        Translated by Joanna Macy Listen Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.                                  Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 Joanna Macy died this week but her wisdom did not. When I sit with her writing or her brilliant translations of Rilke, I am blanketed by a sense of interco...