Ruthless Trust

Ruthless trust inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart,"Abba, in your hands I entrust my body, mind and spirit and this entire day...Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting you in the midst of my life. Into your heart, I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself."

Timothy P Jones
Praying Like a Jew, Jesus

Quote de Jour

This quote from Anne Lamott's writings came in an email from a friend. It is so rich and beautiful.

Anne Lamott, in Plan B,.. Further Thoughts about Faith shares this:
There’s a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.”

Claiming the Sacredness of our Being

Good words from Henri Nouwen

Are we friends with ourselves? Do we love who we are? These are important questions because we cannot develop good friendships with others unless we have befriended ourselves.

How then do we befriend ourselves? We have to start by acknowledging the truth of ourselves. We are beautiful but also limited, rich but also poor, generous but also worried about our security. Yet beyond all that we are people with souls, sparks of the divine. To acknowledge the truth of ourselves is to claim the sacredness of our being, without fully understanding it. Our deepest being escapes our own mental or emotional grasp. But when we trust that our souls are embraced by a loving God, we can befriend ourselves and reach out to others in loving relationships.

The words from Jesus are "love your neighbour as well as you love yourself."

As a good friend said to me recently "if you cannot love yourself then you kill the life within and this is your sin." How much do we kill the sacred life that is ours by not loving, and befriending ourselves, as Jesus asked us to? It seems to me that as I love myself then I am also learning to live in obedience to the life the Spirit holds within me, letting Light be exchanged for darkness within. I cannot say I do live this way, but I am wanting to, learning to, letting the work be done, so that I will live more this way.

The Scent of Life

Spiritual Direction time begins with lighting a candle to be reminded of the Light that is always present in the darkness, and then a time of silence. In my most recent visit there were not pictures but rather a blank page in my vision. Susan invited me to sit with that and be in a place where I felt total peace and safety and see how Jesus would come and sit with me there.

I saw myself in the completed garden of mia sogno – la casa in Italia. The ruined property in Italia that my heart sees restored and useful and alive with pouring life into those who come to stay. The whisper that surprised me, as I sat with my eyes closed and waited was the fragrance: lemons, oranges, and fresh produce. At last I can identify the fragrance of life – in the scent of what grows and what nourishes, what blends and can be created into something exotic and wonderful! This was very exciting. And why should I be surprised that it was a scent that relates to my passion for creating in the kitchen.

God knows that my heart and mind can always hear, and remember, when I am shown colour or scent. Why is it that scent is the most powerful memory trigger we have?

Cinnamon buns baking in the oven in the early morning draw sleepy guests into the kitchen to investigate. Sautéing onions mid morning, as part of a lunch dish, will draw them in a coffee break to inquire what is happening. Surely it reminds them of someplace in time.

In the last few weeks I have had a desire for food that is cooked slowly, bringing fragrance through the house so that you are tantalized by it all day. I picked up the ingredients for this dish, refrigerated them overnight so that I could begin first thing in the morning.

The finely chopped bacon, diced carrots and onions simmered together then were set aside. Their blend now floated through the house. The lamb shoulder chops were seasoned with salt and pepper, thyme and Dijon mustard adding their scent. The bacon, carrots and onions, as well as chopped turnip, joined the meat in the pan, and then all was covered with red wine and simmered to reduce it. Oxtail soup and fresh lemon juice, and then potato wedges were the final ingredients before the lid went on the pan so it could simmer slowly for several hours. This scent tantalized me all day long until in the evening, by the fireside, four of us sat with our steaming bowls of slowly simmered comfort food.

Perhaps that is part of it – the scent of food cooking is comfort, and the invitation it offers us to come and be satisfied. When are senses are involved we can engage in living. Shutting down our senses can then be a way we disconnect from being alive. But it seems to me that fragrance brings our other senses into action and we find colour, sound, taste and experience how to feel more richly.

Fragrance is still as strong in the gentle breezes of the night: orange blossoms or jasmine that comes when all is still, the dew or the salt of the sea, even the rain has a fragrance. Our senses are just as alive in the night as in the day, and as I actively wait in this place of “night” at present I find myself becoming much attuned to these things that make us sensual beings that “feel” what we are surrounded by, day or night.

If this is the fragrance that came when I sat in the garden with Jesus then I believe I have just inhaled His fragrance in that intimate moment. The fragrance of LIFE, the fragrance of Jesus – fragrance that comes to give nurturing and life with scent, colour, sound, feel and taste.

Another Piece of Hospitality

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

Henri Nouwen Daily Meditation

As a Culinary Minister I find that so much rich conversation happens in the kitchen: listening, sharing, speaking. It is one more way to feed the soul.

