A hand to hold

The other day I mentioned something about the big-leaf maples that turned color last week.  And though we have none of these trees in our yard (all we have is dune grass), one of the leaves from the tree across the lagoon from us floated up on our beach yesterday, so I thought I'd show those of you who do not hail from the left coast what I mean by big-leaf maple... and, yes, the stem of this one extends to my elbow -- and I am NOT a small woman.

That I would write about this tree and that her leaf would wash up on my beach the next day is not really such a huge coincidence.  But somehow, for me, it serves as a gentle reminder of the constancy of Divine Presence.  Which brings me to this morning's quotation from Cynthia Bourgeault's book, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God. 

"Mercy is always with us; it is the ground and wellspring of our being.  But unless we can connect with it, we miss the whole show -- and we do not really understand the "good news" that our gospel is founded upon.  It is possible to be swimming in a sea of mercy and still experience ourselves as stranded on shore.  This distorted perception is what meditation is intended to fix."

Living by the water as I do, this metaphor seems particularly apt -- and a lovely description of how I've been feeling lately; i.e., stranded on the shore.  So for this leaf to wash up has been helpful, and -- oddly enough -- it indirectly led me to Cynthia's post on her blog about the Fall Triduum.  Her post is definitely worth a read, and helps me to understand that the shadow space into which I've fallen lately, though it results initally from the recent series of deaths in my circle of acquaintance, is actually a natural response to the shifting seasons. Here's a tiny piece of her post to whet your appetite:

"In the quiet, brown time of the year, these fall Triduum days are an invitation to do the profound inner work: to face our shadows and deep fears (death being for most people the scariest of all), to taste that in ourselves which already lies beyond death, drink at its fountain, then to move back into our lives again, both humbled and steadied in that which lies beyond both light and dark, beyond both life and death.  What better tilling of the inner soil for the mystery of the Incarnation, which lies just ahead?"

And so, having read her words, I went again into meditation -- which hasn't been providing much solace lately -- but this time I carried with me the mercy of acceptance; that the shadows which have been coming to the fore of late are normal and natural, and not some failure on my part.  And with that sense of mercy -- and this leaf -- comes the trust that despite this stranded feeling I am not alone on the journey.  Thank you, Cynthia, for giving me a hand to hold.

The foundation of hope

"In workshop after workshop I meet people (many of them no longer practicing Christians) 

who despite all theological indoctrination about the complete otherness of God 

have stood their ground, firm in their innate knowledge that at the foundation of the soul, 

at that point vierge, something of our being presses deep into the heart of God 

and begins to swim in the infinite ocean of God's mercy.  

That ocean is our source and substance, 

the ground of our own arising, 

the foundation of hope.  

Those who experience it may leave the church, 

but they do not leave this ground.  

Once experienced, it is undeniable."

--Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope

Welcoming with humor

I'm back from a 2 day visit to Shaw Island.  Something in me needed the down time; I'm thinking it was a chance to process the recent deaths and the inevitable ripples they've caused.

It was great to be with friends, and great to be in such a quiet space.  But great, also, to have a sense of humor about the whole peace and quiet schtick. Somehow the contradiction implicit in this image (the first thing a visitor sees as she drives away from the ferry dock)  echoes the contradiction I've been struggling with: how do we carry the peace of meditation back into this noisy troubled world?  How do I carry the peace I find on Shaw back into my busy life?

It's easy to get tangled up and self-critical in our efforts to live out the spirituality within us; I'm thinking the best way to avoid that tangle is to stay loose and keep a sense of humor about the whole thing.  I keep thinking of the Dalai Lama's smile; wishing I could be that gracious; wishing I could carry that sense of joyful acceptance into all the parts of my life.

Cynthia Bourgeault often speaks of what she calls "The Welcoming Practice," and I think that's a piece that's always been a bit difficult for me.  Humor, I think, makes the act of welcoming just a little easier.

Thoughts on hope

It seems odd to be thinking about hope when all the leaves are falling; driving back today from Shaw the roads and lawns were just carpeted with leaves -- mostly yellow, as all the big-leaf maples decided to turn this week.

But I just finished reading what I think may be one of the finest books of fiction I've read in a REALLY long time, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and one of the protagonists thinks we really do ourselves a disservice by hoping.  She's only 12, but she thinks we should stop encouraging our children to pursue possibility, and just tell them up front they'll never amount to much.

She bases this thought on the fact that so many of the grownups she knows are too busy trying to prove how important they are to actually get down to the business of living, let alone living well.  Perhaps, she thinks, they might be more present if they could just stop trying so hard...

And she got me thinking.  I mean, yes, I do what I do -- photography and blogging and meditating -- because I love it.  But there's some part of me that always thinks I should do more, or sell it better, or wonders what else I could be doing, or how I could be doing it differently -- always (I suspect, though of course I would prefer not to admit it) in hopes of broader recognition.  And there's that hope word again.  It feels like things have gotten off-track, somehow.

So I decided to go back to Cynthia Bourgeault's little miracle of a book, Mystical Hope.  And thankfully she redefines hope, taking me back to a better place, a place where I can honor those hopeful feelings I have without tying them to success or recognition.

"Jesus hints at this other kind of hope in his dialogue with the Samaritan woman... The day is hot, and Jesus pauses by a well to ask a woman for a drink of water... he suddenly announces, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life...


In contrast to our usual notions of hope [she continues]:


1.  Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future.  It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.


2.  It has something to do with presence -- not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.


3.  It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction, an "unbearable lightness of being."  Bu mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within."

It's not wrong to hope.  It's just not especially helpful to let those hopeful thoughts get all tangled up with external possibilities.  It's a bit like the difference between the kind of passion that's filled with drama and emotion and angst and the kind of passion that burns pure and inspires creativity and acts of compassion and sacrifice.  The line between the two can get pretty thin sometimes.  But the right stuff is this kind of joyful surge from within, a sort of waterfall of rightness and light that can wash over you and carry you through, so that even when life is really difficult you can still find it in you to smile, to love, to be generous and gracious...

That's the mystical kind of hope.  Maybe they call it mystical because it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

But it's good stuff.  I need to get back into that space.

Where is beauty?

"Where is beauty to be found? 

In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, 

or in small things that aspire to nothing, 

yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?"

--Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Summoned to become

"The pain of all maturing 

arises from the need to leave behind us 

every earlier state of development, 

all that we have been, 

in favor of what we are summoned to become." 

--John Main

Conflicting desires

One of the many things I've learned, watching my daughters over the years, is that we humans tend to have conflicting desires.  This is true in a lot of arenas, but the one I'm thinking of this morning, in response to this picture, is the conflict between wanting to stand out, to be unique and special, and wanting to blend in; to fit in, be part of the crowd.

Some part of us desperately yearns to be seen for who and what we are, and another part of us has learned, not just that there can be comfort and support in community, but that "the nail that sticks up gets pounded down."  And so there's always this dance between the two extremes.

... which seems to me to be both a gift and quite reasonable: we need both extremes, in ourselves and in society.  This tree helps me understand that: I might not have taken the photo if it hadn't been for that yellow leaf.  But I need all the red leaves to set off the yellow one; the photo would be just as boring if all the leaves were yellow as if all the leaves were red.

And what really makes this picture pop is that all those red leaves have yellow tips -- and, of course, those black black branches, the dark threads that knit them together...