Her greatest wish
Was that her touch
Would leave the fingerprints
Of Jesus.
She got her wish.
Ruth Williamson – Jan 21, 1923 – August 8, 2002
Fifteen years later, her touch remains.
My greatest wish is that my words will echo the whisper of the Holy One.
What is your greatest wish?
Oh, Holy One,
I sit beneath the tree of my imagination.
I hold my troubled heart in my hands.
I don’t know what else to do.
You sit beside me.
You lean over and wrap your hands around mine.
You lean down and kiss my heart.
I offer it up to you, mostly out of desperation.
And you smile.
That, at least, is good; seems right;
Not righteous on my part, but true.
That smile softly changes the contours of my heart.
I move from grasping fear to gratitude.
Your smile tugs at the corners of my own mouth.
I feel my hands relax around my heart.
I feel my soul relax around my quandaries.
Your presence beside me is enough.
Indeed, it is more than enough,
I release myself into a surprising fullness,
My questions are not answered, but they are quieted.
I am held in you.
[photo by Felix Dance per cc 2.0]
May the soft breeze of God’s whisper
Lift your heart as you arise.
May God’s dear smile
Play across the faces of your friends,
As you greet each other along the way.
May you find yourself joyfully engaged
In those tasks most suited to your gifts.
May you deeply know, even in the midst
Of troubles and questions and seeming failure,
That you, yourself, will never be abandoned.
May you see that any gift,
Given in love into the hand of God,
Softens the edges of reality,
And widens the flow of grace.
Each act of love
Is a step
In the redemption of the world.
[photo by Styleღwithღattitude per cc 2.0]
Does it seem strange to you that an amoeba would try to talk to a ballerina?
Or, even more, that a ballerina would care to talk to an amoeba?
What language would they use?
What reality would frame the conversation?
What concerns, what urgencies, would energize the exchange?
So, when prayer confuses me … I probably should not find that confusion confusing.
The work of prayer is not so much what is being prayed about –
But about making the connection.
It is a wonder that a connection can be made;
A kindness that such connection is invited.
There is a transformation, bit by bit, in what I see;
In who I am;
In who we are, together.
Conversation becomes conversion … bit by bit by bit.
What grace!
[Image modified from photo by Mirjana Veljovic per cc 2.0]
I stand at the mouth of a cavern – huge, dark … powerful in its presence and mystery. I want to enter, something calls me in, but I am also fearful. If I walk this path, will I soon get lost amid the stalagmites and stalactites and crevices and boulders that lurk within the shadows? Will I fall or be trapped? Will I simply wander to no avail?
Yet, there is this call, not really audible, just a tug upon my soul. I take a deep breath and step toward the dark. And in that first step, I feel my heart open just a bit – or perhaps it just softens. It is an almost imperceptible move, like the coming wakefulness of morning, arising from the deepest sleep to the next level, just below awareness.
I take another breath and resist the urge to steel myself. It is not about holding tight, but letting go. Another breath, another step, ears on alert, heart inching ahead of my frame, I move. One slow step at a time, searching … or, no, opening, I move.
This is different. I somehow know that this is not a process where I will find something, or figure it out, or come to understand. This is a process in which I will be changed, opened, melded.
It has taken these few steps for the whole sense of this call to change. I am not called to some great mission, to some accomplishment that will be a offering for you. I am called to become someone different, someone melded, molded, reconstituted into a vessel, or … not so much a container for something other than I am, but a container that is an amalgam of me and you – a container that can now hold something that could not otherwise be held.
Beheld… that word, itself, turns a corner in me. If I let myself be seen – and the darkness provides a bit of a robe for my nakedness even as I shed my successive layers of protection – if I let myself be seen, I will become more of myself. Beholding as creation.
And beholding goes both ways. As I find my way through a successive unmasking of my very self, I find my way to you, as well. You dwell in truth. An honest soul, and only an honest soul, can truly encounter you. It is a law of the spiritual realm – that truth is a prerequisite.
Yet truth alone, sterile and hard, will not suffice. Somehow, honesty must be mixed with the affirming pulse of life itself, the truth of true connection, where the coming together is full and free and beautiful. Some would call it love, but even that word seems too light a thing.
And now all my words fade to mere filaments of hope. They cannot really do justice to what is.
I stand, naked, in the dark, still shedding layers of presumption and constraint. And the darkness, itself, a deep and quiet and holy darkness, swirls around me, urging union, promising completion.
Slowly the darkness becomes light. Turns out the darkness was within me, and I have begun to shed it, ever so slowly. The light begins to smile upon me, to welcome me, to make its way into me. My growing honesty is, at last, allowing me to embrace – to be embraced by – the truth of you.
This process is not done, but it is begun. And I am glad.
My soul, a bit raw from this successive unveiling, feels closer to itself. It confirms a truth that has long dwelt with me. I have no words. Except, perhaps, ‘thank you.’
[photo by Emily Mocarski per cc 2.0]
A change in plans
Can be disconcerting.
