Category: Awareness

One View of the Garden of Eden After the Eating of the Fruit

On By MaryIn Awareness, cosmogony, cosmology, growth into humanity, mysticism, spiritual growthLeave a comment

It came to pass late one afternoon, in the transitional moments before twilight, just as the sun was caressing the horizon, that Shekinah was strolling through the garden. She was carrying a resplendent, glowing alabaster pot, filled with the fire of the breath of creation, on her way to feed the tree of wisdom and the tree of life. Just ahead of her she saw Adam and Eve, and at first she couldn’t fathom what they were doing. Then it dawned on her, they were dressing themselves in fig leaves.

Shekinah was so shocked, she dropped the pot, and it shattered into billions of shards. How did they know they were naked and needed to cover themselves? There was only one possible answer. They had eaten of the tree of wisdom, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, before the fruit it bore was ripe. They just couldn’t wait. In one, maybe two, more months, the fruit would have been ripe, creation would have evolved a bit more, they would have grown in knowledge and wisdom themselves. Things would have been so different.

Shekinah tried to tell Yahweh that giving them a prohibitive commandment wouldn’t work. She argued that it would have been better to explain the ripening process to them, to help them understand it was not “no, never” but rather, “no, not just yet.” But now the fruit of the pomegranate tree will never ripen.  Now, Adam and Eve will have to face the consequences of their actions. Now, all of humanity to come will have to devote their lives to the repair of the world, regathering the fire of the breath of creation through acts of mercy and justice, working to find the balance between those two kinds of good works.

Reflections on What the Living Do by Marie Howe

On By MaryIn Awareness, Awe, Gratitude, In-spiration, poetryLeave a comment

I came across a reference to Marie Howe’s poem “What the Living Do,” in Suleika Jaouad’s, The Book of Alchemy: A creative Practice for in Inspired Life. Jaouad quotes the last few lines, and I was so taken with them I had to search out the full poem.

The lines she quotes are

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Clearly the poem speaks to heart rending loss, breath suspending loss. And that’s not where I am these days. The poem is set in the dry, icy chill of winter. And that’s not where I am these days (it’s summer and the humidity has been hovering around 80%, the kind of humidity that makes breathing a conscious, effort filled activity). And yet, there is something about those lines, those words—a cherishing so deep—of simple things that constitute the dailiness of living, the simple things we rarely notice, but that make life—not just worth living, but that literally make our life. And the aha line—I’m Speechless: I am living. How mundane. How taken for granted. How perfectly breathtakingly, awe inspiring. I am living. And so are you. And I am grateful.

What the Living Do

Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

From What the Living Do, copyright © 1998 by Marie Howe. 

Who are you?

On By MaryIn alchemy, Awareness, books, Koan, spiritual growthLeave a comment

I’m reading Braving the Thin Places: Celtic Wisdom to Create a Space for Grace by Julianne Stanz. It may be a little too “capital C” Catholic for my preference at the moment, but it is none the less a splendid book, rich with prompts that inspiration self-reflection. It is the Celtic version of spiritual Japanese Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, a process that transforms the damaged areas into streams of strength and resilience marking the paths of our learning and growth.

In the first chapter, Julianne Stanz poses the question, “who are you?” She reflects on a moment when one of her teachers asked her, “who are you?” and then encouraged her to go beyond behaviors, beyond relationships, beyond the choices we make, even while recognizing that those are important elements within our story.

Reading those lines in the book, I couldn’t help but remember how I used that very question as an icebreaker in so many of the courses that I taught in Human Behavior. I remembered how I used that question as a blessing at the birth of one of the main characters in my novel, Letters from Eleanor Roosevelt. “Who are you?” is a question with deep resonance in my life.

Julianne Stanz’s teacher encourages her to dig deeper, to think about who she really is. There are some lines in the Celtic Kildare Poems that encourage us to always remember in our heart these three things related to the nature of our being:

Whence you come.

Who you are.

What shall become of you.

I believe that remembering those there things and reflecting on them has the potential to carry us deeper into self-awareness. Now, to be honest, committing to self-awareness is tricky. There can be a fine line between self-awareness and self-centeredness. But especially for women of a certain age, walking on the right side of that line is a journey worth taking. I remember my early days dancing on the fringes of the second wave of feminism, and my growing awareness of how our culture socialized women to be selfless. It’s hard to be self-centered when you are self-less. it’s also hard to be self-aware when you are self-less. For many of women, finding and nurturing a healthy sense of self is necessary.