Rhetoric or Authentic Strength

Recently, in a discussion group, someone brought up the passage "the joy of the Lord is my strength". It was explained as something to strive for, to be joyful all the time, never getting down or turned upside down, but always being the same and a sign of deep Godliness.

Something inside me withdrew as I head this explanation as I remembered hearing the repetition of these words when someone became emotional, or suffered from depression, or displayed fear - in fact they were the words used whenever any strong emotion was exhibited! And so somehow in the recesses of my brain these words have been religious rhetoric connected to the instructions to shut down and turn off the tears. They were a bit like the spiritual instruction for "Stepford Wife" behavioural patterns!

An after discussion on these words that Nehemiah spoke brought out that each of us had really no idea what was meant when he said "the joy of the Lord is your strength".

Joy, according to Oxford, means "1. deep feeling of pleasure, 2.thing causing delight".

Brennan Manning writes "Define yourself radically as one beloved by God".(pg 51 Abba's Child) which I am seeing as beginning to embrace that truth that God finds deep pleasure and delight in who I am, where I am here and now. If I can continue to embrace this truth there will be a kind of energy and anchoring for me.

Then I read this following passage about Jesus, and it blows the "Stepford Wife" definition, shut down emotions, kind of behaviour out the door:
"We have spread so many ashes over the historical Jesus that we scarcely feel the glow of His presence anymore. He is a man in a way that we have forgotten men can be: truthful, blunt, emotional, nonmanipulative, sensitive, compassionate - His inner child so liberated that He did not feel it unmanly to cry. He met people head on and refused to cut any deal at the price of His integrity. The gospel portrait of the beloved Child of Abba is that of a man exquisitely attuned to His emotions and uninhibited in expressing them. The Son of Man did not scorn or reject feelings as fickle and unreliable. They were sensitive emotional antennae to which He listed carefully and through which He perceived the will of His Father for congruent speech and action." (pg 89 Abba's Child - Brennan Manning)

Jesus isn't afraid of emotions and therefore it is why he loves our stories. This is someone who has pleasure and delight in me, in my story with all its darkness and Light, and who invites me to live in the reality of deep pain and the height of joy. Not that I do, but I want to because my deepest desire is to live vibrantly and passionately, embracing the present with all it holds - dark and Light.I am not sure I am any closer to defining what it means to live out the words "the joy of the Lord is your strength". But I am aware that as I learn to be obedient to the words "love yourself as well as you love your neighbour" and continue to define myself "radically as one beloved by God" that energy and anchoring moves it from words/rhetoric to authentic strength, which is tangible.

Roadside Sacred Space

The description we are given is of a man who has been beaten and robbed and left helpless to get himself out of the ditch at the side of the road. Several people passed by and do nothing but I can just hear them saying “how could he be so stupid, if only he had….” Or perhaps they look and stare, snicker and laugh and say, “Well, I knew she would end up like that. If only she had….”

Then along comes someone who stops, who bends down and doesn’t judge, but rather offers this person their gift of being present and bringing with them life-giving sacred space. They don’t give lectures, or proceed to tell you what they would do, or make this an inquisition; in fact they may speak very little. This sacred holy moment of acceptance brings with it the safety to remain quiet, or to speak what you long to say, or to let the tears flow without explanation.

I am often given the gift of another’s story, or given the safe place with which to share some of mine. As these gifts are exchanged I realize how much tenderness and compassion, vulnerability and humility will chase away judgment. Sacred, holy space is just that because the Almighty is also present to continue the writing and the telling of the story.

I realize how much our own inner ability to be still/quiet allows us the honor of entering into sacred space with another. We have the privilege of walking whatever distance is required to move away from the place they have collapsed because of their wounds.

Sacred space comes with us when we carry it within – where is it carried within me and how willing am I to share it along the way?

The reason this has been sitting with me recently is two fold: one, I have observed how pain is reacted to by others, and secondly, I know how I react when in pain. People, well intentioned I am sure, give all kinds of advice and speak into something they really know little or nothing about in my life. Those who really speak into my life often say very little – they are willing to linger with me in the spaces that seem dark, help me name my depression, and who are unafraid of my sobbing, my tears, my words strung together that seem to make little sense yet come spilling our from deep within me. They are the ones who acknowledge their own pain and can therefore sit with others without judgment or contempt. These are the people who bring sacred space and the Light of the Almighty to us when we lie crumbled and seem to be a spectacle to those who are filled with fear when they see others pain. They are the face of God in difficult places.