Finding Time for God

An Advent Question: How Do You Wait?

2011-11-30T13:13:00.001-06:00

"How do you wait?" the priest asked us at Mass this Sunday. He reminded us that we've just begun Advent -- the liturgical cycle of waiting for the coming of the Christ Child.

I've been known to fall asleep during sermons. I never sleep when Father Tom gives the homily. He began this Sunday's homily by telling us that he was taking a group of students to Disney World. Having done so in the past, he knew that long lines for rides were part of the Disney experience. While waiting on one of those very long lines, he'd been struck by the different "waiting" behaviors of those on line with him. Some griped loudly and made their displeasure obvious. Others chatted amiably. Some even laughed. They didn't seem to mind waiting.

Most of us spend a great deal of time waiting. We wait on lines at the grocery store, we wait to get into theaters, stadiums, restaurants, buses, subways, we wait --seemingly without end -- in the doctor's office. We spend much of our time in the car: waiting for our children, for the light to change, for the almost inevitable traffic jam to clear up. I remember once telling my spiritual director how painful that morning's drive to work had been. Road repairs on an exit ramp created a bottle-neck that took over an hour to clear.

"Oh, I love traffic jams," she laughed. "There's nothing you can do about them but you can use them. I look on the time spent driving as a mini-vacation. A time for me." Her words turned me into, while not exactly a line lover, a person who could greet time spent waiting as a gift. A time to slow down. A reminder to stop the rushing and simply be.

While "waiting," I can reconnect with the inner self I might have lost on the way. I can greet God and spend time listening. I can pray for the the people waiting in line with me. I can check the color of the tiles on the supermarket floor if I want, notice the dust motes in the air, observe the way sunlight strikes the cashier's hair. The things I can do while waiting are limited only by my imagination. For the times my imagination fails, I usually have a book in my purse. And, because I'm a writer, a notebook and pen.

We can waste our time waiting, just as we can let Advent which is all about waiting, slip past without noticing, without participating, without longing for its apex. Why should we yearn for something that happened thousands of years ago? While we're at it, why should we wait during Advent anyway. Are we waiting for that special gift under the Christmas tree? Do we wait for the excitement of the celebration itself? The family gathered together? The joy of giving to others? The arrival of Santa Claus? Is that why we wait? Yes to all those things but Advent is so much more. Advent is a time to come to life. It is God's reminder of His Gift to us: the fathomless love that sent Jesus to show us the way to Love. And to Life.

Our experience of Advent depends on our response to God's gift. The Church makes it easier to live Advent through the liturgies that comprise this season. Advent's scriptural readings capture the age-long yearning for a savior, it's hymns lift our hearts, it's ceremonies move us. Advent prepares us to respond to God's gift of Love. Advent comes round year after year, to remind us of God's unfathomable love for us. And if we are listening, our hearts will break open to receive this Love. This Advent, I hope to participate as fully as I can, to experience the full meaning of its liturgies, to prepare my heart to open wide to greet the Christ Child.

I'm glad I'm good at waiting. I just have to work on Advent.

God's Besotted Love

2011-11-12T11:31:00.001-06:00

During one of our Benedictine Oblate meetingsat St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Sister Edith handed us sample copies ofa new publication from the Liturgical Press. “GiveUs This Day: Daily Prayer for Today’s Catholic”is a treasure for those of us seeking to live a deeper life ofprayer. Morning and Evening prayersinclude Scripture and intercessory prayer and features models of holy living ina daily reading called “Blessed Among Us.” Mass texts include reflections bywell-known spiritual writers.

Today, the reflection for the mass was taken from “God,Christ and Us” by Father Herbert McCabe, an English Dominican,theologian, philosopher and preacher:

“You do not have to begood before God will love you; you do not have to try to be good before Godwill forgive you; you do not have to repent before you will be absolved by God.It is the other way around. If you are good, it is because God’s love hasalready made you so; if you want to try to be good, that is because God isloving you; if you want to be forgiven, that is because God is forgiving you.”

I was especially moved by the words: “You do not have to tryto be good before God will forgive you . . . if you want to be forgiven, thatis because God is forgiving you.” It brought me back to the day I saw mydaughter Francesca for the last time. When Francesca came to see me that day,it was September 11, 2001 and the attack on the World Trade Towers in NY hadjust hit the news. She’d called to tell me she was on her way from Minneapolisto our home on Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. “I need you, Mommy,”she said. “I need to be with you.”

Francesca was a wildly loving, intensely vulnerable, andtormented young woman whose lifestyle placed her at great risk. When she cameto see me on September 11, it was to tell me how much she loved me and agonizedover all the pain and worry she’d given me. When I pulled her into my arms andtold her I’d loved her through all her choices, she asked about God and God’sforgiveness.

“What about God, Mommy. Can God forgive me for the way I’velived my life?”

“Oh Fran, honey,” I reassured her, “God has already forgiven you; you’vealways had God’s forgiveness; even in your darkest hours God’s been there,loving you”

I hope Francesca believedme for on September 18, one week later, my lovely girl – all of 24 years old --was shot and killed. I pray that Francesca died knowing how greatly she wasloved . . . and forgiven. Seeing FatherMcCabe’s words this morning brought me to tears. This was the message I’d hopedto give my daughter. That is the message I hope to take into this day and therest of my life. The knowledge of and belief in God’s “besotted”[i] love forus.

[i]Roberta Bondi, In Ordinary Time, Nashville, Abingdon Press,(1996) pp 22-23

Scruples and Teresa of Avila?

2011-11-05T08:42:00.000-05:00

This week, I began reading SaintTeresa of Avila: Collected Works translated by Kieran Kavanaugh OCD andOtilio Rodriques CD starting with “The Book of Her Life.”

I'd looked forward to connecting with this great lady. My first reaction, however, was one of irritation. Why did Teresa continually insist that her actions were so sinful? Wasn't this just a case of scruples? The Catholic Encyclopediadefines scruples as "An unfounded apprehension and consequently unwarranted fear that something is a sin, which, as a matter of fact, is not.“

Her vagueness about her so called “sins,” bothered me. To what loose and dangerous activities did she allude,save for some hints at friendships that were perhaps more secular thanspiritual. Yet how were these friendships sinful when she was always trying toencourage these persons to a life of prayer? What could be sinful in that, save that perhaps she sought somedegree of personal glory in the attentions and love of these persons?

