Something to think about – something to ponder in your hearts. Many of you are clergy and spiritual leaders and will be speaking about this.
This weekend there is rightfully a celebration of what took place in Selma, a center of what some once called the glorified Confederate States of America.
Ferguson lets all of us know that there is more civil rights and justice work to be done.
Finally, let us remember the Rev. James Reeb, Unitarian Universalist Minister (Jan 1, 1927-March 11, 1965). He was clubbed to death by three white men who were later bought to trial in Alabama and acquitted by an all white jury. The son of Rev. Reeb and the family will be in Selma this weekend to finish the march that Rev. Reeb was not able to finish 50 years ago.
“There lives a creative being inside all of us and
we must get out of its way
for it will give us no peace unless we do.”
-M.C. Richards
“Am I being asked to enter a new passage in the spiritual life – the journey from false self to true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self? Am I being compelled to disturb my inner universe in quest of the undiscovered being who clamors from within?”
-From When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (Plus) by Sue Monk Kidd
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
-Gospel of Thomas
Good Morning Lovers and Seekers of the Mystery of God!
In Genesis 28: 16-17, we have the story of Jacob’s awakening to the presence of God in his life.
“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought,
‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’
He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.'”
How is this a story in your life? What about your moments of awakening? More than a few of you have told me of your experiences of grace, moments of breakthrough, moments in what is called the “thin places” where there is the unitive ineffable experience of the divine indwelling ourselves and all life. Might we be learning that the gate of heaven is everywhere?
That as Paul says, “we live and move and have our being in God.”
What we have so longed for over the years has always been there awaiting our recognition – our awakening. I found this new piece of music mentioned in Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve by the Rev. Paul R. Smith. He applies Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to Christianity in a spacious and free way.
I invite you to listen to this music for your time of morning prayer and reflection. Let the music flow through you – opening inner spaces, awakening something deep within you.
“The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw all things in God and God in all things.”
-Mechthild of Magdeburg
With you in awakening to who we are in God and to who God is in us.
Good morning lovers and seekers of the mystery of God.
“A mystic is not one who sees God as an object,
but one who is immersed in God as an atmosphere.”
-Ken Wilber
Many of you have told me that poetry opened and deepened your life, connecting you with new depths of your own being, opening new avenues of insight and understanding – a growth spurt awakening you on your journey to God “in whom we live and move and have out being.”
I invite you to read this slowly and aloud to yourself – over look the sexist lanaguge please. You may want to read it a second time, again slowly and aloud to yourself – prayerfully.
For The Time Being
-WH Auden
He is the Way.
Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.
He is the Truth.
Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years.
He is the Life.
Love Him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.
May you gift yourself with quiet moments apart from the chaos and the clutter, calming your mind, opening your heart to the mystery of God’s Presence. May you come and find a quiet center within the depths of your own being here and now.
“Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” -1 COR 3:16
May you be filled with loving kindness
May you be peaceful and at ease
May you know that the Spirit is with and within you always
Love to you and a gentle hug
We are all sparks of the Divine flame
Blessed Be
Compassionate Be
Boldly Be
These words have stayed with me, along with the word “Re-Imagining.” Connect the words and you get: “Called to Re-Imagining.” Life is a calling to re-imagining. Re-birthing. Creation continues. New being.
On this holiday (Holy Day) celebrating the life and witness of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a new Moses, a drum major for justice, a man for others, a Christ figure – we remember that we had a dream, a vision, a call to re-imagining, which caught fire and inspired black people to rise up from under the thumb of fear put on them by white patriarchy. And many open-hearted/open-minded white people joined in the struggle for freedom.
I invite you to see Selma, the movie.
When you re-imagine your life then you no longer allow others to define you. Look at Rosa Parks, the image of her sitting on the front of the bus enraged some white folks who benefited from the status quo, yet it inspired black folks leading them to liberation and a new life. Some folks still want the status quo. Others, women, blacks, LGBTQ community, the oppressed, have had to fight for the freedom to re-imagine their own lives. Many of you are freedom fighters.
I invite you to listen to your life, to ponder in your heart, what is calling out to you these days? What new images are coming up from deep within you, calling you to rise up to freedom and new life? The images in our mind can shrink and confine us and others, or they can empower and free us and others.
I suggest you read this poem aloud and slowly to yourself:
“You must give birth to your images
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth … for the hour of clarity.”
-Rainer Marie Rilke
Allow the words and music to flow through you – opening inner spaces – releasing you to become your true self. Notice any images coming up from deep within your own being. Remember, the future must enter you long before it happens.