And then because my brain is my brain, I remembered the Zen koan, “What is your original face? What is the face you had before you were born?” A koan intended to set the meditator on a quest to encounter a deeper understanding of oneself, a quest to engage with one’s true, unconditioned nature. Not to give away the answer, but some writings say that our original nature is luminous, and pure, unbound by any specific form or possession.  

What is your original face? What is the nature of your self? Who are you? I say each and every one of us is pure, luminous love. I say we, and all of creation, come from love. We are called to live love, and we will return to love. Not love the flighty emotion, but love the active verb. The Love that sees the goodness in self, others and all of creation. The Love that wills and acts to enable that goodness to grow. That’s who I think you are, and I am too.

Like this Together by Adrienne Rich

On By MaryIn Awareness, poetryLeave a comment

I’m kind of obsessing on Adrienne Rich these days. She was important to me once when I was much younger. I read her as a spokesperson for the moment. She somehow seemed to have the words to help me think about what I was reckoning with when I was wordless. Now I find myself drawn to her again, in another moment when I am wordless, albeit for very different reasons.

Here’s the poem fragment that caught my heart today

Like this Together

Adrienne Rich

Wind rocks the car.

We sit parked by the river,

Silence between our teeth.

Birds scatter across the island

Of broken ice. Another time

I’d have said: “Canada geese,”

Knowing you love them.

A year, ten years from now

I’ll remember this—

This sitting like drugged birds

In a glass case—

Not why, only that we

Were here like this together.

From Necessities of Life. 1966.

On job security

On By MaryIn Awareness1 Comment

So, one day a few years ago I was walking across campus early in the Fall Semester. One of the maintenance guys was in the quad raking leaves. Now, the quad had quite a few trees in it, so raking leaves was a pretty monumental job, and he was out there on his own tackling it.

I stopped, said hello to him, and went on to say something about what an arduous, thankless job raking the leave was. I looked around at all the trees, and said something about how many leaves were still up there, and how interminable it must feel to him.

He smiled at me, looked up at the same trees and leaves and said, “Oh no, Miss. That there is job security.”

It’s all how you see it. I’ve never looked at raking in quite the same way.

That brief conversation helped to nudge me to see more of life and the world around me as a gift – if only I have the eyes for seeing!

Thinking about John ODonohue and Beauty

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I am now of an age where any day, every day that I wake up and find that I am still breathing is a wonderful day. And, yet, some days are indeed just a bit more wonderful, more full of wonder than other days.  For my money, there are few people who speak to this better than John O’Donohue.  Here are some lines from his book: Beauty: the Invisible Embrace.  See what you think!

“We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more. At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world. At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible. Awakening and surrender: they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty. . . .

The human soul is hungry for beauty… When we experience the Beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. Some of our most wonderful memories are beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances and sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.”

 

The human soul is hungry for beauty! Ain’t it just so.  I remember back in graduate school, reading about some research that Abraham Maslow did where he found that people learn better and thrive more in circumstances of beauty.  So, here’s what I think. Let’s each of us go out today and do some one thing to make the world a little more beautiful for someone else. And, let’s each of us go out today, look around at the world we are living in and appreciate, really appreciate one little thing that is just beautiful somewhere nearby – maybe look at the ocean, or a tree or flower, or look into someone’s eyes. Take a deep breath, and say ‘thank you.’ Just a moment to notice and remember. For me, I will be appreciating the beauty of John O’Donohue’s (1956 – 2008) thoughts and words.

The donkey and the load of salt

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There is a story about a rich merchant and his donkey who went to the seaside markets to buy salt. On the way home they had to cross a river. There were no bridges across the river, so the merchant drove the donkey across the river. This donkey was not as sure footed as his breed is reputed to be, and so he lost his footing on the rocks and accidentally fell in the river. Very quickly he got back on his feet, and noticed that his burdens were considerably lighter as the water melted and dissolved the salt.

The merchant noticed that the packs on the donkey’s back were hanging with more slack, and so he turned the donkey around, when back to the seaside, bought more salt, and reloaded the donkey.  Then they turned home ward again.  When they came to the river, the donkey (who was more wily than sure footed) once again slipped on the rocks, pulling his packs under the water and once again melted most of the salt. As he rose to his feet the donkey shook his head and brayed in triumph. The merchant suspected what the donkey had done, but thought to bide his time, in dealing with his delinquent donkey. They continued on their way home and the merchant did the best that he could selling the bits of salt that remained.

A short time later the merchant and the donkey returned to the seaside markets. This time however the merchant bought a large load of sponges rather than salt.  On the way home the donkey recognized the place on the trail leading up to the river, and as he entered the river, once again the donkey intentionally lost his footing, slipped into the river and soaked the packs on his back. But this time the salt did not dissolve, rather the sponges absorbed great quantities of the river water, doubling the weight of the donkey’s load!

