Something about receiving

Image from Wikimedia Commons

A book has just come to my attention called The Power of Receiving: A Revolutionary Approach to Giving Yourself the Life You Want and Deserve by Amanda Owen. (Mind you, I'm not very fond of the subtitle but the excerpt I read just now is quite wonderful.)

Yes, I know Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than to receive and he is certainly right, of course, with regard to our responsibility for and to the poor and brokenhearted.  But just think about the following:

"Receiving is much harder than giving. It can be emotionally risky; it requires opening up to a possibility or desire that may not be fulfilled. Giving is easy. Not only do you get to showcase your more saintly qualities, but also your ego enjoys the reward — the payoff of giving....  Have you experienced the pleasure of giving to a grateful recipient? Isn't it obvious in that moment that receiving and giving are flip sides of the same coin? ...  All of the help, information and abundance in the universe cannot get through to you if you have a negative belief about receiving. Nothing can get through that distortion. That energy is strong! It is like an energy wave that pushes away the very thing that is trying to assist! Perhaps you know people who reject again and again offers of assistance, of love, of connection. Perhaps this is you."

Yes, I do know people like this. And it can be very discouraging, even painful, when such a person rejects a gift.

~~~
UPDATE:  I just found the following over on the Amazon page for this book:
~
"I've been one to give until I'm depleted, yet feel embarrassed when someone gives to me; my energy and resources were painfully out of balance." 
~
I would definitely say that people in this category truly need to become acquainted with the skill and virtue of receiving.
~~~

The laughter of God

Artist: Scott Kiche

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following is by Teresa of Avila. To me, the idea of laughter coming from bricks is a truly marvelous one!

Just these two words He spoke changed my life, "Enjoy Me."
What a burden I thought I was to carry - a crucifix, as did He.
Love once said to me, "I know a song, would you like to hear it?"
And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky.
After a night of prayer, He changed my life when He sang, "Enjoy Me."

~~~~

Conjuring love

Artist: Andrew Stevovich

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Oh, my. Please look at this. A friend of mine over on facebook posted it and it is quite wonderful:

Today I will conjure love from the empty air. I will call it out from thin places where people walk without breathing, from dark places where they stumble without seeing. I will find love in those I do not like and let love appear in the faces I avoid. I will make room for love in my life even if I feel overcrowded with worry. I will offer love without restraint even if I have not received love in return. I will dance with love in innocent pleasure. I will sing love as though my voice were a new discovery. Today I will be the love God made me be when God called me from the empty air.

It is by Bishop Steven Charleston who, these days, lives right here in Oklahoma.
~~~

A new consciousness

Artist: Lorenzo Lippi

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have valued the website entitled Spirituality and Practice for a good many years now.  I found the following quotation there today:

"Only a renewed consciousness of the worth of each and every one of us can provide the beginning of a new politics and of community that could bring us together. To create such a new consciousness will be a formidable spiritual and political task." 

— Jim Wallis in The Soul of Politics 

To Practice This Thought: See the image of God in every person you encounter today.

Election year in the United States can be a very stressful time for anyone and it can be difficult for some of us to maintain the kind of spiritual outlook we truly want to have. The recommendation above can help, I would suggest.
~~~

My apologies

Sorry I haven't posted for a while, dear people. I've been down with a very unpleasant cold and cough.

Be back soon!
 ~~~

The futility of declaring sin illegal

This is a re-post from a while back. It really does seem pertinent for right now:

Artist: Francisque Millet

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today's religious right could sometimes be seen to be promoting a new puritanism. But, you know, it really doesn't work to impose one's belief system or moral code on other people:

Two thousand years of failure have not taught some reformers that you can't stop sin by declaring it illegal. Two thousand years have not taught them that you can't save a man's soul by force -- you can only lose your own in the attempt. Drunkenness and gambling and secularism and lechery -- various hopeful churchmen have earnestly tried to outlaw them all; and what is the result? A drunken nation, a gambling nation, a secularist nation, an adulterous nation. And, often, a ruined Church. 

-- Joy Davidman

In case you don't recognize the name Joy Davidman, she wrote a number of books including Smoke on the Mountain (from which the above passage is taken) and was also married to C.S. Lewis.
~~~

Something about Resurrection

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

I continue to mourn the much too early passing of this wonderful writer and speaker:

“When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.”

-- John O' Donahue

~~~

Holy Saturday

(12th century Greek icon)

Somehow, this seems appropriate for today:

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer

~~~

WITH Jesus on the cross

I offer you the final paragraph of a sermon preached this day by Diana Butler Bass in Alexandria, Virginia. I do love what she says here about "God's dream of love and justice for the whole world."  May these words truly speak to us in our own reflections of what it means to be with another.

"The Cross isn’t a contract between God and sinners; the Cross is God’s definitive expression of kinship and love—that everything, everywhere, through all time, is connected in and through pain and suffering. We are with Jesus on the Cross, not at a distance from it, standing by, watching safely from afar; those are our hands and feet nailed, our blood dripping, our voices crying out “We thirst.” And Jesus on the Cross, naked and mocked, is with us all on every broken-heartened, betrayal-laden, blood-soaked day of human history. That is God’s Passion; that is Jesus’ Cross. And, in the tortured Christ, we find the hope to endure, a love for others and creation, the power to enact God’s dream of love and justice for the whole world. We are with God. God is with us. This is why the Cross should cause us to tremble, tremble. We tremble at the fearsome with of God."

Artist: Stefano di Giovanni (15th century)
Image from Wikimedia Commons
~~~

Mandatum

Image from Wikimedia Commons

An excerpt from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Frank Hegedus:

The word “Maundy” does not have any meaning in and of itself. It is one of those exotic Episcopal or Anglican terms we sooner or later all become familiar with in our church. Scholars are not even sure of the word’s origin, though most now believe it to be a Middle English corruption of the Latin word mandatum – “commandment” – which appears in an ancient antiphon assigned for this day: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.”