Then I remembered that saints do not view their behavior the way we do. Awareof God’s tremendous love for them, they view anything that might distract themfrom God, as sinful. While we might deem these “sins” simply as distractions due to our humanity, saintsview everything through the lens of love – God’s love for them and their feebleresponse to that love. I remember once having tried to become a saint and remember how the sense of sin tainted everything, even my efforts at prayer, so aware was I of wanting to excel.

During the intervening years, I've had to come to terms with my "sinfulness." While once shame had me praying while hiding my face in shame, I now view sin -- not as something deserving punishment but as something we do to ourselves.By choosing to ignore the movement of grace we block the door to the gift God brings us. My spiritual director once suggested that rather than berate myself for my failures of grace, why not celebrate the times I did respond. Why not view our failures as reminders that God is waiting to assist us. They force us to acknowledge our helplessness and dependence on our constantly loving creator.

Teresa (thanks to thatinfinitely loving God she remembers to praise constantly throughout her autobiography) speaks much the same way. She asks how God can work within us ifwe avoid opening ourselves to that loving presence because we are ashamed of our imperfections. If we take the time to turnto God, she reminds us, God will shower his graces upon us.

Whetheror not Teresa suffered from a surfeit of scrupulosity, no longer troubles me. Herefforts, despite her reluctance (and even repugnance), to live a life of prayerprovide us with a mirror in which to observe our own unwillingness to pursue asimilar course. “Don’t give up,” I hear her telling us. "Yes. You’ve been amiserable failure thus far, but keep turning toward God. That’s all that’snecessary. God will guide you the rest of the way.”

Pastel by Beryl: Fall on a Lake Superior back road

Lake Superior in Advent

2010-11-24T17:16:00.000-06:00

Lake Superior’s North Shore is a craggy, rugged land with only six inches of topsoil on some of the oldest rock exposed rock on earth. Over 90 % of the land is state and national forest. Two thousand square miles of land with an average population according to the latest census of 3.6 persons per mile. Towns are small. The town where I live boasts fewer than 200 residents.

It’s quiet up here, the predominant sound that of waves crashing against ledge rock, and the peregrine falcons and ring-billed gulls cruising above. It’s a place where you’d better love the out-of-doors because there is little indoor activity to distract you. TV reception is inaccessible unless you have satellite and that’s expensive. Night life focuses primarily on lodges and taverns, when they’re open, the occasional community theater production or visiting musical group.

Those who don’t live here wonder what we do with ourselves. There’s little industry save tourism. Mostly the area caters to tourists, artists, people wanting to escape city life. In warm weather we hike, pick berries, watch birds, canoe the boundary waters and challenge Lake Superior in kayaks. The lake is too cold for swimming. In winter we hunt, snow shoe, ski, run sled dogs, watch the night sky. Deer, wolves, bear and an occasional moose wander our woods.

It’s a perfect place for a monastery, here where God’s bounty is so clearly visible. Contemplative living should flow naturally in such a place, one would think, yet perfect places do not guarantee perfect lives. Always we lug ourselves around, not seeing clearly, not listening closely, always dependent on God’s love to rekindle the fires of yearning within us. Advent approaches, reminding us that the Incarnation was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love for us.

In a beautiful meditation on Advent, Sallie Latkovich CSJ writes that in Advent we contemplate the three ways of Christ’s coming: in history, in our daily lives, and in the second coming.

“I’ve been thinking that we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We need not wait for God. God is always present, always with us . . . this Advent I’ve come to see that it’s GOD who waits for us . . . [God who] waits for us to notice the myriad ways in which God is with us, always.”

Time as a fountain bubbling up, not running out

2010-10-20T19:59:00.000-05:00

The other day, while fretting over the difficulties encountered while writing the sequel to The Scent of God, I came across a quote that read something like this. Waiting for inspiration is like waiting at a train station to catch a plane. I read these words and smiled. Why would we head to a train station to catch a plane?

I asked myself this question as I plowed through 23 years of accumulated journals, medical reports, letters, and notebooks, trying to connect the disjointed but important factors of the story leading to my daughter's violent death nine years ago. I felt like I was in a train station wild with the mess of gates, and timetables and platforms and levels with time breathing heavily behind me.

There is another way to deal with the pressures we impose on ourselves. We can think of time as a well bubbling up into our days -- monk's time as referred to by Brother David Steindl-Rast in one of my favorite books, The Music of Silence. Monk's time is not chronological. It is what the Greeks called the kairos: time as opportunity or encounter.

The thought that “there is always enough time for the task at hand” frees me when I hit the barrier of my limitations; when I worry that I might not have another 10 years to finish this book, as I had with The Scent of God. It is in Kairos that I will catch the muse’s hand, not in the train station while waiting for inspiration.

The violence of the daily

2010-03-28T12:59:00.007-05:00

In her weekly e-mail update titled "Reflection Questions," leadership and life coach Marcia Hyatt quotes Trappist monk and world renowned spiritual author Thomas Merton

"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times," she asks us to reflect on the ways in which we succumb to the violence of our times.

How intriguing to find Merton relating "good deeds" to the "violence of our times." Certainly, the issues he mentions are ones that concern all who struggle to make good use of their time. Merton, however, is not accusing the works themselves but the way in which we perform those works.

In reflecting on this, I realize that I succumb to this violence each time I forget to be fully present to whatever it is I am doing. Each time I rush through the "now" to get to what should be an “attitude” but instead has become a “place,”: Inner quiet and focus.

Why quiet should be a place toward which I rush might stem from my monastic days when we were warned against the prayer of silence or centering which the church termed “the doctrine [heretical] of quietism.” Catholic Encyclopedia.

