Meditating to Heal

Retreat of Love

I am enjoying the first evening of a weekend retreat at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, Virginia. It is our once-a-year gathering for a weekend of enjoying the beauty of God’s creation and the Love of our fellow man.

Presently, I am sitting in the lobby of the main building listening to the youth of the church sing Compline. What a beautiful way to end the day. The young girls and boys are leading song, prayer, scripture reading, and sharing personal love and prayers for each other and the world. When I see events such as this, I know that the world will be in good hands; the young people are so encouraging in their belief and lack of fear sharing their faith with each other. I wish that their parents were similarly inclined. Not to pick on the immediate parents, but the parents I general, who tend to forget how simple, child-like faith can move mountains.

Presently, they are singing, “Jesus Loves Me.” I am seeing the innocence and love expressed in all their faces; those of the two and three-year olds; those of the teenagers; and those of the parents, who are considerably older. The beauty of the faith of a child, the child in all of us, is truly a promising, uplifting experience to observe and to anticipate.

AS this first day closes, I thank God for giving us the opportunities to love one another, as She Loves us.

Although I am not Catholic, I do read what Catholic leaders write. I believe that these words also come from God.

Pope John Paul II wrote, “So, in beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, we must contemplate, sing, and rediscover wonder.” Right John Paul, we must wonder at the glory of God when he allows a crazed terrorist to smash a window on the 32^nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel and kill 59 concert goers and seriously wound almost 600 others. However, let us not forget the thousands of others who will be forever traumatized by this event and suffer with PTSD for the remainder of their lives.

Last night, at our Lectio Divina contemplative prayer group, we discussed a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where, among other things, Paul speaks of the undying Love that God gives us. I sometimes find it impossible to live a life of rapture, basking in God’s Love, when I awake to the horrific news from Las Vegas. I posted a prayer on Facebook, almost immediately, asking for God’s Love and forgiveness for the victims and their families, for the politicians who are too cowardly to face the gun lobbyists, and for ourselves, who keep electing these traitors to our society, unless of course, the truth is that we are actually the very barbaric nation of loveless people we seem to be.

I pray that we are not. As a society, we are over-programmed to shun God’s Love in favor of a more seemingly comfortable acceptance of our distorted societal values.

Are we really this way? Are we so numbed by the daily recurrence of gun violence in our communities? I am all for voting these deceitful politicians from office; but I cannot hate them. They are also children of God. I must offer God’s Love to them, as I would to my friends and family. By loving freely (not free love), I am fulfilling Paul’s message: he writes in his letter, and I paraphrase:  God gives us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know Him better. I now must extend this Love to include the man who committed this violence, knowing that he also is a child of our ever-Loving God.

Of course!! Have a Loving day, even amidst this horrifying news.

 

Let all that you do be done in Love. 
This profound sentence is an OMG moment in my life. When I realized what Paul is telling me in this letter to the Corinthians, I experience an AHA moment. This is not possible.

After all, I teach and am constantly confronted by the unfortunate fact that many students attend class totally and completely unprepared. They just do not complete the assignments, resulting in my monologue, not a discussion of main ideas from English prose. I’m supposed to be angry and reprimand the class for the poor performance. I guess when I was learning how to teach I cut the class that told us to be mean and avoid any signs of understanding that today’s students are under a great deal of pressure.

The simple fact is: I love my students. Even if they have not performed to the best of their abilities, I do not show anger toward them, simply because most of them are struggling both physically and psychologically by attending class four or five times a week, and work half or even full time.

I also find that I love all people. The other day, I was approaching campus on a road with a very strict 25 MPH rule, so much that there is often a police car, just sitting there. A little pseudo-sports car passed me on the right in a right turn only lane; he then cut in front of me, turned right into the parking lot, and race across the lanes to grab the first available space. I verbally expressed my love for this young man, feeling sorry for his lack of preparedness to be in class on time.

