“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...

(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, i...

  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 ...

  Warning: This reflection includes a bit of description of three Csections... We have been blessed by three children. I had three C sections; three different cuts and scars. When the second child was being extracted, there was a moment of panic when I was told that what was taking so long (Csections are usually very brief procedures) was the surgeon was having difficulty cutting through scar tissue from the first child. All worked out in the end and I was warned that the incision was not as clean as it might have been?! I will stop there and leave the third laborious and jagged birthing surgery to your imagination except to say a different anesthesia was used and yet a third incision was made?!   I spent years wondering about this uniqueness I literally wore on my body. The words “we have never seen anyone develop such strong scar tissue” were at first a badge of shame and have become more of a curiosity. I search periodically for consolations and meaning as the desolation an...

  (Based on Nihonga painting style wherein layers of self made pigment from metallic substances are carefully and methodically applied) Layers of Pigment   “live in the layers/ not in the litter” Stanley Kunitz Intrigued by the layers of precious pigment applied in the Japanese nihonga style and aesthetic, I gazed until the eyes of my soul rested on an unlikely rainbow in malachite shards. This rainbow shimmered and dimmed In refracted rhythm with the sun’s certain movement. Beauty. Once realized, however, I was consoled by an eternal rotation Of invisible and visible phases like the moon, like grace.

  “At the edges, Look to the edges. There’s always hope at the edges.” Rowan Williams I have a fear of ledges. But edges are another thing. I am drawn to them, intrigued by them, and learn from them. Perhaps that is why I am finding such inspiration in some recent reading which, albeit in very different contexts, offers the value of “edges”.  Edges are thresholds to novel and liminal space; ledges often really limit that transition or travel. We might spend time at the edge instead of retreating toward the common middle. I have thought a lot of what takes place at the edges. I think about all that transpires at the borders, new life at best, and too often torture and turmoil. New birth at the edge of the birth canal, also presenting danger, but certainly the threshold to this crazy beautiful world!  Shorelines, river banks, are edges which support and guide the mysterious wonders of water. Where earth and sky meet, in the humus, roots take shelter in the edges of dirt and...

  Padraig O’Tuama: We might have some capacity to learn how to respond with more equanimity to these forces we cannot control.  Sharon Salzberg: Certainly if I heard the word “equanimity,” long ago, I’d have thought, that’s really bizarre. What does that mean? And so many times, we think it means indifference, but it really doesn’t. It’s such a huge capacity of our hearts to see what we’re going through, to see what others are going through, and to just have this perspective of, there is change in life, and there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light. And we’re not avoiding pain, because some things just hurt. That’s fundamental. But we’re holding it in a way that it’s like the love is stronger than the pain, even. And then we can really be with things in a very, very different way. Equanimity is a word which has crept up a lot in my life lately and it is usually just on the other side of integration, or should I say productive integration?! Sometimes it is hard t...

  BY THE TRAGIC GAP I MEAN THE GAP BETWEEN THE HARD REALITIES AROUND US AND WHAT WE KNOW IS POSSIBLE — NOT BECAUSE WE WISH IT WERE SO, BUT BECAUSE WE’VE SEEN IT WITH OUR OWN EYES.” —PARKER J. PALMER Though in Ordinary time, and also emerging from something extraordinary and still unprocessed, we live in a tragic gap. We live in in-between time: between this world and the next; between pandemics and who knows what. We think the other side of it all is “normal”. We think the line a direct one to certainty and control. It is not so! The path or bridge or life-line through this experience is imagination, unleashed and unbridled. Holy imagination, like the prophets, like the poets, looks for wings and angels and light. This imagination shimmers with possibility, recognizes the all things made new realities, and blesses the space between, not just the destination

  The poem below has haunted me for a little more than a year. I loved it prior to the pandemics but imposed isolation found me seeking some kind of affirmation and resource for all the emotions which were now carried out inside four walls. When paired with the Seamus Heaney poem yesterday, I am consoled by shafts of light through which angels descend and ascend. I am consoled by what transcends the hard walls and confinement. I find a kind of hope in the process of a veil lifting from a darkened heart and the revelations of simple ordinary quotidian delights. All of this goes into our need to belong and be-loved. “The House of Belonging” Written by  David Whyte I awoke  this morning  in the gold light  turning this way  and that thinking for  a moment  it was one  day  like any other. But  the veil had gone  from my  darkened heart  and  I thought it must have been the quiet  candlelight  that filled m...