"Generally speaking [quietism is]a sort of false or exaggerated mysticism, which under the guise of the loftiest spirituality contains erroneous notions which, if consistently followed, would prove fatal to morality. ...In its essential features Quietism is a characteristic of the religions of India. Both Pantheistic Brahmanism and Buddhism aim at a sort of self-annihilation, a state of indifference in which the soul enjoys an imperturbable tranquility. And the means of bringing this about is the recognition of one's identity with Brahma, the all-god, or, for the Buddhist, the quenching of desire and the consequent attainment of Nirvana, incompletely in the present life, but completely after death."

Thomas Merton helped turn this doctrine on its head by reminding the Church of it’s ancient mystical traditions, diffusing the threat of "heresy," and introducing millions to lives of contemplation. Rather than warning against the falsity of eastern mystic traditions, "Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding. He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese writer on the Zen tradition, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh."

Perhaps in "succumbing to the violence of our times," I've also "succumbed to the violence of" Church doctrine.

2010-03-19T07:17:00.002-05:00

Every morning I turn on my computer and receive a lovely photo and poem by award- winning poet John Caddy. I've know John for many years. When I first began working at Milkweed Editions (a superb literary press in Minneapolis) there was a lot of excitement when his book The Color of Mesabi Bones won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. I have his permission to share this recent post with you. It brought a sense of freshness to a cold March morning on Lake Superior.

We are tender toward the young.
Gentle in our eyes are lives just opening:
Smalls, the risen seed, the nestling’s gape,
grasshopper nymph in perfect miniature,
a tulip bud just coloring,
the spotted fawn in ferns,
all the small who are potentials,
all the lives of innocence:
but how helps this our survival?
Why feel so far beyond our kind?
Perhaps to make us tender
for a moment toward our selves.

It is not fashionable to explore our interconnectedness with the Others. It is almost reflexive to accuse such attempts as excessive sentiment, but this is really just a last gasp of the gendering of science.

Explore your own responses to other lives; wonder how such feelings came to be. -- John Caddy

A winter circus in the woods

2010-02-11T17:29:00.007-06:00

When my husband Bill, who works in Northern Alberta, was home 10 days ago, we decided to go snowshoeing in the deep woods along the Superior Hiking Trail. When we started out, we had no idea we'd become slightly intoxicated by the beauty that awaited us. The woods were literally snow-bound: the firs and pines, protected in that forest, still bearing the white muffs they'd donned the prior week. Sun and shadow mingled to create a landscape that shimmered with wonder and the ice that filled my soul a week earlier melted into the landscape.

I felt like a child at a circus. Everywhere I looked, bent limbs of trees supported animals in parade. Pine martins, ravens, and red squirrels danced with elephants, hens and sea horses. These exquisitely delicate sculptures of snow and ice transfixed me. I kept stopping in amazement. Look! There! That mouse was definitely dancing. And over there. Wasn't that tiger stalking? That horse rearing?

"Are you doing okay?" Bill shouted back to me. As usual, he was far ahead and felt obliged to check on me periodically.
"Do you see all those animals?" I shouted back.
"What animals?"
"The ones on the trees. Snow shapes. They're everywhere." Bill shrugged and moved on. His wife was imagining things.
Occasionally, frozen gems cascaded from branches high above me. I told Bill to watch for them.
"I haven't seen any," he responded.
"Just look," I encouraged, and laughed when the globules fell after he'd passed.

We returned to the same trail the following day, hoping to repeat the journey. This time I brought my camera but though the temperature was the same, the cold was more severe. Both Bill and I had trouble with our fingers. Mine hurt so badly that I raced along trying to warm up, not daring to stop to take pictures. When after half an hour, the pain in my fingers had me near tears, we turned around and hastened, as fast as our clunky snowshoes could manage, to the car. On the way home I comforted myself with the thought that perhaps the wonders I'd seen the day before had rarefied to the point where they no longer looked like the circus parade that had so enchanted me. Perhaps I was meant to hold the miracles of that other day in my heart and mind, rather than imprison them in a static photo. After all, I don't have the skills to capture falling gemstones or lure an observer into my circus.

Ice in the Soul

2010-01-28T20:07:00.004-06:00

If there is a relationship between spiritual aridity and winter, it must certainly be the cold. And the ice. Ice, that brims the ditches and with each sleeted rainfall threatens to overrun the roads, has taken up residence in my soul.

To pray, to meditate, even to recite the hours of the liturgy requires a diligence that locks my jaw and shutters my eyes. These periods of darkness fill me with a nostalgia for the delight I once took in prayer. I am reduced to living moment by moment, hoping that in so doing I am actually in God's presence; choosing to believe this is so, because not to believe would be more than I can bear.

I'd like to believe that this is the Dark Night of the Soul of which John of the Cross speaks so eloquently -- the prelude to divine union -- rather than the acedia of which the desert fathers warned us, the deadly sin of sloth that creeps without warning into our lives. I remember that ice turns luminous when held to the light. I lift my iced-soul to God.

Laughing the Dance

2009-11-09T21:40:00.002-06:00

This weekend of November 6-9, while attending the 2009 Call to Action Conference in Milwaukee I kept bumping into a coordinator seeking volunteers as liturgical dancers for the final Eucharist.

Slender, graceful, and smiling, she seemed to appear wherever I was heading. I saw her at breakfast, at the registration desk, on the escalator, in the hallway, in the ladies room and each time I saw her I kept hearing an inner voice that said "Go ahead. Take the leap. Volunteer. Dance the liturgy," and each time I heard that voice I told it to shut up. "I'm not a dancer. I bump into walls. I trip on air. I'm old."

While waiting on line at a food stand, the dancer smiled at me. I smiled back. She smiled at me again. Between the hot dog and the relish stand, she lured me into volunteering. Buoyed by the sheer hilarity of me dancing, I managed to talk two more women "of a certain age," into dancing. Later that day, the dancer took seven of us women through the movements of the varied dances. That night I lay awake, unable to sleep, trying to recall what movements went with what line of what song without success.I could remember only one movement -- a clapping sequence to Alle, Alle, Alle, Lu-u-ya.

My friend Virginia told me not to worry. "Let your body reflect the spirit that the words elicit within you. Celebrate. Remember to exaggerate your movements so they will be seen."