Love and laughter, not anger, will bring a happier day to this young man.

You and I are God’s beloved children; we are way more effective and influential when we turn to each other and not against each other. The only way that we can succeed, tear down the walls that separate us, and, defeat all forms of injustice, anger, and hatred is when we celebrate our diversity, not condemn us for it. 

May all we do, be done through sharing God’s Love, paving the way to a Life of Love.

 

Have you ever been to a place that seems familiar, but you can’t quite remember if you have ever been there? Life can be very vexing at times. There are more things in our world that ask questions that we are incapable of answering, at least on an intellectual level, but are very answerable on a spiritual level.

If there are no answers on an intellectual level, where can we find answers. I am reminded of Yogi Berra’s comment, “It’s Deja Vu all over again.” Funny, isn’t it? But maybe not. Have we been there before, or is it a place that just reminds us of somewhere we’ve been?

I am reading William Walker Atkinson’s A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga, published in October 1906. It is the Eastern view of how Western religious philosophy has drifted so far away from the teachings of first century Christianity. There are explanations explaining some of the mysteries that are not answered in the King James Bible, or any modern translation. I have done considerable reading about first century Christianity; what the Apostles of Jesus taught throughout the then-known world. These are the men who traveled with Jesus, or traveled with those, who did travel with Jesus.

What we learn today differs greatly from the teachings of these apostles. Their lessons are far removed from the alterations and edicts from the Western Church that have come down through the centuries. For instance, women were an important part in Jesus’ ministry; after all, the first appearance of the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection was to women. The women in the New Testament play an important role in His healing and His preaching. But, throughout the centuries, western religion has usurped the role of women and placed them in the subservient position, which is not much better than the slaves in the history of the USA.

How can we accept these ancient teachings? Henri Nouwen has a classic but often forgotten idea: solitude and meditation. When we are alone and in meditation to get closer to God, we open our minds and hearts to hear God speak to us. Nouwen says that solitude is the garden that allows our heart to flourish in God’s good news of Love. Our being alone (with God) will calm our anxious minds, erasing the stressful unhappiness that seems to control our waking hours. Solitude and meditation is essential for our spirit to grow in God’s Love and accept the confines of the hectic world we live in. This is in line with what the 1^st century Christians did. It brought them closer to God.

How does this ancient set of Christian beliefs evolve from remembering a place you have never visited? Good question.

Christian teaching has always been that life extends beyond the grave. The question is, how, to what extent. We have placed little thought to where, when, and how this occurs. Are we reborn to new bodies and remember bits and pieces of our former identities? Or, do we learn a collective knowledge, such as the instinct that is so noticeable in dogs and other four-legged beasts?

 I must think more about this. Maybe when I discover a reasonable response I will return to this topic.

Have a great day.

 

 

 Why did the chicken cross the road?

We can be cute and answer, “to get to the other side;” or, we could be scientifically serious and respond with dietary and avian philosophies dating back to the time of Laozi, 260 years ago in China.

But what about us, what about the human animals that will cross a road only for a sale, or a restaurant, on the opposing side of the avenue? We are too wrapped in our own circles of influence to be concerned with crossing the street for anything other than mundanity.

If we are truly neighbors to those around us, if we truly accept that the family across the road and our family are worthy of each other, then we must cross the road for the benefit of both families. There is too much disengagement and segregation between black people and white people, between gay and straight people, between young and old, between sick and healthy, between prisoners and free people, between Jews and Gentiles, Muslims and Christians, and Protestants and Catholics.

Life’s demands make it imperative that we cross the road; we need to notice that our neighbors suffer, as we do. Perhaps, if we share with our neighbors, more than just a “Good morning, brother,” we will learn to appreciate that what happens to either of us happens to all of us.

Luke 6 says, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye?” Do we remember how painful it is when we get a piece of sand in our eye at the beach? I don’t care how old we are; our first instinct is to run home to Mama for her to stop the pain.

