Tag: contemplative

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Holy is His Name

I love this song by John Michael Talbot. In fact as I listened to it Sunday morning on my drive over to Mt. Irenaeus I could not stop crying. The gift of tears is wonderful at times. It is such a lovely song I’m including it for you to listen too. Maybe it’s just what you need right now. I haven’t stopped listening either. I fell asleep listening to it last night on Youtube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aYecuDlDYM]

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
And my spirit exalts in God my savior
For he has looked with mercy on my lowliness
And my name will be forever exalted.
For the mighty God has done great things for me
An his mercy will reach from age to age

And holy, holy, holy is His name.

He has mercy in every generation
He has revealed His power and His glory
He has cast down the mighty in their arrogance
And has lifted up the meek and the lowly
He has come to help His servant Israel
He remembered His promise to our fathers

And holy, holy, holy is His name.
And holy, holy, holy is His name.

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Morning Fog

Carl Sandburg had a poem about the fog.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

That poem is with me this morning as I sit looking at the fog that covers the valley in front of me. I’m sitting here enjoying a fresh cup of Starbucks, but in deference to my friend Lee, it could easily be Tim Hortons or whatever brand you like. One of the remnants of the fog this morning was a dew covered spider web on the lamp post in front of our home. The sun breaking in caused the moisture on the web to glisten. I tried to take a picture of it, but there are some things that even cameras can’t capture and this was one of them. I thought too of how often ethereal events can only be appreciated by those who can see them. I was blessed this morning to see the web and it reminded me of the Ruach. The Ruach is the breath of God and so much of what surrounds us all is just that the breath of God. Sometimes I’m so caught up in myself that I fail to see the beauty of the fog, the spiders web, or the full moon that was out last night. Thank you God for letting me have the eyes to see your creation and to embrace it. Peace and all good.

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Growth

Summer is a time of growth and my summer has certainly been that this year for me.  This spring or at least early June didn’t start out that way. I thought it was the end and that I’d be leaving and going elsewhere to begin a retirement and whatever that may have held. I even had a verse picked out which I liked and it was from the Second chapter of Paul’s letter to Timothy.

the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith

This summer I discovered that there were other plans in store for me and one of them was to get a much needed break, a respite from my work of the past ten years. I spent much of the early part of this summer actually sleeping in and enjoying getting up at 7 or 8 and having a fresh cup of brewed Starbucks. A post card from St. Bonaventure University, a thought from my higher power, encouragement from friends and family and I’m back in the fray but with a slightly different direction.

This morning it’s a bit chilly. I think it’s 45 F outside. It feels like autumn, but it’s not autumn in my life any more. My life has a sense of spring in it, a sense of redemption and metanoia. I’ve thought often of Thomas Merton’s prayer, “My Lord God I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, ..”. I’m not sure where it will end but I know that the power that animates and directs me is moving me forward. My friend David offered a word of encouragement yesterday as we met in the school parking lot. All around me people have encouraged my re-directed path. Yesterday, I thought a lot of my Dad and how much I missed him. Dad’s been gone 36 years, but yesterday his spirit was with me. This summer has been a pivotal time in my life, a new direction has been taken and I’m not really the author of it, I’m just responding to the direction and sometimes with a bit of hesitancy but I’m moving forward.

If anything this spring and summer I’ve had a sense of Psalm 23. Time after time I’ve been led beside still waters and each time I remember the verse, “He leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.” My soul has been restored and I’m moving forward. Thank you to all who have prayed for me as it must be your prayers and thoughts that have sparked this transformation. I am not the author of these changes. I am reminded of another favorite prayer and one that hangs near the coat rack at Mt. Irenaeus.

It is not you that shapes God
it is God that shapes you.
If you are the work of God
await the hand of the artist
who does all things in due season.
Offer Him your heart,
soft and tractable,
and keep the form
in which the artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
lest you grow hard
and lose the imprint of his fingers.

– St. Irenaeus

I have not lost the imprint of his fingers.