I trust Virginia. Her words gave me confidence. For the Eucharistic Celebration that ended the conference, I danced onto the altar, I flitted through the aisles. I gestured and smiled and encouraged others to imitate my movements. We locked eyes, we laughed, we danced. It was wonderful. And that evening, on arriving back in Minneapolis I visited my now grown son, who laughed aloud at the thought of his 70-year-old mother dancing during Mass.

Morning apparitions

2009-10-28T08:34:00.002-05:00

Every morning, for the past week, as I sit to meditate and raise my face to the rising sun, an eagle has soared past -- so close its wingtips seem to brush the window.

To travel lightly

2009-08-31T20:34:00.004-05:00

There’s a great story in the Washington Post about six Franciscan Friars who made a pilgrimage. At first I thought, oh sure, they probably traveled by air, and bus to the Holy Land with a bunch of American tourists. But no, these Friars never left US soil; they walked 300 miles from Roanoke, Virginia to the Monastery of the Holy Sepulcher in Washington DC.

They traveled: without without money, water, food, or advance provisions for shelter in the spirit of their founder, St. Francis – the Little Poor Man of Assisi. Along the way, they relied on the kindness of strangers. And the ecumenical flavor of those kindnesses filled me with an inner joy. If you haven’t already read about this journey, you really must read the story from the Post. It’s one of the most delightful news stories I’ve read in a long, long, time.

I remember being filled with that sort of spirit years ago when I was a teenager. In the years that have passed, I've lost much of that spirit. I love having my beautiful home, not having to worry about food or clothing though I realize that such gifts are subject to sudden change. We read about it daily in the news: entire populations fleeing flood, drought, and famine; working families losing their homes; catastrophic illness wiping out a family's savings.

My prayer has always been to accept whatever confronts me with trust; to believe that good can be found even in tragedy. I try to live generously and hopefully, to spread more joy than fear.

When disheartened by failure, I remind myself that I am on a pilgrimage like those friars. Unlike them, I travel without a halo, and with entirely too much baggage. I hope to discard some of it along the way.

Sightings and Cycles

2009-08-10T20:37:00.010-05:00

Spare on warmth, our summer has nevertheless been rich in sightings. The other day Bill and I happened upon a “kill” in action – a sharp-shinned hawk diving a song bird. We watched in awe as the bird lifted off with its prey and disappeared into the woods. While heading up our driveway to get the mail, I’ve encountered on several occasions a roly-poly groundhog, though I haven’t seen him lately. While larger than this small hawk, the groundhog might have succumbed to a hawk attack, especially as there are three of them making continual appearances here, spiraling above land and lake, their rapid, staccato, high pitched cries steaming after them. I’ve lived here for 11 years without seeing one of those birds. Now I seem to have acquired a family of them.

Daily, I spot eagles flying over the lake. Today I saw two of those mighty birds, flying together, their immense wings undulating and graceful. The hawks, on the other hand, fly very fast with a rapid beating of wings, so fast that from a distance they resemble swallows or larks. Save for their markings, and the fact that one hung around me for close to half an hour, filling the air with its cries while perched above me on a tree, I’d not have known that those spiraling birds were hawks.

Then there’s the copious scat marking the nocturnal passage, across our driveway, of one or several lumbering bears. To date they seem to prefer the upper section of our long driveway, but I well remember the star -filled night that I stood on my deck and felt the hair rise on my neck, warning me of a “presence.” The next morning my bird feeders had disappeared, replaced instead by the muddy swipe of a massive clawed foot on the window in my office.And what of the racket of 10 or more crows, dive-bombing a raven, hopping across fallen trees as if unable to fly. That raven was around for several days. I know because I’d follow the crows cries into the woods and see them still threatening that raven. Once he hopped next to the car as I headed down our driveway.

There are times when I can almost feel the momentum of this spinning cycle of life and death – a harsh reality save that this cycle is also the source of ongoing renewal. We live, we die, we return to the earth, and the earth in turn gives birth to new life. The scriptures feeding my spiritual life are filled with such references. Isaiah 38 never fails to amaze me with the poetry of its images. "Like a shepherd's tent my house has been pulled down and taken from me. Like a weaver I have rolled up my life, and he has cut me off from the loom; day and night you made an end of me."

Signs of God surround our lives. The Biblical writers knew this. They attributed everything that happened to God, but we've lost sight of that worldview. It is difficult to miss signs of God’s presence in the environment where I now live, but when living and working in the Twin Cities, I had to keep reminding myself to stay open, to find in even the most shattering experience the presence of God, to encounter God in the most gentle and insignificant of happenings. King Hezekiah was spared but eventually he had to die, as must we, but meanwhile we move within the grace of a life where God is present everywhere if we but open our eyes.

Photo: The hawk was so high in the tree and my camera had limited zoom but this is the hawk that serenaded me.

Reading Journals

2009-07-13T21:51:00.006-05:00

"That God should have time for you, you seem to take as much for granted as that you cannot have time for God." -- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings.

Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and famed spiritual author, filled 70 "reading journals" with notes and commentaries on the books he read throughout his life time, as careful a reader as he was a writer. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals)

Though I have only two such reading journals, one very fat and one very thin, they continue to nourish my spiritual life as I daily find, and add to, some quote to ponder.

I came across the above quotation from Dag Hammarskjold this evening while preparing to meditate and felt as if I'd been dealt a hammer blow. I'd copied that quote years ago, and though it impressed me then, tonight's reading propelled me to my knees.

What immense, divine humility that God -- the "I AM" of all creation -- should be always at our disposal while we, filled with insane hubris, spend but a few moments of our day, if at all, with this ineffable presence in return.

Photo of the Holy House of Loretto at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Washington New Jersey.

Just Go For Walks

2009-07-08T20:23:00.004-05:00

"just Go for walks,
live in peace,
let change come quietly and invisibly on the inside" -- Thomas Merton, Woods, Shore, Desert: A Notebook.

What a simple recipe to expand the heart? To allow what Philip Toynbe calls "seepage." Seepage is slow, often invisible. I find this consoling as I view the sluggish pace at which my journey to God progresses. In her lovely little book, Lost in Wonder, Edith De Waal writes the pilgrims, "the peregrini were clear that it was because they already held Christ in their hearts that they could set out on their journey to find him. So too, the journey I take day by day, minute by minute.