Our lack of caring, or even trying to understand, what it’s like across the road hurts us, just as much as the grain of sand in our eye.

Loving our neighbor is not a luxury to be cast aside with irrational whims; it is a gift to cherish.

Lucky to Love and to be Loved 

If God truly loved us, why are there wars? Why are there fatal illnesses that kill little children before they can appreciate what love is? Why do we pray, when most of the time we can never know if our prayers are answered?

Confusing questions from a confused mind. Well, maybe not so confused. I do believe that prayer opens a conversation between me and God. I believe that prayer is the poetry that seals our relationship with something other than our mundane life on planet Earth. It links our known existence with the unknown forces that we do not and cannot understand. Prayer, and the Love that follows, brings forth a compassionate behavior that allows us to appreciate one another in this hectic world in which we reside. Without this compassion, without this Loving behavior, we would only live alone, out of touch with anyone else. We could not abide by others’ idiosyncrasies. Without this compassion and its permanent companion, Love, we would have no future to anticipate. Everything we do would be to satisfy the cravings of a shallow existence. We would be miserable; we are unhappy.

Ultimately, we have no choice but to accept that there is a universal Love that permits us to be, well, us. Love permits us to enjoy Life, the Life given by God. This also invites us to love not only God, but all people. Without this Love directed to our friends and neighbors, known and unknown, life would not be mysterious; it would be terrifying and useless.

We need each other; we need the Love we share between ourselves and between ourselves and God. This keeps us enjoying everything around us – our friends, our families, and the activities that keep us wanting for more.

To Love is to risk. I have loved many people in my life, and many times I have been hurt, felt abandoned, or depressed, unable to understand the rejection. Since I am now considerably older, I recognize that people who hurt those who love them misinterpret Love for what it is. Love is not infatuation; love is caring for others the way God cares for us. Some of my long-ago friends, and some of my current friends, are too fearful of, well, of anything that may put them in harm’s way. They are too afraid to Love, not love, but Love. I wish I were as caring at age 24 as I am at age 74. I probably would have had no hesitation in telling all my friends, my Marine buddies, my teachers, and yes, my family that I Love them, and always will. For some, it may seem too late; however, I am comfortable with the understanding that when I look back on my life and tell someone from my past that I Love them, I know they hear me. And, I am no longer hesitant to express this Love.

 

 

 

Meditation:

Jesus gives us an awe-full (as in full of awe) gift in Matthew 22:

When asked by one of the apostles which is the greatest commandment, Jesus response was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is to love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus repeats this in John 13: – I give you a new commandment: love one another; as I have loved you, so you are to love one another.

This was and still is quite an awe-full task; not the one word awful; the two words awe and full.

We are in awe of the immense responsibility this commandment imposes on us.

As I was thinking about concept of Love (capital L), several ideas invaded my meditation.

We know that one of the greatest gifts God gave us through Jesus is the ability to love – to love one another. Taken in this light, perhaps the second greatest commandment is not a commandment at all, but it is an invitation to share in the Love God freely gives us.

During the adult forum on Sunday, Joe demonstrated the effect of communion with God – the vertical communion between God and man. And by spreading that with our neighbors, we are spreading God’s communion horizontally, thus completing the message of Love on the Cross. Jesus demonstrated this Love when he forgave those who crucified him.

This is the second time in as many days as this image was presented to me. On Saturday, while attending the Diocese’s Intercultural Summit in Richmond, Bishop Shannon demonstrated the same vertical and horizontal relationship between man and God, and man and man when it comes to reconciliation and repentance. These concepts are freely given by God to us, only to be shared with one another, thus completing Jesus’s mission on the Cross.

If we are truly to share in the gift of Love, God’s Love, we must not only love God with all our hearts, with all our souls and with all our minds, we must do the same for, with, and to all mankind.

