Sunrise by Mary Oliver

 

You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India

and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

Today, as the sunrises under your lashes and you breathe the full, fragrant breath of life, may your heart be gladdened with wonder, serenity, opportunity, oneness. And may a spirit of gratitude steep deep and slow in your bones. Have a lovely day! Peggy

Music: Intermezzo from Cavalaria Rusticana, Mascagni

The Importance of NOW

"Great love has the potential to open the heart space and then the mind space. Great suffering has the potential to open the mind space and then the heart space." Richard Rohr, The Naked Now

The moment these two converge - Love and suffering; heart and mind - is Now.

There are a multitude of perspectives on the symbolism of the cross, all of which are true and beautiful. One that I find particularly expansive is the cross as a symbol of the intersect of space, the vertical (the spiritual) and time the horizontal (the physical). At the intersect of these 2 realities hangs a human, suffering at the hands of other humans, most of whom do not understand themselves as spiritual beings, but who operate primarily from their physical identity.


In order to understand the spiritual nature of human identity, one must spend time at the intersect, time in that place where physical and spiritual meet. In the physical, this intersect can be experienced as suffering. In the spiritual, it is eternal peace in union with Christ/God/Spirit. Both lead to the intersect, the point of reconciliation, and  from there, a new way of seeing, a new way of being. We call this resurrection. Love is at the intersect of both realities. Love in the form of a fleshy human. Love in the Divine essence. Love reconciles the two, love suffers and love transcends suffering. Love is our human potential and our spiritual responsibility.

In time (which is a physical construct) this intersect is any Present moment. This moment, NOW. Time is made of these moments. One does not have to be suffering or ecstatic to be in the moment. One can spend time there simply by being mindful, present, through prayer and silence.

Adoration is about identifying our human experience, both our suffering and loving, with Jesus, who overcomes the pain and suffering of the physical reality because he draws his Spiritual identity from God, the Eternal Divine. He fully embraces his spiritual identity. He is annointed, Christ. This is our example, of a fleshy human and of a spirit embodied. We too, can draw our spiritual identity into our greater awareness and into our lives through mindfulness, through quiet prayerful presence. We too, can  Love in the way of Jesus the fleshy human, and be resurrected in Love. In Christ. Every Now moment.
 
May you take the time to be fully prayerfully present in these moments of Holy Week, of suffering and loving, remembering Jesus, who shows us the Way to resurrection.
 
Peggy

I did the artwork on retreat once. If you look carefully, you will see the word, NOW written across the intersect of physical and spiritual. This is the point at which the eternal light of the Divine breaks into physical reality. And on the crucifix, the body and soul of a human, Jesus, hangs in just that very place.

Spirit of Chaos & Order

"These were no longer two things, but two states or two aspects of one and the same cosmic Stuff, according to whether it was looked (Matter) at or carried further in the direction in which it is becoming itself or in the direction in which it is disintegrating (Spirit). Matter is the Matrix of Spirit. Spirit is the higher state of Matter. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Life is energy. Energy is Spirit. The Spirit gives life. Within the soul lies a fire (eros), the energy that drives us. But there is more...The Spirit is the adhesive that holds us together, the principle of integration and individuation within us. The Spirit integrates the mind and the body and all their thoughts and cellular processes into a whole being. The Spirit not only enlivens us individually, but it makes us one with all of creation within which the Spirit lives.

There is a principle of order and chaos within the Spirit - a tendency to come together and also to dissipate (birth and death). The human soul is the same. The energy within us - our desire (eros), our longing for completion is constantly in creative tension with our incompletion. Chaos and order. Fire and water. We live in a constant flux of psychic unity and disorder and social unity and disorder, and global unity and disorder and cosmic unity and disorder. This is the nature of energy and matter and Spirit in flux.

Spirituality is about what we do with that incurable desire, the eros/passion unitive energy of the Spirit within us, who wants to move us to order, but whose intensity is constantly displaced by our (ego) choices to channel it outside of ourselves rather than learn to harness its unitive power within. It is this latter ability that truly raises our consciousness in Christ who IS the unitive Spirit of Life.

Love is the method. Love is the vehicle. Humans can be unconditionally loving - first loving themselves (for this is to Love God or the Spirit of Life within you) and secondly to love your neighbors as yourself (which is every other human creature on the planet). Each of us has the potential to Love unconditionally. It is work. It requires a great deal of humility and patience. But this is how the Spirit brings order to chaos. This is how humanity is united in Christ, who is ONLY LOVE.
 
As we enter into this beautiful time of renewal, this springtime of earthen Matter, take time to reflect on what revives the sleeping winter world. What is it that greens the grass and fattens the buds on trees? What pushes crocus and daffodils from their dark bed of soil toward the warm sunlight? What urges the birds to procreate and migrate? You are part of this.