Sitting so still that . . .

2009-07-07T20:11:00.004-05:00

Today a chipmunk confused me with a climbing pole. I was sitting on the deck, meditating, when I felt a few ounces of something skitter up my leg and then beat a quick retreat. Shocked from my "mindfulness," I saw the little fellow cowering in a corner of the deck next to the house, looking at me curiously. Clearly, I was not supposed to be there.

The visitation by a little neighbor delighted me, though I found it impossible to resume meditating. Instead I gazed about me and enjoyed the sun and breeze. Lake Superior gentle today and whispering against the ledge rock, the pin cherry and ash trees preparing to launch the fruit for which the birds (and bears)yearn, the chatter of the gold-finches as they swooped around the feeders.

When the cry of a gull drew my attention, I was treated to another of those marvels we see up here -- a larger animal being chased by a smaller one. This bald eagle, hounded by only one gull, was in great haste to get away. (I've seen very small birds chasing eagles which makes me wonder why it was chosen as a sign of national pride.)

When I returned to my computer a bit later, I did so with a light heart and smile -- God's presence so visible in the life surrounding me.

Expanding the Heart

2009-07-06T19:24:00.001-05:00

I stand with hands uplifted . . . a willing heart all I have to offer. After 50 years of searching I am still a beginner pilgrim. Today I think about the way love expands the heart, the way the fire of longing opens us not because of our efforts but because of God's longing for us.

To Say Nothing But Thank You

2009-06-02T17:54:00.007-05:00

On a gray morning, having just uncovered the newly planted flowers that I had to cover yet again because of frost, my favorite literary magazine, The Sun, offered this lovely bit of light.

To Say Nothing But Thank You
by Jeanne Lohmann

All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips' black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
streaming surface of the bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.

-- published in the May 2009 issue of The Sun

This poem requires no commentary, yet its words speak such wisdom to my heart: All the things I've been "trying to" learn about living in awareness, the gratitude it triggers, and the wondrous fact that we need go nowhere save within this moment to commune with God. Perhaps my favorite line of all is "with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I remember who I am."

Upping the Senses to download the divine

2009-05-19T20:05:00.006-05:00

Last week, I gave a talk on how to "pray always" to a group of young mothers. To prepare for the talk, I reviewed all my favorite authors on the subject of prayer: Anthony De Mello, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, St. Therese of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross.

Preparing for this talk was like a crash review of the practice of attentive awareness moment by moment.

Though I no longer have little ones clamoring for and needing attention, I still know the feeling that young mothers often experience. Harried! Deadlines, others' needs, emergencies still seem to collide with noticeable frequency. Now, however, the feeling of being "harried" is the trigger that most frequently lifts me from my panicked mind and into the present moment.

Stop, quiet yourself, breathe, and listen. You will emerge from that brief respite, healed and focused.

Select several triggers that will remind you of God's presence. Whatever you are likely to notice, such as seeing a butterfly, tripping on a shoelace, a chocolate-covered coffee bean, the chiming of a clock, changing diapers. It will get you into the habit. Notice that I've used various senses as examples: seeing, feeling, tasting, hearing, smelling.

It takes only takes a few moments to respond this way: to remember God's presence within you. To respond to that presence. To recognize the blessing in the "now."

I was touched by a small ceremony in which these young women participated prior to my talk. They passed a "blessing basket" around the room. Each mother recognizing a blessing in her life stood up, shared that blessing with the group, and dropped a dollar for charity into the basket.

"My Sarah slept through the night for the first time."

"Timothy took his first step."

"When Naomi threw a tantrum in Target, I had to leave. A woman came up to me and said 'you're a good mother'."

"Steven turned four this week."

Their words reminded me of similar blessings in my children's lives. That was their blessing for me.

Finding silence within sound

2009-04-14T08:59:00.007-05:00

My husband Bill is noise sensitive. Sounds of traffic, noise from factories, lawn equipment and machinery drive him batsy. I, on the other hand, having spent many years in a cloistered monastery on a busy urban street am not bothered by noise. Bill will ask me if I hear a particular humming emanating from the rocks on which our house is built. I don’t, not until he’s pointed it out.

Anthony de Mello, in Sadhana, A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form, addresses the issue of noise sensitivity during meditation. His Contemplation Groups often complain about the sounds around them, he writes, which intrude on their quiet and distract them. Rather than protect them from sound, he deliberately chooses places above or near busy streets.

“If you learn to take all the sounds that surround you into your contemplation,” he writes,”you will discover that there is a deep silence in the heart of all sounds.”

Modern life is noisy. No place is really free of noise as even the airwaves hum with electromagnetic and seismic signals. If we are to meditate (or simply to live in peace with noise) we must learn to find the “silence in the heart of all sounds.”

De Mello claims that sounds distract us when we attempt to run away or fight them. Rather than trying to tune out such sounds, he advises us to listen to the sounds surrounding us, even the smallest; to attempt to discover the sound within sound, the variations in pitch and intensity. In this way we become aware, "not so much of the sounds around you, as of your act of hearing."

Alternating between the awareness of sound to the awareness of your hearing can lead to the awareness that sound is produced and sustained by God’s almighty power. “God is sounding all around you . . . Rest in this world of sounds . . . Rest in God.”

The photo above is of an open courtyard off a busy San Juan street

Morning Earth

2009-04-08T11:16:00.007-05:00

I am posting this lovely photo and poem by well known author John Caddy. John has been sending daily poems and photos for several years now and his site Morning Earth provides educators, authors, and earth lovers with ongoing inspiration.

Morning Earth Entry 4.3.2009

On the forest floor
ancient lives are waking,
snake-skinned liverwort
and froths of moss
gone green again in their
waltz with time,
hugging soil.
But this new season
an odd bit of lichen
has dropped in
from the mystery above
to offer a frisson
of winterkill white
and a splash of pink
to the palette of spring's floor

Prayer that precedes faith.