And the moral of the story? Just cause it worked once, doesn’t mean a strategy will work every time.  Don’t be a donkey! Stay awake to the details of the situation!

whose got issues?

On By MaryIn Awareness2 Comments

Back at the cloister of the good Sisters of Mary Magdalene life proceeds apace. But what exactly is apace? About three feet? Well that depends on how long your legs are really. But no, when you scope out the dictionary, apace means to travel fast enough to keep up with the momentum around you. That being the case, life for the good sisters definitely did not proceed apace. The good sisters in face remain intentionally out of step with the momentum around them, taking their good old sweet time to pray and meditate and to savor the sweetness of the world around them, to bask in awe of what is and what could be when we but find our place at one met with what is.

Well, for the most part that is how this are. But then there is Sister Honora. You will remember Sister Honora – she is somewhere around 90 years old, and has some visual and auditory challenges (some would say she is blind as a bat and deaf as a stone, but don’t let her hear you say that or she will lasso you with her rosary beads and give you what for but good!). So, just the other day Sister Beatrix, one of the postulants caring for the older sisters in the cloister took it as her mission to convince Sister Honora that she really should be wearing her hearing aid.

Now, Sister Beatrix is humble if she is nothing else, and she is many other things. But her humility is one of her virtues of which she is most proud. So, she humble approached Reverend Mother and asked her how she might approach this issue with Sister Honora. The good Reverend Mother suggested that she stand about 40 feet from Sister Honora and talk to her in a conversational voice to see if she hears you. If not, then move in to about 30 feet, then to 20 feet, and to keep moving closer until she got a response.

So, the very next day Sister Beatrix was near the back of the in the refectory just outside of Sister Honora’s room, and she thought that they must be about 40 feet apart, so she called out to Sister Honora, “Sister Honora, what is the scripture meditation for vespers today?” She heard no response.

So Sister Beatrix walked down the refectory a bit closer to Sister Honora’s room, about 30 feet from it, and asked, “Sister Honora, what is the scripture meditation for vespers today?” And she heard no response.

Sister Beatrix smiled to herself as she gathered this proof positive of Sister Honora’s need to wear her hearing aid, she walked further through the refectory so that she was now about 20 feet from Sister Honor’s room and asked again, “Sister Honora, what is the scripture meditation for vespers today?” And still no response.

She put her head into Sister Honora’s room so that the two of them were about 10 feet about and one more time she asked, “Sister Honora, what is the scripture meditation for vespers today?” Still no response!

Finally she walked right up to Sister Honora, looked her square in the face, smiled and said, “Sister Honora, what is the scripture meditation for vespers today?”

And Sister Honora also smiled and said, “Sister Beatrix, for the fifth time I’ve said ‘it is Luke 6:42, How can you offer to take the speck out of your sister’s eye with that log in your own eye.’ Dear, would you like to borrow my hearing aid?” And Sister Honora reached up to her ear to remove the hearing aid to offer it to our dear Sister Beatrix.

 

 

With thanks to Philip Chircop, this is an adapted version of his THE DEAF WIFE AND THE CONCERNED HUSBAND  https://philipchircop.wordpress.com/ which he found in Cathy L. Wray, The Perfect Blend Devotional (WestBow Press, 2014) pages 147-148

Philip reminds us to remember this: The problem may not be with the other one as we always think. It could be very much within us. We sometimes tend to look to heal in others problems or issues that are actually ours.

 

Seeking the Harmony of Wisdom

On By MaryIn alchemy, AwarenessLeave a comment

There is a story that my grandmother said her grandmother told to her grandmother when she was a child living in the Tatra Mountains in the south of Poland. The story has it that at one point my grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s father was having what we would call a midlife crisis. So, he went off in search of wisdom and the truth. Well, my family are not great adventurers by nature, so, Dziadek (grandfather) Janush walked over to the church and asked the priest where he could find wisdom. The good Father stroked his beard, and told Dziadek Janush to go up into the mountains where he would find a cave with a well near the back of it.

Dziadek came home, packed himself a lunch and set off to find the cave. Late in the afternoon as the shadows were beginning to lengthen, Dziadek found the very cave the good Father at the church had described. So, he went in, found the well, and after walking around the well three times in a clockwise direction, he bowed to the east and poured out the troubles of his heart and asked his question. From the very depths of the well came the answer, “Go down the other side of the mountain to the village crossroads. There you will find what you are seeking.”