If you are Christian, you are celebrating this in your Lenten journey. As you move through the chaos of darkness with Jesus in these last days, open yourself to the Spirit of order that is calling you forward, the Light of your higher consciousness - Christ - that cannot be extinguished. Let this Spirit, that is You, speak to you and unite you with the Spirit of God/Christ that is bringing into unity all that lives.
 
Namaste, Peggy

The beginnings of this blog are inspired by a book by Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, "The Holy Longing, the Search for a Christian Spirituality."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1, 1881 – April 10, 1955) was a French philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of Peking Man.


Below is a selection of scriptures that speak to our identity (our psychological being) in the Spirit. The creation story in Genesis would be a good place to find a poetic discussion of Spirit's uniting of energy and matter.
 
1 Corinthians 2:10....The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
 
13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.


1 Corinthians 3:16, 21.
¹⁶ Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?
All things are yours, ²² whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, ²³ and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Happiness and the Matrix

I am reading a book called The Steps of Essence, by Hanns-Oskar Porr, that describes the first call to becoming who you truly are with this analogy: In the movie, The Matrix, Neo can take a blue pill that allows him to live every day in bliss, but the trade off is that he gives up his autonomy and control to an unknown force that renders him a mindless slave - happy, but mindless. OR he can take the red pill which will afford him to learn the truth about himself. He will understand the forces that control him and learn to gain freedom from them, but at a steep price. The road will be hard; he will enter into dark places of His weakness: shame, guilt, neediness, greed, jealousy, fear. But he will learn to sculpt away these castings, these disguises of the true divine Self and realize that they must be held in paradoxical tension with all that is good and pure and true. The journey will reveal the truth and the truth will guide the journey. He will discover the essence of who he is. He will become his most authentic self. Happiness will look more like self-acceptance and deep joy, and Neo will be the Hero of his own life.


I was intrigued with this because I think I missed this point in the movie. Or maybe not, it has been awhile since I saw The Matrix, but I am familiar with the choices that the pills afford. So, the first step is to say, ok I am willing to take the hard road. But here’s the catch: everyday you get the pill choice again...Will you choose to wait for happiness to present itself to you, to be a victim of life, a sort of bystander to your own existence? Or will you choose to to be the Hero of your life, to confront your fear, put aside some of those things you think you "need," and ride the wonderful experience of your true Self? The choice to hold the tension between what should and should not be is the demand of truly living YOUR [authentic] life.

At my niece’s graduation, the priest gave a sermon on "The Road Ahead" for the grads. He said that Jesus would ask them at every turn, “Do you love me?” To answer to this question, we must make the choice of pills. If we answer yes, we take the red pill. We agree to be Christ-like in love which is to love ferociously, and, yes, to suffer for it. To love is to be vulnerable. It is to bear all the sweet goodness of your divine Self to the other, with no defense; to be completely compassionate. The red pill requires us to be loyal to truth, above all else. And the truth is, Love is who we are! Every day we are faced with the choice to be either authentic or robotic. Every day we choose to take the high road or the low. Everyday we can allow the circumstances of life to control us, or we can choose our destiny. To know ourselves as love requires incredible courage and strength. To remain positive, optimistic, “happy” requires us to be a warrior for love and kindness, even at those times when we would rather not be. To truly live into love, which is our authentic nature, is to encounter hurt, absorb it and love harder.

We can run from the demands of life and relationship and never know who we are, or we can meet life head on with the Wisdom (yes, this choice is a wisdom choice) that happiness means more that just getting what I want. Which pill will you take?

I "see" the beautiful Real (the Spirit) in you! I hope you will choose to "see" also!
Namaste, Peggy

© Peggy Beatty 2011

Ash Wednesday - Wilderness, Fasting, Humility

Contemplation~
“But know this,” says YHWH: “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Tear open your heart not your clothes!” Return to YHWH your God, who is gracious and deeply loving as a mother, quick to forgive, abundantly tender-hearted – and relents from inflicting disaster. Joel 2:12.

The Journey of Lent is a Wilderness journey and is associated with fasting. Some people fast from meat, or soda, or TV during Lent. Fasting is a long- practiced spiritual discipline designed to empty one’s self in order to be filled by the Spirit. The symbolism of fasting is that doing without your most basic needs, food and water, is an act of trust and submission. We submit our need for food in trust that God will provide, much like the ancient Israelites trusted God in the Wilderness to provide the manna needed to sustain life.

You are tender and compassionate, YHWH—slow to anger, and always loving; your indignation doesn’t endure forever and your anger lasts only for a short time. You never treat us as our sins deserve; you don’t repay us in kind for the injustices we do. For as high as heaven is above the earth, so great is your love for those who revere you. As far away as the east is from the west, that is how far you remove our sins from us! As tenderly as parents treat their children, that’s how tenderly you treat your worshipers, YHWEH! For you know what we are made of – you remember that we’re nothing but dust. Psalm 103:8-14

From a psychological standpoint, submission in trust is called humility. Psychologically, humility is to let go the idea that you are in ultimate control of what you think you need for comfort and happiness, be it material or intangible. We like to think we control our circumstances as well as our attitudes and perspectives, but very often we do not. And very often, the attitude we choose is not an attitude that reflects the benevolent love of God…either toward others or toward ourself.

