Tag Archives: prayer

Peace of a Winter Morning

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The Ann-Keeler-Evans start to the day, although often quiet, is usually brisk. I like getting things done. makes me happy. check, check, check! But yesterday, that didn’t work. I was up. I was even out. I got one check done. And then another. And then, there was a space in which no connections were being made.

Maybe it’s just because i was procrastinating, getting ready for my trip tomorrow, but I just wasn’t all that interested in zooming around. And for once, Ms I-tell-everyone-to-pay-attention-to-what-their-bodies-are-telling-them actually decided to pay attention. And so I sat and pondered. I consciously made no decisions. I just looked at things, turning them over in my head and my heart, admired their beauty, noted some rough spots, and put them down.

Choosing one dream for the year and dedicating yourself to bringing it into the world is worth taking some over. It’s worth deliberating about. I always find it interesting when I begin to discern a process and it demands I pay attention. And so, I’ll wonder just a little bit longer at the wonderful possibilities I’m exploring. And see how they might all fit together. For me, that’s a tall order. Sitting down helps. I wish that you might give yourself a half hour’s peace one morning before the sun demands a bit more action of you and me.

The Peace of Winter Trees

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I was delighted when I studied Chinese Five Element Theory and discovered that it includes a Fifth Element, Wood, one of whose functions is flexibility. In our busy urban lives it is an element to which we pay too little attention. Tree hugging — actual rather than philosophicall! — is really quite balancing for our health. It improves our spiritual and mental flexibility. Most of us can use that! (as for whether tree-hugging, philosophical, is virtuous, I invite you to discuss amongst yourselves… but I would, no great surprise to any of you, come down on the side of the trees.)

One of the joys of learning the five element theory was the need to suspend disbelief and learn something completely new. I compare it to learning the alphabet. If you spend your life trying to figure out why the would designate this symbol A as the letter A, you’ll miss the astonishing things that can happen when you break the code of reading. Here’s to learning new things and believing six impossible things before breakfast!

And of course here’s to trees and all the wonderful things they teach us, of which flexibility is only one!

The Sacred Journey

There are trips you take (sometimes just in your soul) which set you on the path you will walk throughout your life. It’s a stripped down life. You don’t bring along most your possessions to weigh you down. Often it’s hot. The big thermos jug of water (tea, lemonade) in the back of your vehicle keeps you hydrated. You carry your foodstuff’s along and eat by rushing creeks, under the shade of trees, or overlooking the desert. The days are long and you settle in to the rhythm of landscape. On such journeys there is both the time and the quiet required to reassemble your soul without all the distractions. Every once in a while you need to go on a trip long enough to leave you delighted in the stillness.

The journey leaves every day. The path is nearby…

Dancing with Delight

The other evening Steve and I watched our grandson discover fireflies. He’d seen them for the first time in Steve’s garden the night before, but this evening as twilight broke we were out in the country. The lawn around the ice cream place was awash in fireflies. AJ could not believe the beauty.

And the beauty was astonishing.

But what was amazing was his unfettered delight. He was so excited, he literally ran in circles, unable to contain himself. No one could take their eyes off him. Often when a child does something cute, everyone watches and says… awwwwwww. But this wasn’t so much an awwwwwww moment as a moment that made us remember the joys of an unguarded reaction to an ecstatic experience.

Most of us would be hard pressed to dance to wonder’s rhythm. Most of watching a young boy that evening, were probably saddened by that realization. I hope some of us were also stirred open.

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Fearing the Real Deal

When we skim along the top of life, never doing the work to engage our souls at some profound level, what do we miss?

I believe that Grace is abundant, as is Forgiveness. But I think they mark you when you encounter them, or allow yourself to encounter them. To become a vessel for that grace also marks and changes you. Having tasted them, I do not believe you turn back to “nice grace,” “nice forgiveness.”

I can’t help but believe that our lives could be richer and that Peace is far closer than we’d like to know… because knowing.. we’d start walking toward us. And radical Peace isn’t easy either. But it is Paradise.

Forgiveness

The book I talked about yesterday (Kingdom of Simplicity by Holly Payne) pushed me to spend some time with forgiveness.

Forgiveness, as it’s practiced in this community, (based on my reading and living here), is as much radical acceptance as it is radical forgiveness. It’s complicated. I always hold my reservations about whether a woman has to forgive a rapist or accept that it happen… but then a man kills 5 young girls and himself and the community heals by setting up a fund for the killer’s family.

That’s a lot to chew on. Their system isn’t perfect, there are power issues that aren’t well addressed… but how does/might/could a culture of community forgiveness change our living together? It seems worthy of our consideration…

and it’s another way to be in prayer…

Saying Please and Thank You

I just finished a novel on the Amish (The Kingdom of Simplicity by Holly Payne). One of the things the hero talks about is that they don’t use polite language. They don’t say “please” and “thank you.” I would argue that in fact that they do. They say those things to God, whom they understand to be the genesis of all. My suspicion is that they believe it would be disrespectful to God to give that thanks away.

I understand creation and the created to be a much larger part of the Divine rather than just the result of… and so please and thank you is prayer. Gratitude and longing are most visibly focused on creatures rather than creator — at least in my little world.

But few of us live a life that as slow, with as much time for observation and presence as the Plain folk… so, we might do well to use those words to anchor us in the presence. What if we used them not as punctuation on a sentence, but as the sentence? Would our lives change? Would other people’s?

Full, Empty, or Lifegiving?

I don’t like the is the glass half empty or full kinda questions. I confess they make me feel stumped… and somewhat stupified, if not downright lackwit. I’m terrible at games and rarely think creatively in the midst of them — unless I’m trying to connect people. Then I do better.

So it’s always surprising when I decide to write on something like the oh-so-important glass level question to work my way through to the fact that I think the water rather than the level is what matters. Once we realize it’s a precious resource we’re dealing with, all the questions change.

odd, eh?

a

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Nurturing Friendships

Relationship is at the core of my belief system. I am filled with wonder at the ways we connect and how connections deepen and change our lives. What touches me, what inspires me, what calls me is either the longing for connection or the actuality of it. From wriggling pup to august Divinity, it is the intimacy that ensnares me. If I don’t tend and nurture those relationships, I am not true to my belief system.

And… I seem to be writing one of my next poems… yep, this is how it starts!

Ah… you guys make me think! Thanks.