God has set you free – do not submit again to a yoke of slavery, and do not seek to keep others in a yoke of slavery.
With you in awe – wakening to the Presence in our midst calling us to be conscious, free, loving, and fully alive.
I remembered that Dr. Joy Davey and Rev. Lawrence Stibbards, our wedding celebrants and best friends for over 25 years were leading a retreat at Shalom Mountain aging. If you want more information, let me know.
The Elder Journey: The Wisdom Years
Culture suggests that aging brings a gradual diminishment of life. In fact, the elder years bring new freedom and aliveness. Living every day with the knowledge that this life is not forever throws everything into a clearer, sharper perspective. Life becomes precious, not to be taken for granted, or spent doing things that are not ultimately important. Priorities rearrange themselves, yielding a richer and more deeply satisfying experience of life.
How will we live these years?
We offer as our elder curriculum, crafting a life that is:
Spiritually radiant
Physically vital
Socially responsible
Let’s explore our life through these lenses. I came across this prayer below. I think it is stereotyped for humor. Most all of the aging folks I know have more depth, more meaning and purpose, more real dignity and joy in living.
It did make me laugh. Maybe being able to smile gently into yourself is a good thing at any age.
Zest for life!
We are all sparks of Divine flame
Blessed Be
Compassionate Be
Boldly Be
My wife and I saw Selma last night – powerful. Tears and weeping at times. The courage of people to stand up for dignity, freedom, equality. Many of you marched, rode busses, preached, demonstrated – God Bless You!
Dear friends on the journey with, in and to the Eternal Now we call God. Let me say at the beginning that I hope you will read this and I would love to hear from any and all of you who find that you relate to this which I now call “Learnings in the afternoon of your life.”
I woke up thinking about learning, education, school – life-long learning. They say that the first six years of your life are the most critical years for learning. I can’t argue with the experts. Most of you reading this have gone on to a great academic education. This is the way the culture, your family of origin, the church, other spiritual institutions, the Boy/Girl Scouts, the colleges, universities, seminaries, pour all of their content and concepts forming and informing our being.
But then there comes a time in the words of Carl Jung:
“Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was a great morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.”
You and I know that there is so much more in the afternoon of life. While I am most grateful for all the education of my youth, it comes to me that I have learned more in my years 35-74 than I learned in those early years. That which worked in the morning of my life did not work in the afternoon of my life.
There have been shifts, breakthroughs, journeys to far countries, transitions, painful times, joyful times – deaths and resurrections – and I expect that you too have in your own fashion been acquainted with all the ways that life is a’learning you.
I am writing this to invite you to reflect upon your own life journey and to remember your stepping stones, your times of deep insight and transformation, deaths and resurrections, moving in new directions, of making necessary changes, of beginnings without end. Those times when you may have said along with May Sarton:
Now I become myself.
It’s taken Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces.
Our life story, our journey to authenticity, freedom and wholeness, is of vital importance. We are not birthed, created to live a life that adapts and conforms to the expectations of others or of our culture. Each human life is an experiment of one. We are here for an original experience of Life and of freedom. It is never too late to learn this.
The choice is always ours.
What new life is seeking to break through to you?
Neil Diamond sings: “Some people they never wake – until the day they die.”
“In the world to come I shall not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’
I shall be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?'”
-Rabbi Zusya
With you in awakening to who God is in us and to who we are in God here and now.
We are all sparks of the Divine flame
Blessed Be
Compassionate Be
Boldly Be
The word for today is Mystery.
Life is not a problem to be solved,
but a mystery to be experienced.
“The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. As obvious as it is, then, Jesus is bigger than any one religion. He didn’t come to start a new religion, and he continually disrupted whatever conventions or systems or establishments that existed in his day. He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain him, especially the one called “Christianity”.”
-Rob Bell from Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived
On the subject of mystery, years ago when I was the pastor of The John Calvin Presbyterian Church in Annandale, VA, we came up with this brief expression of faith:
Awed by the Mystery of God’s Presence in our midst,
gratefully we celebrate life,
and work for justice and peace.
“We have entered an era of passionate enlightenment, an era of the sacred marriage, the marriage between masculine and feminine, action and prayer, politics and mysticism, an era where all the old distinctions between sacred and profane will be rubbled to inaugurate a new divine freedom.”
-Andrew Harvey
Consciousness, compassion, courage – seek to live with loving kindness.
We are all spark of the Divine flame
Blessed Be
Compassionate Be
Boldly Be
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.”
-Micah 6:8
Good morning friends, lovers and seekers of God, earthy mystics, people of all faiths and of none.