This antiphon, taken of course from today’s gospel account, is an apt summary of what this day is about. And Jesus’ commandment to love is as much a new commandment today as it was in his own time. The command to love is, after all, always new – as is love itself. And the lesson of this day, Maundy Thursday, applies equally well to last Thursday and next Thursday and to all the Thursdays and other days yet to come. It is a lesson or mandate we, as followers of Christ, dare not forget.

And yet, we do forget. Sadly, tragically, inexcusably, we forget.
~~~

Thoughts by a great doctor of the Church

Artist: Ernst Hanfstaengl

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I found myself thinking today of the first of the quotations I'm offering here by Teresa of Avila. Then I decided to add a few more for good measure!

“Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; God never changes." 

“To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that.” 

“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.” 

“The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.”

Of late, that last one has become one of my favorites. It seems that Teresa was an early process theologian.
~~~

How you see anything

Artist: Franz Marc

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I know I've used this quotation before but I can't remember where right now. It's by Richard Rohr and I think it is truly wonderful:

"You cannot earn this God. You cannot prove yourself worthy of this God. It is simply a matter of awareness. Of enjoying the awareness. Deepening the awareness. There are moments when we believe it. Then it all makes sense. Once I can see it here, and trust it, even in this piece of clay that I am, in this moment of time that I am, -- then the compliment is also passed onto you. I am able to see the divine image both in myself and in you and eventually in all things. Finally, the seeing is one. How you see anything is how you will see everything."

~~~

Letting go of attachment

Artist: Rembrandt

Image from Wikimedia Commons

It was the great mystic, Meister Eckhart, who said the following:

"... we should learn to see God in all gifts and works, neither resting content with anything nor becoming attached to anything. For us there can be no attachment to a particular manner of behavior in this life, nor has this ever been right, however successful we may have been."

~~~

Deeply lovely

Beautifully, beautifully performed.

This is one of the most well known traditional chants. It has been often quoted by a number of great composers.

You will not be sorry you listened!


~~~

The mirror of awareness

Artist: Karl Pavlovich Bryullov

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I have long admired the work of Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit priest, retreat conductor, psychotherapist, who died in 1987.  Today I have been spending reflective time in his little book The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello. Here's something toward the end that is very powerful and worthy of much thought:

Holiness is not an achievement, it is a Grace. A grace called Awareness, a Grace called Looking, Observing, Understanding. if you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is, accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgments or condemnation, you would observe all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in  you.  Only you will not be in control of these changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness along that heals and changes and makes one grow.  But in its own way and in its own time.

~~~

A turning of the soul

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Image from Wikimedia Commons

This is by Samuel H. Miller from his book, The Dilemma of Modern Belief. I do agree. Glory. Glory.

"In the muddled mess of this world, in the confusion and boredom and amazement, we ought to be able to spot something — an event, a person, a memory, an act, a turning of the soul, the flash of bright wings, the surprise of sweet compassion — somewhere we ought to pick out a glory to celebrate."

~~~

The center of the home within us

Artist: Ferdinand Dorsch

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today I found myself pulling from my shelves a book I've actually had for a long time that's entitled Coming Home: A Handbook for Exploring the Sanctuary Within by Betsy Caprio and Thomas M. Hedberg. Here's something I found in it today that I'd really like to share with you:

Becoming the spiritual detective is an acquired skill. When we first begin the explorations of the psyche, we may feel in a strange place -- just as any new home feels strange at first. Then, with time, we learn our way around just as we are soon able to find our way around a new home in the dark. And the spiritual seeker learns how to let the inner and the outer worlds in which he or she moves become two  parts of one whole, so that they are continually informing each other. This is how we find our way to the center of the home within us, the place where God lives and waits for us.

I first acquired this book during a period of my life in which I didn't really have a home. Oh, I had a place to live but my presence there was resented and so I really didn't feel at home. Learning to rely on the knowledge that I had a home within was a big, big help.
~~~

Taking proper care of one's own soul

Artist: Charles Sprague Pearce

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Here is a very wonderful passage from the works of Thomas Merton:

"The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.

"If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul."

This is truly a very important observation because so many church people make a huge effort to be what the Church wants them to be. And that is a soul-destroying enterprise, I would assert.
~~~

A bit of a nuisance

My friend, MadPriest, posted the following:

"Blogger is messing us about again. Recent changes to the comment facility has resulted in the disappearance of the ability to subscribe to a comment thread if you have your comment settings set to pop up window. However, it is still there if you set your comments to "embedded beneath post."

"I strongly suggest that we all change our settings to embedded. Otherwise there will be no conversations on our blogs anymore and a drastic reduction in visits.

"Thanks to Grandmère Mimi for sussing this one out for us."

So, I'm off to change all those settings right now.

(Image above from Wikimedia Commons)
~~~

Silence and laughter

Artist: Salvatore Rosa

Image from Wikimedia Commons

The following is from A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life by Parker Palmer:

"The soul loves silence because it is shy, and silence helps it feel safe. The soul loves laughter because it seeks truth, and laughter often reveals reality. But above all, the soul loves life, and both silence and laughter are life-giving. Perhaps this is why we have yet another name for people who can share silence and laughter with equal ease: we call them soulmates."

~~~