When you sit
Quietly
With your hands open in your lap
Sometimes
You can manage
To open your mind
As well.
You will begin to see beyond
The boundaries
You have accepted
As true.
And if you are quiet
And open
For just a bit longer
Sometimes
Your heart will open, too
And you will find
That there are no boundaries
For love.
It will find you
And fill you
And then
You will be full.
Of course,
You cannot hold it all.
You will overflow.
Love is like that.
Isn’t it?
The wind chimes
Hang outside my window
And when the breeze is low
I can barely hear them.
My ears are deaf
But my heart is held
By their quiet, soft, round tone.
They melt into that hollow.
Every morning
Before the world begins its clamor
And the responsibilities click in place
I am held by unspoken beauty.
Even at noon
When the wind is still
And the chimes hang limp
The beauty of hope remains.
And in the evening
When the cool and breeze return
My heart is reminded.
I find I am held, still.
May you hold your own heart gently
As you make it through this day.
Sometimes it is enough
Just to breathe, just to wait.
Words, even tears, are not required.
Those hollow places are sacred,
Holding room for the grace
That quietly surrounds you.
[drawing by Bill Rogers per cc 2.0]
The hall of mirrors where I wander
Gives reflections of the broader world.
Yet, those reflections are often distorted
By my own attempt to fit them in a too-small frame.
Still, despite distortion,
There are truths that can be seen.
Whether stretched or compressed,
My hair is still turning gray.
My eyes still look back at me,
No matter how quickly I look away.
There is no way to look in the mirror
Without looking back at myself
I need other eyes
To catch another angle;
To expand the frame.
Can you help me out?
What can we see together?
I think we are both stuck in this fun house, anyway.
[photo by Lauren Coolman per cc 2.0]
The way down is the way up. – Richard Rohr
I don’t want to follow you on the way down.
I don’t want illness, weakness, failure, or sadness.
And I don’t think that you want me to want such things …
The goal for my soul is not mortification, any more than it is glorification.
The goal is you.
The trick seems to be that the elements of pleasure –
Fullness, satisfaction, acclaim, power, capacity –
Feel so good, that they quickly divert my desire.
‘The pursuit of happiness,’ is a siren song.
It is like sugar for my soul – empty calories that leave me wanting more.
On the other hand, loss is not a distraction for my desire.
Instead, the experience of loss drives me closer to you.
It is at those moments when my soul desperately cries out for you.
So, I must admit that there may be something to Rohr’s contention
That the way up is down.
The Via Dolorosa, the path of sorrows, is not to be sought,
But neither is it to be avoided at all costs,
Especially since even ‘all costs’ will not keep it away.
Even Jesus did not choose suffering
What he chose was to give himself to God.
You think you are better than me.
Of course, you are not.
But that does not make me better than you, either.
We are one.
Ugh!
That must make you uncomfortable.
It certainly makes me squirm.
Amazingly, that oneness doesn’t make us the same, either.
The mystery is that we are both uniquely a part
Of the universal One.
Like the left hand and the right,
Like the ear and the eye,
Our difference is a gift to the whole.
Indeed, it is that difference that makes it whole.
Until I put away my need to be complete on my own,
I will always be incomplete.
(Why is that always such a surprise?)
[image modified from a photo by Luc Blain per cc 2.0]
[I send apologies to my English teacher friends, lest you think you are better than I (am). Of course, as friends, you would never think that. I just needed to follow the voice of the small child who still runs around on the playground in my head.]
Is a bird self-aware?
Does it see its own quiet beauty?
Does it know the part it plays within the whole?
Or does it focus on the beauty that surrounds it,
Making it all the more beautiful,
In its unstudied grace?
Sometimes, I’d like to be a small bird.
Not so much for the flight,
But for the ease of finding the wind.
[photo by Mike Bizeau from the wonderful blog, nature has no boss used with permission]
At what point do you become so self-protected that you can no longer do the thing you were created to do? How much protection do you need—and how much can you bear before you stop being able to grow, or fly? – Quinn Caldwell
What is God’s will for a wing? Every bird knows that. – Saint Teresa of Avila
What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly? – Rumi
I wanted to write that this rich conversation between artists helped to fortify my soul … but fortification is the problem, isn’t it?
Freedom is a scary, precious thing, calling life to life in all its tender vulnerability.
May we all be brave enough to fly into the face of fear with thundering wing and gentle feather.
[The photo is of the sculpture “Harness” by Seamus Moran, as posted to his Facebook page. You can also view his work at www.seamusmoran.com. Used with permission.]
May you rest your head, this evening, upon a pillow of rich and beautiful dreams – where your imagination runs barefoot across a meadow of delight.
May your heart be set free from the concerns of the day.
May your soul find its home in the hollow of God’s hand.
May you receive and return that primal love
That calls the universe to life and sustains its every breath.
[image cropped from photo by angrylambie1 per cc 2.0]
One dark night – I think it was in the early 2000’s – there was a great and terrible storm in Denton. It engulfed the whole city, especially the city center.
On the south side of the square, there was a bolt of lightening as bright as the light on the Damascus road, and that young confederate soldier looked up. He shook his stone head and covered his eyes. When the flash and rumble had subsided, he put down his rifle and climbed down from that arch.
As he was climbing down, he stepped for a moment on the old water fountain on one side of the base of the arch and it crumbled under his weight. From it sprang an arch of water that sprayed up – higher than the stone arch, itself – and fell just to the other side. Seeing that, the young soldier moved to the other side of the arch and raised his foot and stepped down on the fountain on that side, crumbling it and releasing an arch of water that rose and joined the first in mirror image.
Suddenly there was another crack of lightening. It struck the stone arch and broke it into a thousand pieces, but the arches of water remained, dancing in the bursts of lightening that continued to spark the night around him.
Then Johnny went to work. He took the pieces of the stone arch and began to fit together a mosaic that extended up the sidewalk toward the courthouse. It was tedious work. He had to fit and re-fit the pieces until they came together well. As the night wore on, he realized that he would not be able to finish his work before daybreak, when the spell of his re-enchantment would break. He sat back in despair and dropped his head into his hands.
Then, slowly, he noticed dozens of other forms had gathered round him – men and women, boys and girls, a diversity of faces and voices. They all took up the task with him – fitting the pieces of the mosaic along the line of the sidewalk, moving northward. The continuing rain created a small stream that ran through their work, from the courthouse to the water-arches. The gathered throng finished the mosaic just as the rain stopped and the sun ran its rosy finger across the horizon.
Johnny stepped back to admire the view, resting his tired form upon the wall of courthouse, his feet planted among the low bushes that ring the building. A shaft of sunlight fell upon him and the spell was broken. Johnny turned back to stone. He stands there now, gazing out upon a different world than the one he knew when he was soldering. There is a new look of pride in his stance – one that sprang from his change of heart, from his awakening to a world where difference is strength and where the circle of his heart was expanded with one great lightening strike. It is the same world where we can learn and grow and work together, as our hearts, too, are changed.
The dawn now finds its reflection in the small stream that, miraculously, continues to run from the seat of justice to the water-arch. There, on a hot summer day, the children of Denton cool themselves as they splash together. They, in their laughter, continue to write our future’s history.
[images from the Portal to Texas History ]
Quiet Hope 