2009-03-29T17:32:00.004-05:00

In her introduction to Every Eye Beholds You, edited by Thomas J. Craughwell, prominent scholar of world religions Karen Armstrong, writes that all the world's great prophets and sages have spent very little time telling their disciples what the ought to believe, that they have rather "insisted that before you can have faith, you must live a certain way." Prayer, in other words, is not born of belief but a practice that creates faith.

I love this idea. We in the western tradition have gone at prayer backwards, praying because we believe. To practice prayer this way means that we do not bring to our prayer preconceived notions of who God is. We do not force him into a mold of our own making. In this kind of prayer, God is encountered not seized.

Don't squander good news

2009-03-22T17:59:00.004-05:00

Juliahna was diagnosed last August with acute myelogenous leukemia. Since then she’s undergone progressively more radical procedures, all the while keeping her friends informed of her progress through her Caring Bridge journal. The other day, while sharing the great news of hopeful prognosis for recovery, Juliahna wrote the following:

“As of today, I'm committed to really celebrating all the good news that comes. Too often I skip right into wondering how long good news will keep coming to me, which I've come today to consider a rather careless squander of good news. I'm wanting now to practice a more disciplined mindfulness of being present to this moment, this one I've been gifted with in this fractal of time. And in the bigger picture, I'm reminded that this has been and will continue to be the only way it can be: a moment to moment experience. I'm going to work to keep all of me with me in the only place I can be: here, now.”

What a powerful reminder of the vulnerability yet the giftedness of life. Juliahna's words resonate within me and spur me to a similar mindfulness. What better teacher than one who has entered the darkness and emerged filled with light.

A recipe

2009-03-03T13:48:00.005-06:00

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time cooking lately. Now that we can no longer afford to eat out, I have been trying to bring variety and interest to our meals by using recipes. My husband, who has been semi-retired (out of work) for six months, goes a bit stir-crazy with just me and the computer for company so we've been inviting family and guests to share these meals with us.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm not always the happiest of chefs, even when I know that cooking provides some wonderful quiet time, time when I can place myself fully in the now, and as the Buddhists would say, cut the carrots in order to cut the carrots.

I want to finish my next book and write the two articles I've got slated for publication later this year. I don't really want to cook. And, there's the difficulty in finding focused concentrated meditation time.

Perhaps all that God wants of me right now is to accept what is. To be there for others, to put my own plans on hold and to give thanks that we've got food to share. To take each moment as the gift it is no matter what that moment consists of, including cooking.

Waiting for the sun

2009-02-28T17:42:00.002-06:00

At three in the morning, I find it difficult to meditate. I prefer the sun to shine across my prayer mat and shawl. The light behind my eyes warms me and I settle into that presence.

What do you really believe?

2009-01-27T20:19:00.003-06:00

"What is it you REALLY believe?" a friend asked in her weekly e-mail. She posted the question two days ago and I am still pondering the thought. What does it mean to believe? Does belief come from within oneself, or from others? Does belief exclude doubt or does it include the choice to believe despite doubt?

Then there is that question of "Really." For me, "really" places the responsibility for belief on my shoulders. But does "really" exclude the acceptance of belief received from others and accepted as true. Does "really" require that we start from scratch to determine what it is we believe.

Are any of our thoughts really our own? Think of it, from the time you are a child, others are telling you what is true, what is right. They even tell you who you are, or who you ought to be. But, do you know who you "really" are?

Truth is, I'm not sure who I am but I'm trying to find out. And this partially "found" person can say right now, based on my own experience and on the experience gleaned from others and tested against this experience that I believe:

In gratitude. That Life is gift. That all that happens within Life is gift. That gift includes that which we might label good and/or bad because both are part of the journey toward Self-discovery. Self-discovery is good. Self-discovery means openness to Life and Life is that divine creative force I call God.

My friend sends me weekly questions like these. They are called "On the Waterline." If you are interested in receiving such questions just send an e-mail to mhyatt@boreal.org.

The self of fog and sun

2009-01-12T18:44:00.000-06:00

We biked into the fog this morning and rode home in bright sunlight and I was reminded that just as fog does not negate the sun, neither does doubt and uncertainty obliterate our power to find the light. The sun keeps shining whether concealed behind clouds or hidden on the other side of the earth. To move ahead despite our doubts is to find the answer that was always ours.

These geese were hidden within the fog on Lake Superior one morning. When the fog lifted there they were -- not just one goose but a whole gaggle of them.

The Color of Good and Evil

2009-01-07T14:23:00.004-06:00

Remember the days when color consultants popped up like mushrooms throughout the nation to coordinate skin tone for wardrobe and makeup. These Color-Me-Beautiful consultants analyzed clients’ skin as being spring-, summer-, winter-, or fall–toned. Don’t remember? Well I do. I fell for that fad and went for my own analysis (Fall, in case you’re curious).

This morning while reading the Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, I was reminded of that Color Me Beautiful analysis when I came across a story adapted from Anthony De Mello’s Song of the Bird.

“A preacher put this question to a class of children. “If all the good people in the word were red and all the bad people were green, what color would you be?
Little Linda Jean thought mightily for a moment. The her face brightened as she replied: “Reverend, I’d be streaky.”

“Streaky.” Isn’t that a wonderful description of being human? Linda Jean knew she was neither all good nor all bad but was a mixture of both good and bad.

Despite the fact that we all play host to a similar combination of good and bad we seem more inclined to view things as "either/or."

For some reason, judging someone (something or some nation) as bad seems the more dangerous. Substitute “evil” for bad and we make seeing “good” almost impossible. We had the perfect example of such blinding to goodness the day President Bush slapped the term “axis of evil” onto Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

Though we can be incredibly hard on ourselves, we are not quite so tough on the people we’ve already judged as good. When we see evil within them, we make excuses. They are only human we say.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of being streaky.

Am I not your Mother?

2008-12-12T19:04:00.002-06:00

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the celebration of the Virgin Mary's appearance to Juan Diego, a humble Indian of Mexican descent in 1531 to assure him of her "love, compassion, help, and protection to all who inhavit this land and to those others who love me."

What a delight this reading was, especially when learning that Juan Diego, sent to fetch a priest for his dying uncle "went around the hill and passed on the other side . . . so as to arrive quickly in Mexico City and to avoid being detained by the Heavenly Lady."