It suggests that I’m not really
The one in control, after all.
Imagine that!
It also reminds me
That my focus, all too often,
Is on the circumstances,
On things to do and places to be.
I have a to-do list,
Not a to-be or to-be-with list.
But, when plans change,
I am reminded
That the richness of life
Lies in the continual dance of relationship.
Circumstances are just the medium
Where we dance that dance.
Life is not really about what, but who.
And I am so grateful
For those who dance this dance with me.
They touch my soul with grace
And open my eyes to the deep.
With these companions,
Plans are dance steps drawn upon the floor.
When you are actually dancing,
There is joy in creating the dance together.
Change is where the life is.
Let’s dance!
[image modified from photo by Jeremy Keith per cc 2.0]
The mirror of my mind’s eye
Is much more flattering
Than the one framed on my bathroom door.
My imagined goodness, too,
Contains all the contemplated kindnesses,
Not just those actually done.
My projects are better when I plan them
Than when they reach completion,
With all their wrinkles and flaws.
The problem is
When I am content with imagining
Nothing really happens.
I must embrace the flaws
If I am to love the life that is,
If I am to live at all.
Like raw silk,
The slubs are part of its beauty.
They add richness and grace.
Those cracks, dear Lenard,
As you knew so well,
Are where the life gets in.
So, here’s a surprise for you:
I’m not perfect.
Never have been.
In fact, perfect isn’t so good,
‘Cause you’d have to stop right there.
Any move from perfect goes away from it.
And perfect –
Doesn’t have many friends.
Too insufferable; too lonely.
What I am; what you are
Is unfolding; growing; transforming,
All of which embrace imperfection at their start.
Like a little one,
Learning to crawl; learning to stand;
It can be a lovely, messy process.
What it requires is a loving environment.
Where each new step is cherished
And loving arms reach out to hold you through it all.
I am grateful to have such arms around me.
We fall together; we help each other up; we laugh.
Perfect! (not.)
A list of things that will pass:
A list of things that will not change:
At last, I can breathe again. Nothing is too precious or too painful to be outside the realm of the embrace of love. I am grateful.
[photo is my own … already she has changed]
[Thanks to Brene Brown for her work on foreboding joy.]
I sit below the tree in my meadow and look up at its deep green leaves. They are full and strong, but showing a bit of the wear from the recent winds. Then, among the branches just at the tip of one of the limbs, I see a movement. A small fairy emerges from among the green and sits upon a twig.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” she answers.
I wait for something else. She sits awhile and smooths her wings and then, catching the fiber of a spider’s web, she slides down to the ground and sits upon a small stone at my feet. She sit cross-legged and alert. Listening to every sound.
“Hello,” I say again.
“Hello,” she responds, politely, and then puts her finger to her lips and motions for me to listen.
I strain my ears, but I hear no sounds beyond the common meadow sounds: the rustling leaves, the swish of the wind upon the taller grasses, the birds, the insects. The meadow is alive with sounds that I usually do not notice, but there seem to be no unusual ones here, today.
We sit and listen to together. She flies to my shoulder and speaks in a low tone into my ear. “Listen to the ordinary and find more.” She is gone.
Find more… I listen again and hear no other sounds. I strain my ears for hidden words, but none are there. Slowly, though, as I listen, I begin to note just how the sounds blend and move together. The rustling of the trees and grasses rise and fall together with the rhythm of the wind. The wind, too, brings the songs of the birds more clearly and then muffles them again. The wind is directing the sound symphony. It is not a collection of separate sounds but a concert, a musical comraderie, an interweaving of each into a whole.
This is must be the message I am to hear today – I must listen for unities, for wholes, for rich patterns blended from individual fibers. I sit and close my eyes. I feel the sway of the sound and deep from within I hear an echo of its rhythms, the pull of its movements.
I find that I am no longer just listening. I have become one with the symphony. I exist as one, but not alone. The me of my consiousness blends, but does not dissappear. It lends its tone to those around. I have become a part. I am not separate and alone; I am not independent and self-sufficient. I give and take in the symphony, not in a series of trades and bargains, but in an unbroken exchange of the essence of self, broadened and deepend by sharing.
When I try to close my hands around this concept, I loose it. I must remain open, giving and receiving, part of the flow. I cannot step outside and evaluate. I must be, instead.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts and find that I have broken the spell. “What is this?” I ask my meadow, my tree. This letting go is a fearful passage. How do I know I am not abandoning myself to some beautiful deception, some strange spell?
Yet, somehow I know that here, in my meadow, I can risk letting go. Caution is fine, but fear impedes progress. I can let go into his melody. I will not forsake what is real; nor will I be forsaken.
I let myself go into the sound and feel myself drop into its enormity like droping over the edge of a waterfall. I am surrounded and engulfed, but not distroyed. I am bigger in a way that is unfamiliar to me: not apart, a part. It does not diminish me. It enlarges me. I do not understand, but I rejoice… and wonder.
8/14/95
Quiet Hope 