With renewed hope and vigor, my Dziadek walked through the mountain pass to the other side of the mountain. He walked down the mountain to a little village he had never been to before, and on to the crossroads at the heart of the tiny village.  There he found three shops. They looked very poor and ramshackle to him. One was selling bits of metal, the second sold wood, and the third sold thin wire. It made no sense to him. What did this detritus have to do with wisdom or truth?

Sad and dejected, Dziadek walked back up the mountain, over the pass and back home again, this time feeling that the parish priest had played some kind of joke on him, and feeling rather foolish. He set out seeking wisdom and had been made a fool of instead. As he walked he cursed the priest. Without thinking he spat out words he had never said before in his life. Then, realizing what he had said, he set off to the Church, found the priest and asked the Father to hear his confession. Dziadek told the good Father all that had happened to him, and how he had been so disheartened and disappointed that he had cursed the priest without even thinking. The priest heard his confession, gave him penance and absolution, and said to my Dziadek, “Be patient my son. You will understand in the future.”

Time went by as time is wont to do. Days turned to weeks. Weeks became months. Months grew into years. And Dziadek settled into his routines and life took on a softness for him and his family. Then one evening Dziadek was walking by the Church rectory where the priest lived and he heard the sound of sweet music coming from the porch.  The music was sweet and haunting and quite wonderful. Dziadek stood there in rapt attention watching the priest play the suka, a Polish fiddle like instrument. The Father’s fingers danced on the strings, he played with masterful concentration and ease. Then Dziadek began to notice the suka itself. It was made of beautiful carved wood, with the strings attached to it with metal pieces. And standing there in the moonlight, watching the good Father play and listening to the music, the light dawned on Dziadek, the suka was made with wood, metal and wire, just like those sold in the stores which he thought were bits of scrap and junk.

Finally he understood the message from the well. We are all always already given everything that we need. Our responsibility is to see the relationships and connections among the elements, to assemble the parts of our lives and use them in the best way possible. Nothing is meaningful when we see only the disparate parts in isolation. But once we put the parts together, we discover the alchemy of synthesis and harmony, a whole new creation comes into being that we could not have foreseen by looking only at each part independently. We must find the synergistic alchemy and interdependence of all of the elements of our lives if we are to live well, if we are to live in harmony with each other and with our environment.

And with that realization fresh in his heart, Dziadek went home to share his thoughts and insights with his dear wife. Anastasia listened thoughtfully to her husband, smiled and said. “Indeed, my dear heart. It is good to know that a tomato is a fruit. It is wise to know that it does not belong in a fruit salad. Even as we learn the nature of each, we must also understand the relationship of one to another and to all. And that my dear is the heart of true alchemy.”

And they did indeed live happily ever after.

 

The inspiration for this story came from Roger Darlinton’s blog, http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/

Reality, art or

On By MaryIn AwarenessLeave a comment

Back in Europe in the late 1950’s a woman was riding in the first class cabin of a train in Spain. She was chanting to herself, “the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” She rode along chanting that line over and over trying to remember where she had heard it before.

As she chanted, the gentleman who was sharing the cabin with her looked up and said, “My fair lady, May I ask what you are singing?”

At that the woman burst out laughing, because of course she was chanting a line from a song from the very musical, “My Fair Lady.” After she regained her composure she explained her laughter and the song to the gentleman. As she was speaking to him, the woman looked more carefully at the gentleman and realized that she was speaking to Pablo Picasso the great artist.  The woman gathered up her courage and said to the great master, “Senior Picasso, I know that you are a great artist, so perhaps you can help me to understand a bit about modern art. Why is your art so distorted? Why don’t you just paint reality as it is rather than distorting it so?”

Senior Picasso hesitated for a few moments and then asked her, “Madame, may I ask, what do you think reality looks like?”

The woman took out her wallet and pulled out a picture of her husband. “Senior, I believe that reality looks much like this. This is my dear husband.”

Senior Picasso took the photograph, looked at it, and smiled. “Really? He is so very small. And flat, too.”

Adapted from Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (New York Penguin, 2010) page 2. By way of Wisdom Stories to Live by

So then, what is reality? What is art? In the play, “the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe” Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner invite the audience to distinguish between art and soup, by holding up a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and an Andy Warhol painting of a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. Reality surly must mean more than a simple two-dimensional snapshot of the world, even though the snapshot may be true. And yet, how often do we live our lives basing our understanding of reality on snapshots of life that we hold in our mind. And so, in the spirit of Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, let us all remember, that reality is nothing but a collective hunch and it is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.  In the spirit of good mental health may our connection with reality be light and light hearted.