Dec 3
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
“Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”― Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy
Beyond a mere passing glance, a blur
Pause, sit, watch
Pay attention, rapt attention
Linger
If but only for a minute or two to get caught by beauty
Held hostage by awe and wonder
A mark of eternity
Spark to flame.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”― Simone Weil
“This is the homely heart of Incarnation, this meeting of God in man with men and women, this simple face of divine graciousness in ordinary life rather than in the hymns of church fathers or in the dry elaborations of theologians.”― Eugene Kennedy, Joy of Being Human
“Aliveness, he will teach, is a gift available to all by God’s grace. It flows not from taking, but giving, not from fear but from faith, not from conflict but from reconciliation, not from domination but from service. It isn’t found in the upper trappings of religion -rules and rituals, controversies and scruples, temples and traditions. No, it springs up from our innermost being like a fountain of living water. It intoxicates us lie the best wine ever and so turns life from disappointment into a banquet.”― Brian D. McLaren
No lectures.
No rules and regulations.
No judgment.
An invitation into the waiting, wandering and grace.
Open to all, owned by none.
Greater than our imagination, more substance than opinion.
May the story of Advent welcome you home to love, peace and light.
Make room.
“Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.”― Thomas Merton
“Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.” – Psalm 118
“As I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here.”― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow
May we all have the capacity and desire to change and be changed.
Becoming new again and again.
To see the same from other sides, new angles.
To understand more than be understood.
To stand in the complexities, the yes and no, knowing and unknowing, belief and doubt, organized and unorganized, reason and wonder.
Allowing it all and opening up.
In broad places and thin spaces.
“Standing eye to eye with being as being, we realize that we are able to look at the world with two faculties—with reason and with wonder. Through the first we try to explain or to adapt the world to our concepts, through the second we seek to adapt our minds to the world.”— Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity
“For the person who has learned to let go and let be, nothing can ever get in the way again.”― Meister Eckhart
“Alice: How long is forever?
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”― Lewis Carroll
The weight of a drop.
The immensity of small.
Slivers, pocket and crevices.
Thin spaces.
Seconds, moments making up forever.
Be ever present in this day to not miss the wonder of being.
“I have been a drop in the air. I have been a shining star. I have been a word in a book.… I have been the string of a harp, Enchanted for a year in the foam of water. I have been a poker in the fire. I have been a tree in a covert. There is nothing in which I have not been.”― Stephanie Burt, Don’t Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems
“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”― Chaim Potok
“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.”― William Stafford
In all that is present, not the past, not the future, create.
The material is available to shape, mold, make our own.
Shapes, dimension, air, space.
Emergence, unfolding, arriving. Daily.
Experience this day in fullness and delight.
“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”― William Stafford
“The inner world is as real as the outer world. One ought to be conscious of that… These two worlds are fed by each other, you must not neglect one at the expense of the other, must not deem one more important than the other.”― Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork
“And don’t we all, with fierce hunger, crave a cave of solitude, a space of deep listening—full of quiet darkness and stars, until finally we hear a syllable of God echoing in the cave of our hearts?” — Macrina Wiederkehr
A prompt.
Beauty seen, really seen.
Awe unbound.
A spark.
A whisper.
A syllable.
Deep listening.
Long gazing.
Pausing in wonder.
Dancing with gratitude.
Held in grace.
May you love well without ceasing.
And be loved in return.
“You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”― Henry Drummond
“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”― e.e cummings
“We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.”― Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior: A Memoir
What lies beneath the surface that keeps rising up?
Get to the root of it, the source below, deeper
If it’s a weed – resentment, guilt, unforgiveness – pull it
If it’s a seed – dreams, aspirations, yearning – feed it
Something is trying to break open, break free
Clarity comes when we are open to receive it, receptive to answers not conscious but subconscious
Weeds and flowers reside together
Each telling us what we need to know, to grow or wilt under the weight
Expose it to the light
Create a new stories, rooted in hope, joy and beauty
“Keep your Eyes on All that’s Good and Beautiful and Possible in the World. Because “The Stories We Tell Create the People We Become.”― Jacqueline Lewis, Life Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone
“Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.”― William James
“Beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction.”― William James
A shift
A twist
A possibility
What if?
How about?
Why not?
Flip the equation.
Release, assumption, opinion and judgment.
The push, one more step.
Allow, invite, consider new thoughts, altering of attitude.
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.”― William James
“No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.”― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Pause, gaze, witness.
Below the surface.
At your feet.
Within reach.
Observe the details, the layers.
Patterns, themes, threads.
Known, unknown.
Understood, misunderstood
The story of your life.
Sentences, chapters, the arc of the story.
Unfolding, opening, transforming.
Not done yet.
The story continues.
Slowly born.
“There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.” – Jim Morrison
“As the Irish wise word, or seanfhocal, says: “What is not worth seeking, is not worth finding.” Seek and you shall find.”— Julianne Stanz, Braving the Thin Places: Celtic Wisdom to Create a Space for Grace
“The Celtic imagination considers sacred places to be “thin,” or places where the veil between the worlds of heaven and earth seems especially permeable, and the worlds discernibly close to each other. Thin spaces exist between the now and the not-yet.”— Julianne Stanz, Braving the Thin Places: Celtic Wisdom to Create a Space for Grace
May you make room for thin places and spaces
The width of a petal, the depth of the ocean
The hem of heaven touching earth
Between now and not yet, standing still and in motion
Trust the journey, the heart and soul
And the Author
Master class of self unfolding and in bloom.
“Thin spaces are wild, messy places where God is at work. Time seems to stand still, there is a discernible sense of sacredness, and the world around us speaks its own story to those who are listening. The concept of a thin place is an ancient one, arising from the Celtic tradition, but it holds real meaning for each of us today as we try to make sense of the world around us and, indeed, within us.”— Julianne Stanz, Braving the Thin Places: Celtic Wisdom to Create a Space for Grace