Like Juan avoiding the Lady, we too have at times gone out of our way to avoid meeting God. Like Mary to Juan Diego, God does not remonstrate or accuse or punish but rather assures us of love, compassion and help.

Like Mary, God comes to meet us at the place where we have gone to avoid him. Like Mary to Juan who went to meet him on the other side of the hill, God says to us "Are you not under my protection ... are you not in my care?"

All over the world

2008-12-04T13:25:00.006-06:00

While reciting the morning liturgy of Lauds this morning with my husband, I suddenly became aware that we were praying not as a unit of 2 but as one small note within a symphony of prayer rising from monasteries, cloisters, churches, homes, beaches, forests, and farms -- at every moment, somewhere in the world others are praying the same psalms and reading the same lessons and praying the same invocations with us. What a glorious, comforting, and hopeful thought.

Click on photos for larger view

Finding joy in imperfection

2008-11-24T05:55:00.003-06:00

It's taken me a lifetime to learn that pursuing perfection sets our teeth on edge. At every failure we berate ourselves. Why bother, we think. It's an impossible task. And that's exactly what it is -- an impossible task. We are human. We are not God. We fall, we get up again, we move forward, we fall, we get up again. What a journey. I have learned more from my falling than I ever learned from flight. More from failure than from success. More from suffering than from an absence of suffering. I've learned to keep my hand lifted so that God can raise me up. What joy to find that presence always there.

Prayer in a new place

2008-11-20T04:23:00.003-06:00

We left within days of our return from Italy for Florida where for the first time we plan to spend the winter. The cold is getting difficult to handle living in a remote area and alone much of the time as my husband travels.

Here I have no special place to meditate as I do on Lake Superior. Daily I find myself moving to a different location -- a different side of a room, a different room, trying to find a place that feels right.

Waking around 3:30 most mornings I've tried to meditate in bed but always end up rising. I have a prayer shawl which has become my "place." I wrap it round me and feel silence envelope me.

Oh Italy

2008-10-03T15:38:00.002-05:00

I won't be posting again until late October as my husband Bill and I are leaving for 3+ weeks in Italy -- a pilgrimage of sorts to many of the places I visited with my deceased husband Vittorio.

It seems strange to bring my husband to places I once shared with Vittorio but this was Bill's idea. He's never been to Italy and my last trip was 30 years ago just before Vittorio's death.

Bill and I will spend several days in Rome before heading south for the Amalfi coast, visiting Pompeii, Sorrento, Capri on the way, then heading up to Foligno and the Umbrian countryside so beloved of St. Francis, then to Florence, the Italian Riviera, the Italian Alps and Lago di Garda, Venice and back to Rome.

Wishing you Peace and All Good.

"Living in Metaphors"

2008-09-30T09:12:00.008-05:00

Christin Lore Weber has been writing a Caring Bridge blog for several years as she followed her husband through the torment of treatment for brain cancer and of his final journey. John died earlier this year but Christin continues to update this site -- writing with incredible beauty of her pilgrimage through grief. In her most recent blog she wrote:

"You are living in metaphors, I tell myself. The leaves. The dogs. Minnesota. Oregon. Can you live in your own being? Can you be still? And even that is metaphor because right away it brings Eliot’s poetry to mind -- “We must be still and still moving, into another intensity/ For a further union, a deeper communion,/ Through the cold dark and the empty desolation, ... In my end is my beginning.”

Christin is the author of several books on spirituality and her exquisite first novel Altar Music published by Scribner in 2001.

P.S. I just received notice that Christin is moving her writing to her Gather.com page. I also write on Gather.com where I post an eclectic assortment of essays, book reviews, photo essays, and fiction, and find the community of reading and writing friends I've met there invigorating.

Our lovely larcenous mess

2008-09-27T11:33:00.005-05:00

What was I doing at a concert on the night of 9/11/01 among a swaying praising group of evangelicals when my heart was sick with grief over the tragedy taking place in New York?

What was I doing at a Praise God concert when I should have been at home waiting for my daughter who was driving 254 miles to be with me on that awful day?

What was I doing keeping my daughter waiting, when this was the last visit she’d ever make; when the following week -- on the same day, and at around the same hour -- a bullet would take her young life.

The nation was suffering, my daughter was suffering, and this group of traveling gospel singers was singing songs of joy and the audience was on its feet singing with them.

The concert was meant to be one of praise, to be worship-filled and trusting, but I found it inappropriate and shallow: the waving arms and swaying bodies a pretense of praise in a time of agony.

I was in anguish to leave that concert. My daughter was coming home and I'd put a prior commitment before her needs. I'd been consumed with worry about her and now that she was coming home, reaching out to me, I wasn't there to greet her. Instead she had to wait hours for my return.

As I sat there, shuddering inwardly throughout the entire event, I wanted to gather the elderly women I'd offered to take to this concert, and flee from that temple back home to my daughter. Instead I waited for it to end, and afterwards agreed to stop for a bite to eat on the way home.

What a mistake. Francesca was huddled on the couch watching the replay of the 9/11 events when I got home. I took her in my arms and held her close. She'd come home because she wanted to be with her mother, because she was afraid, because she was reaching out instead of pulling away.

That night she asked me if she could move back home with us. I said yes . . . and then I let her leave to get her things. Letting her go was an even greater mistake than not being there to greet her when she arrived that night.

“Accepting ourselves means accepting the whole package, the whole sour and sweet, lovely and larcenous mess that we are” says Philip Simmons in Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life, a book of powerful, illuminating essays he wrote during the final stages of ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), his promising literary career cut short at the age of 35.

It is so hard to accept this “lovely and larcenous mess that we are,” isn’t it? We look on our mistakes as failures, especially when the results are so devastating.

Breath

2008-09-12T14:16:00.003-05:00

If I escape from the clamor of my thoughts into the silence of the breath, why do I find this journey so difficult? Thirty years of practice and my mind continues to rebel. Sometimes I find myself closer to the divine midst the stress of the daily. I stop and enter the presence.

