“It is compassion that removes the heavy bar, opens the door to freedom, makes the narrow heart as wide as the world. Compassion takes away from the heart the inert weight, the paralyzing heaviness; it gives wings to those who cling to the lowlands of self” Nyanoponika Thera I was going to use this quotation in my sermon yesterday about the relationship between saltiness and peace but it seemed to make the message more cumbersome than needed. Nevertheless, it does seem to speak to the paradoxical power which is inherent in that which is invisible and which gift can render. After all, “compassion” and “heavy bars” are an unlikely coupling. In these times of pandemics and perils, despair and fear, we may feel actually and metaphorically “locked down”. May a gentle breeze of compassion and care loosen those feelings of entrapment and may a vision of free flight replace the darkness.

  I had no sooner written my former post on the regenerative power of understories than I was met with the phrase: “The radical uncertainty that underpins our lives” It appeared in a discussion about time and timelessness which took place between a Christian and a Muslim who had both faced down and incorporated cancer into their life understories. (Onbeing podcast) Somewhere or somehow in that mining of the understory they had each faced fully the “radical uncertainty”, of the unseen, unknown. Most often that underpinning has not been explored and hence may cause anxiety or fear. But the conversation referenced above caused me to think of the many Covid conversations to which I have been a witness in which radical uncertainty was transformed or became the transformer of doubt into faith, despair to courage. I suppose one of the keys is to lean into the encounter. Not to name it or trap it but to accept and learn from it. The poem below by the Japanese poet Izumi Shikibut encourages, en

(image by Suzanne Simard)   The word “understory” has been repeating itself in my contemplation lately. Perhaps this has been stimulated by the podcast from OnBeing with Suzanne Simard who has researched and written about the life of trees, a community of reciprocity and wisdom, under the surface of visible expectations, underground. Besides being fascinated by the whisperings of trees, their protection of the young, the identification of “mothers” among them, and the sheer wisdom being revealed, I found myself reflecting on our “understories”. What invisible and under-appreciated forces support, transform and propel us through life? Christian Wiman talks a great deal about these invisible internal forces and how fracking for them leads to God…perhaps…for some. What makes sense to me and what resonates as the divine force of the forest is that following the doubt deep down into the ground of our being, “skepticism seems to have salted the ground of our soul, faith, durable faith, is st

  I sit down to pray and I am flooded with tears and terror. I wipe away the tears saving one for the blessing, the blessing which gives me the faith and the strength to continue. I make the sign of the cross where the ashes would go and continue. Continuing with fewer tears and less terror the memories are the flood. Like a deluge they come with no ark except the metaphoric ark built on God’s grace, love and sustenance.   I think for a moment this is like the Eucharist often is, when we intentionally remember the suffering. Drop drop slow tears. The host is moistened. Anamnesis, Greek for remembering.   Some memories are still too painful. And some evoke response-ability. And most of the memories amaze me in their clarity and proximity.   The sky was bright blue that day before smothered in ashes.   I was not there but can taste and feel the ash because I remember from whence we came.   At the time 20years ago the phrase Never Forget seemed like a fragile hope. It was not. For memory