Yesterday, driving by the Community Church in Round Hill, VA, I saw this message on the church sign: “How Would Jesus Vote?”
This question may give us pause, and something to ponder in our hearts. How do you think Jesus would vote? This Jesus who said, “Come until me all …” who welcomed sinners, outcasts, harlots, lepers, tax collectors, the poor and the oppressed, the immigrants fleeing persecution, everyone! See his mission statement: Luke 4:14-21.
I think Jesus would encourage everyone to vote knowing that men and women had to fight, sacrifice, suffer, and die that we all might be free to vote. I think Jesus would be disappointed in many states where there has been no voter fraud whatsoever, but still one party has self-admitted their clear intentions to repress the vote of people of color, to in effect, disenfranchise them. No! This does not sound like democracy to me! The Robert’s Supreme Court may say the days of racism are over, but the well organized effort to suppress the voting of black people is clearly a denial of civil rights, and of voting rights, and proof of racism.
Jesus was a ‘man for others’. For all others. I do not believe he wanted to form a religious movement as much as he wanted to introduce a way of life that centered on justice, peace, equality, and freedom for all beings everywhere.
I do not know how Jesus would vote. But I do think he would want everyone to have the freedom to vote and he would not be pleased with the efforts to suppress and to disenfranchise. You know his words. He identifies with the poor, the oppressed, the afflicted, those pushed to the margins of their culture and excluded. “In as much as you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto me.”
The music for this morning is Lift Every Voice And Sing. Please listen!
Today I say, lift every voice and also let every one vote. The suppression of voting does not sound like a step towards justice and equality for all!
Does it sound right to you?
Is it something that you would do?
Is it something you would want done to you?
Have you spoken out against this?
“This spiritual journey is often characterized by an intense passion for justice and liberation, especially in the face of exploitation and deprivation. The desire for justice is motivated not merely by the plight of appalling suffering, but by a deeper sense that love and well-being must prevail in the end.”
-Diarmuid O’Murchu in Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
With you in awakening to who we are in God and to who God is in us all.
“Surely the Lord is in this place — and I did not know it. How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
[Genesis 28]
On this Monday morning, I wish for you a day of awakening. May you have a day of wonderment and discovery, a day of unbounded being, the breaking through of the old revealing the ever new in you. May you recognize how precious and sacred your life is. The sacrament of your life! Squander not!
Make today count!
Music for your morning prayer and reflection.
“The need is constant. The gratification is instant. Give blood.” To make an appointment call 1-800-REDCROSS or visit Red Cross online to find a blood drive nearest to you, eligibility (do you qualify), and the process of donating blood.
Today – Let your love flow and your light shine.
Coming Home: A Fall Contemplative Retreat
In the tradition of the Iona Retreats founded by Marv and Nancy Hiles.
“The path of real life moves from one shelter to another. We are not drifters or homeless, but seekers, pilgrims, itinerants of a hidden impulse”
–All the Days of My Life by Marv and Nancy Hiles
Robert and Nina Close announce a very special contemplative retreat at the Santa Sabine Retreat Center where they have attended for many years. Inspired by the retreats led by Marv and Nancy Hiles, quoted often in the Soul Nuggets. This retreat will blend quiet time in a perfect location, deep community, chapel gatherings, art process with Debbie Ryon, and more – all centered around the theme of “Coming Home.” Throughout our lives, that longing to be at home – with ourselves, with others – manifests in many different ways, and has much to teach us. And amidst change and transition, a sense of “homeground” is vital and can show up in many ways.
We hope that you might feel led to join us at Santa Sabina Retreat Center. Here is the information for taking the next step:
Dates: Thursday, November 13th to Sunday, November 16, 2014
Location: Santa Sabina Retreat Center, San Rafael, CA
Cost: $485 for a single room / $425 per person for a double room.
Meals: All meals are included in the total cost.
Space for the retreat is limited and is limited to a first come, first serve basis.
Contact: Are you ready to register? Do you want to have more information? Please contact Nina Frost at: nhfrost at aol dot com or call: 347-546-4029.
My Spiritual Journey and in Loving Memory of my son, Alex. The lessons God asks us to learn as a result of tragedy such as how to accept a new vision of life.
An Occasional Blog of Devotionals Inspired by A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, Choose Only Love, The Way of the Marys, and The Age of the Heart. . .with Celia Hales - https://www.amazon.com/author/celiahales
by Sue Monk Kidd
by the Rev. Paul R. Smith. He applies Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to Christianity in a spacious and free way.
Soul Nugget 