A Backyard Labyrinth

2008-08-13T17:05:00.007-05:00

My husband Bill often calls our home Beryl's Monastery and in many ways it is. I am often here alone as Bill's work as a consultant takes him away from home for much of every week. I am blessed that my husband shares my desire to live spiritually. When he is home, we recite Lauds and Vespers together (sometimes the other liturgical hours) and we meditate together.

Bill is also responsible for the meditative paths we have around our house. One of these paths features several meditation benches overlooking Lake Superior and circles the knoll where we buried my daughter Francesca's ashes. But by far the most amazing meditative path is the labyrinth he built for us (and for whoever else wants to use it).

A labyrinth is not to be confused with a maze. A labyrinth is path designed to lead purposefully, in tight concentric circles or spirals, toward a center space. The walker then retraces his/her steps from that center back to the beginning.

I think of the labyrinth as a physical metaphor for our life’s journey and the meditative walk one takes through a labyrinth as a mini-pilgrimage. Walking the labyrinth slowly calms and opens heart and mind. Used meditatively, the labyrinth is a vehicle for inner healing and transformation.

Ours is not a traditional labyrinth, one that follows a pattern such as those found in ancient cathedrals or monasteries. Our labyrinth conforms to the topography of our land. It is defined by the shape, the ruts and ridges, of the wildflower field in front of our home.

It looks quite pretty tucked among the grasses and wildflowers, its meandering spirals bordered with split logs and filled with wood chips with Lake Superior providing a gorgeous blue backdrop. Bill and I have been walking it since he first laid it out two years ago.

My favorite time to walk the labyrinth is after supper as the sun begins to set. In winter the labyrinth disappears under the snow, but in spring, summer, and fall, it provides a wonderful place to remember that life is a journey and to walk it attentively.

See Road Writer for my travel blog.

10 days of silence

2008-08-04T12:07:00.008-05:00

When I left for my first Vipasana retreat (insight meditation) last July with Resources for Ecumenical Spirituality -- an experience that combines Christian with Buddhist meditation practices -- I'd pictured a cozy silence where I didn't have to talk and could just moon around being thoughtful. I was sadly but wondrously mistaken. This retreat was not mystic rapture. This retreat was Dark Night of the Soul.

In July of this year I went back, this time with my husband Bill. Rigorous days. Rigorous nights. For 10 days we sat in meditation, walked in meditation and when we weren't sitting, walking or listening, we were moving purposefully -- reaching for doorknobs, putting on one's sandals, eating one's meal -- everything done as consciously and purposefully as possible. We did not read books. We did not write in journals. We kept total silence save during the lectures (1 lecture, 1 practice instruction daily) when we were encouraged to ask questions, or when we were chanting.

I must confess that this year, with my hubby there, I was not as focused as I’d hoped. Instead I worried about my type-A personality husband. Would he survive the first few days? Two other attendees had bolted early on and I learned later that two days into the retreat Bill was ready to high-tail it out of there as well. But he didn’t. He stayed and entered that intense silence with me. He's glad he went but he's not sure he wants to do it again.

There was one other married couple there. They sat together during their silent meals. Bill and I did not sit together. The other retreatants were not even aware that we were married – that’s how hard we tried to walk the Vipasana experience. I’ll write more about our retreat in my next post.

This retreat was offered by Resources for Ecumenical Spirituality -- an organization founded by 2 Carmelite priests and Mary Jo Meadows, an author, clinical psychologist, former professor of religious studies at Mankato State University and a practitioner of meditation for more than 30 years in the Christian, ashtanga yogic, and Theravada Buddhist traditions. For more information on their retreats and workshops, contact them at resecum@msn.com.

Tools of the Trade: unnecessary but nice

2008-07-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

This is where I usually meditate.

The table was made by a local craftsman who used a piece of mahogany my deceased brother Greg gave me over 30 years ago. We call it Greg's memorial table.

In front of the table are my Zafu meditation cushion and a prayer rug made by my husband Bill's father.

On the table are two photos. One of my deceased daughter Francesca, and one of my son Thomas and his little family.

Not shown is a meditation shawl brought back to me from India by a dear Yogi friend.

I have several other places where I can meditate which I shall show in future posts. My husband calls our home, Beryl's Monastery.

A good day to start

2008-07-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

For more than 30 years I've been journaling, charting the daily thoughts and happenings in my life but, until today, I'd never considered the option of writing a public journal about my efforts to live a God-centered life.

So here goes. Day one.

Though I've spent most of my life searching for God: rising daily intending to make my day one of praise, I continue to retire every night having to accept the poverty of my efforts.

This morning for example, I woke to the sound of thunder and dashed downstairs to my office to unplug my computer. As I entered the room, a bolt of lightening thrust itself into the lake and I sent a quick plea heavenwards that it would stay on the lake and keep a safe distance from my house -- at least until I got the appropriate electric cables, phone and satellite, disconnected. Having done so, I went back upstairs to begin my 40 minutes of silent meditation.

After all these years, one would think that I've gotten this morning schedule thing down pat but I'm still working on it. Almost daily I debate the option of stretching first and then meditating or meditating first and then stretching. Stretching calms my mind, which at 5 am is already busy planning its day. Stretching helps me focus. Something to do with exerting oneself and breathing deeply. Meditating first thing in the morning, however, is the option preferred by spiritual directors.

This morning, meditating first seemed like the more viable option. I'd just experienced the creative power in an electric storm. Certainly focusing on the divine should be easy. But was it?

Of course not. My 40 minutes of silent prayer limped by as thoughts besieged me: remember to confirm lunch with Vicki, don't forget to cancel the appointment with Crystal, remember to bring wild flowers when you visit Virginia. Each time I became aware of these thoughts, I gently returned to my breath and wham, before I knew it I was thinking about the book I'm working on, structural changes to make, conflicts to include, a character's voice.

This morning I actually took a peek at my watch rather than waiting for the timer to chime the end of my session. 35 minutes down. Five to go.

That's enough don't you think, I told myself (and God). Got such a busy day. Better get my stretching done while there's still time.

And, dear God, please help me to remember to remember you throughout this day because I need your help. Desperately. Thank you.