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Victory is certain

This letter that came from the Merton Institute is timely today. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming sense of despair and lately it has been tugging at my shoulder from time to time.  This letter Czeslaw Milosz though fifty years ago rings true for me today.

[Letter to Czeslaw Milosz, Feb, 1959] Milosz, life is on our side. The silence and the Cross are forces that cannot be defeated. In silence and suffering, in the heartbreaking effort to be honest in the midst of dishonesty (most of all our own dishonesty), in all these is victory. It is Christ in us who drives us through darkness to a light of which we have no conception and which can only be found by passing through apparent despair. Everything has to be tested. All relationships must be tried. All loyalties have to pass through fire. Much has to be lost. Much in us has to be killed, even much that is best in us. But Victory is certain.

Thomas Merton. The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers, Christine M. Bochen, editor (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993): 57-58.

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A Sacred Path

More than a month ago I wrote about taking a picture of the labyrinth at Mt. Irenaeus and how that invited some comments from friends that sent me on a journey that included reading Dan Pink’s, “A Whole New Mind.”  Actually, I downloaded the book and listened to it on my iPod Touch. I listened to it more than once and went so far as to buy a finger labyrinth from the Labyrinth Company. The labyrinth arrived this week and in the past several days I’ve used it a number of times.  The very first time I used it I had the sensation that there was some movement in my brain. I could almost feel my brain move. I know that sounds strange and I wouldn’t have believed it myself had I not experienced it.

Yesterday, while visiting a friend’s home and returning a computer to her that I had recently restored to original condition for her I shared this story. She didn’t think I was losing it and instead recommended a book which I began reading last night. The book is, “Walking a Sacred Path,” by Dr. Lauren Artress. I’ve only read a couple of chapters, but I am really enjoying this and from the stories therein I realize that my reaction to the labyrinth was anything but strange. I intend to keep using the finger labyrinth and see where it leads me. Each time I experience the labyrinth it is a bit different but each time I come away renewed.

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Finger labyrinth

I remember the first time I ever walked a labyrinth. It was at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Scottsdale, AZ. I remember how calming and centering that was. Since then I’ve had an attraction to labyrinths. A month ago while attending an Evening of Re-Creation at nearby Mt. Irenaeus I snapped a picture of their labyrinth. The picture posted to Facebook invited a conversation which saw me read Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind.” It was from Dan Pink’s book that obtained a web link to the Labyrinth Company and now I’m the owner of my own finger labyrinth.

I ordered it last week and it finally arrived in today’s mail. It’s very exciting and restful to know that I now have my labyrinth and that I can use it whenever I might. I took it out of it’s case today and traced the path with my index finger. I had a peculiar sense as I moved my finger around that path. A sense of peace and stability ensued. I’m going to keep trying to use my labyrinth everyday. I want to bring it into my classroom at school but I’m going to wait for an opportune moment.

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Stepping down

In a couple of months I’ll be stepping down as fraternity minister for our St. Irenaeus Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order. I really enjoy being a Secular Franciscan and lately I’ve been a bit more active in wearing my Tau. I’ve been challenged in that regard by my friend Br. Kevin Kriso, OFM. I’ve enjoyed being the minister of our fraternity at times and not enjoyed it at other times. I’m unorthodox and that is one of my strengths, but I sometimes find myself at odds with those around me a bit more tied to orthodoxy than I. I guess living the way I do, by the seat of my pants at times is unsettling to those folks.

One person in particular took issue with my use of Google Apps to facilitate communication amongst our fraternity and more than once in the last few years I’ve thought of how using technology like Moodle we’d be able to form individuals wanting to be Franciscans, but unable either by distance or family requirements to make our meetings. There is precedent for such activities as St. Clare formed Agnes of Prague by writing letters to her.

It was the website of the monastery of Christ in the Desert that reached out to me almost fifteen years ago and brought me slowly back to the church and eventually the Secular Franciscan Order. Being a web developer, a Blackberry user, a tweeter on Twitter and a blogger on WordPress much of this just seems to flow, but there are some folks that this sort of activity is either threatening or frightening to. A couple of years ago while spending time at St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia I noted that Fr. Michael Duffy, OFM was actually sending and receiving text messages in the middle of the dining room there. To some technology use seems un-godly I suppose and to others like me it’s just one more way of carrying a message of hope and reaching out to those around us.