In ecclesiastical language we call humility, or self emptying, kenosis. Fasting, a symbol of kenosis, or self emptying, is essentially the willingness to reduce your neediness – physiological and psychological – to humble yourself in a gesture of trust and prayer before God. It is no mistake that the root of humility is humus – dirt, soil (ashes) – the same root as human. It is in the Wilderness of humility that we accept our humanness – our inability to count on anything but God to provide everything we need.

Action~
This is the sort of fasting that pleases me: remove the chains of injustice! Undo the ropes of the yoke! Let those who are oppressed go free, and break every yoke you encounter! Share your bread with those who are hungry, and shelter homeless poor people! Clothe those who are naked and don’t hide from the needs of your own flesh and blood! Do this and your light will shine like the dawn- and healing will break forth like lightening! Your integrity will go before you and the glory of YHWEH will be your rearguard. Isaiah 58:6-9

Blessing~
May you go forth into this season of Lenten fasting and wilderness with complete trust. On this journey, may God surprise you and affirm you by the lengthening of the days and the greening of earth. May you see Gods promise of new life all around you and may it give you constant hope. May you walk with Jesus in humanity, in humility, in kenosis and approach with Him the great tests of Love along the way. May you remain committed to hold His hand in darkness all the way to the cross, knowing fully, faithfully, that God is here and always, always waiting for you with light and life.

The love and peace of Christ be yours, Peggy

© Peggy Beatty, Feb 2011

Thursday Psalm - Thomas Merton

By ceasing to question the sun I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted thing

Grow from my heart

A tall spare pine

Stands like the initial of my first

Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,

When I was on fire

When this valley was

Made out of fresh air

You spoke my name

In naming Your silence:

O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart's love

Bursts with hay and flowers.

I am a lake of blue air

In which my own appointed place

Field and valley

Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds His foolish worship.

Thomas Merton, Book of Hours

Praise for the rising sun and the new day! May your day be filled with splendor and surprise. Breath deeply and take moments to Be.... part of unfolding Life. You are humus, made of the soil of the earth, enlivened by ruach, the breath of God, and sustained by the waters of Grace. Peace be with you, Peggy

My Dream - Peggy 2009

I approached the Creator and I told Her my dream, “I dreamed the world could be saved and I knew how to save it. I had to tell someone!

So I went to my Earth Friend and I told her of all the beauty and grace in the universe and how we humans bring that to each other. I showered her with images of you, Creator, and of your garden and I told her what is yours could also be hers.

     She looked at me sadly and said, 'I cannot hear you.'

Realizing that she could not interpret my words, I went to The Magistrate. And I told her that you, Creator, called to us through each other. I tried to explain that we must be silent and quiet in our hearts to hear your voice and to understand the ebb and flow of your grace.

     She said, 'Where did you learn these heresies?'

I confessed that I learned them from speaking with you.

     She said, 'I have never learned such things. What you say threatens us. You are a false prophet.'

Saddened at her response, I told my Spirit Friend of my concerns. Surely she would understand me. I explained that you, Creator, were speaking through all of us, through our friendships and our families, our relationships with the earth and with those like us across the globe. I told her that you informed us of these things in so many ways, but that sometimes we needed to affirm them among ourselves. I said that was what spirit friends did; they reflected the love and beauty of the Creator’s promise to each other and made light.

     She said, 'There is a time for that. And now is not that time. Now it is time to sleep.' And she turned out the lights and closed my bedroom door.

I did not want to sleep!

I lay in the dark night wondering if I misunderstood everything you have taught me. I wondered if perhaps your promises of love and grace and joy were promises to be kept only to myself. And yet, they were promises so lovely, so grand, so true and so life saving. And now they seemed so heavy, so burdensome, so alienating. The world was perishing, and your way was so simple and obvious. I had to try to tell them. But, alas, they could not hear me. They thought me a heretic and a fool. They left me in the dark to hold these insights all alone. In despair and self doubt, I closed my eyes and let my mind slip away so my heart could not feel the pain."

The Creator looked at me with gentle eyes and smiled. She drew me into her broad arms, and as I melted into her breast I could feel our hearts beating together in the very same rhythm. I lifted my eyes to hers and from our gaze emerged an ocean of tears that poured over us, cool and clear, settling around us in a peaceful tidepool. She breathed and we expanded together, her chest burgeoned, heaving above the waters like a breaching whale, then exhaled back to gentle calm. Misty breath surrounded me and drew me cell by cell into vapor. I knew this peace.

     Ever so calmly she assumed my discouragement into our eternal embrace and whispered assurance through me,
                                                           “I will talk to them.”