After all, we are all children of God and we will all be recognized as this after we leave our bodies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life, Death, and Love

No, I am not talking about leaving this earth as we know it, only as we perceive it. That is, if we can ever accurately understand it.

I was born in 1943 to a 55-year-old father and a 26-year-old mother, who already had a daughter, born 18 months before my arrival. As with all families, ours was the typical American family in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I think it would be generous to say that we were upper lower class. My father, a 1912 Yale graduate, lost everything with the market crash in 1929, including his first wife. Fortunately, they did not have children. My mother was from a very lower class southern European family; she worked two jobs and raised her younger siblings during the Great Depression. My maternal grandmother was a barfly and two years younger than my father.

When I was 15, my father was 70. I emphasize this because I was raised by a relatively young mother and a grandfather, so to speak. At best, there was peace in our family. I cannot say that there was an overly emphasis on showing love – at least through physical connection. dis

My father was a Christian Scientist and spent many hours towards the end of his life reading his Bible and Science and Health. He was a gentle soul who rarely showed his emotion, reflecting on his New England raising.

For many years, and even today, when I reflect on it, I feel cheated from a life with a normal father to take me fishing or teach me to throw a baseball; I could pad the list with examples. Then I think what I learned from my father and his relationship with God. First: be thankful, for health, family, a roof over your head, an income; I could list many other things, but you get the picture.

My father, mother, and sister have all passed into God’s eminent domain, and I have a hard time thinking of them in a loving fashion. It is a very difficult struggle to remember love, when for all practical purposes, there was little. Henri Nouwen reminds us that it is not always easy to express our love even to those who mean the most to us. We do not have the proper words to express how we truly feel; for example, in Greek, there are five separate words for the concept of love. We have one. . .

I really do not care how many words we have; if we can say “I love you,” we create a whole different world for us. Jesus lived a life of unconditional love, even loving from the cross, when he asked God to forgive those who crucified him. As I recall my family, can I do any less?

When I open myself to admit that there is love between me and my family, even if they are no longer physically with me, I realize that Clarence, Beatrice, and Judith are not gone; they are still alive in my mind, still alive in my body, still alive in the very essences of my life.

For this, I am grateful.

Source: Turn Around

Henri Nouwen says, We belong to a generation that wants to see the results of our work. We want to be productive and see with our own eyes what we have made; but that is not the way of God’s Kingdom. We are too enveloped by our own importance, causing both external and internal pressures.

Our friendships and relations with all others can be challenged by this egocentric obsessive personality trait. On a grander scale, this egocentricity can be disastrous for many greater relationships, causing permanent damage with these relationships, or at least a permanent lowering of trustworthiness.

Internally, this obsession can cause both physical and psychological difficulties, triggering unfortunate long-term results. If we concentrate on our true inner selves, we are rewarded by better relations with others and with ourselves, William Stafford (1914-1993) says this best in his poem, “The Way It Is,” expressing what the true inner self means:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

That thread is your true self, the one created by God. This is the self that we must please, the false self, the one concerned with our productivity and self-importance, is the one that causes our problems. Stafford says that this self is difficult for others to see; I say that all too often, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible for us to see this true self. We are too busy to allow this true self to emerge. It takes practice, and all too often, it is hiding from us. We must take the time to find its hiding place within us.

I do take the time to meditate, daily if possible. Much of my meditation is trying to contact my true self. My brain is so focused on what I have to do, what I did not do that my mediation seems unfocused. And, it is! I find it difficult to be patient enough to allow my contacting my true self. However, those days that I do reach down and allow my inner self, the one created by God, comes out of hiding. The feeling is euphoric. I come out of my period of mediation to a world that looks beautiful.

We are promised rain today, tomorrow and the next few days in Virginia. So what! By allowing my inner voice to speak this morning, the day is not a waste. The weather-forced limitation is given by God to allow me to quiet down, read, write, and stop to smell the proverbial roses.

What a truly joyous day this is.