In a couple of months I’ll return to being just another member of the Secular Franciscan Order. I’ve been a minister for three years and a secretary for three years before that. It’s time for a break. My plate is going to be very full this year doing varied tasks including graduate school. Quiet contemplative time continues to grow in my life and it’s something I crave more and more.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven: — Ecclesiastes 3:1

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Merton on solitude

Earlier today I took a canoe onto the lake where we are staying and maybe it’s because I had ridden in motorized craft a lot this trip, but it was very refreshing to be paddling along in a still cove. I think there is a lot more to solitude than prayer or maybe it’s that contemplation leads to an awareness or state of mind that begets solitude and that solitude begins to infuse all that I am. It’s more than interior silence. It’s a state of being. As Ii paddled I began to recite, “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you.”

Solitude as act: the reason no one understands solitude, or bothers to try to understand it, is that it appears to be nothing but a condition. Something one elects to undergo, like standing under a cold shower. Actually, solitude is a realization, an actualization, even a kind of creation, as well as a liberation of active forces within us, forces that are more than our own, and yet more ours that what appears to be “ours”. As a mere condition, solitude can be passive, inert and basically unreal: a kind of permanent coma. One has to work at it to keep out of this condition. One has to work actively at solitude, not by putting fences around oneself but by destroying all the fences and throwing away all the disguises and getting down to the naked root of one’s inmost desire, which is the desire of liberty-reality. To be free from the illusion that reality creates when one is out of right relation to it, and to be real in the freedom which reality gives when one is rightly related to it.

Thomas Merton. Learning to Love, Journals Volume 6, Christine M. Bochen, editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997): 320-321.I used to

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Brother Fly

I’ve been enjoying a lovely summer. For the first time in almost ten years I’m not working twelve months. God has been very good to me and us and I’ve found consulting opportunities which have allowed me to make up the difference.  Our weather has been very rainy and I love to see the sun, but it’s been great to sleep in  and just enjoy sitting still.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading and writing which have been very fulfilling pastimes. I’ve loved to read ever since I first learned how. As a child I lived next to a public library and it was my second home. I frequently tell people that a visit to a bookstore is a religious experience for me. Other than monasterys and other quiet places I frequently find myself in libraries and bookstores. In the past several years I’ve become very adept at reading RSS and that’s opened some new vistas for me.

St. Francis referred to sloth as Brother Fly and I can see how that could become habit forming.  I do enjoy the stillness and lack of routine this summer has brought into my life. Frequently I’ve found that epiphanies follow a change in routine. This summer has been filled with change. I fought it at first,  but now I’ve come to see that it’s just what I needed and I’m grateful for it.  Seeing God’s hand in my life often requires lots of help for me. This summer has given me new eyes.

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Secular thoughts

Lately I’ve read a number of posts on Twitter and some of the more prominent blogs about secularity. Those thoughts along with some of my own have led me to speculate that it is man who has created this division. All that is created is created by a supreme being whether you call that being God, I Am, Yahweh, Allah or whatever sacred name. That which some would name as secular is in fact divine because it was created by humans who didn’t create themselves, but are instead manifestations of the infinite.

The false dichotomy of secular and sacred allows some men to regard what they call secular as lower and therefore un-holy and un-worthy. This allows men to regard each other as less than holy, to regard nature as less than holy and to exploit that which is regarded as secular. Western thought seems permeated with this argument over secular vs. sacred when in simple fact all is sacred. If we really saw all as sacred, how would that impact our decision making. Scientific or so called rational thought is just a sacred as those words written in the most sacred texts. What sets the sacred apart and and who gets to decide what is sacred? We accept what is sacred because somebody else told us it was sacred. But, is it really sacred to us. All life seems sacred to me, even rocks in the field were created. Squirrels, mice, snakes, insects, fish, people, grass are all created. In Franciscan terms they bear the imprint of the Most High.