This body, your life, is a letter
to the king of the universe.
Go to a private place and open it and read to see if
the words are right.
If they aren’t, start another!
Rumi
Sunday Quote: Your Life
Empty time
In-between states, between emptiness and form, teach us there is a wisdom in not naming.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.
John O’Donohue, For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing.
The language of descent
On this Good Friday in these pandemic times….
We seldom go freely into the belly of the beast. Unless we face a major disaster like the death of a friend or spouse or loss of a marriage or job, we usually will not go there. As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of religion. It teaches us to enter willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark periods are good teachers. Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers. Answers are the way out, but that is not what we are here for. But when we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation. Fixing something doesn’t usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning.
Richard Rohr
True practice
Holy Thursday, the start of the three days of the Easter Festival, when the focus is on service and fellowship
St. John of the Cross, alone in his room in profound prayer, experienced a rapturous vision of Mary. At the same moment, he heard a beggar rattling at his door for alms. He wrenched himself away and saw to the beggar’s needs. When he returned, the vision returned again, saying that at the very moment he had heard the door rattle on its hinges, his soul had hung in perilous balance. Had he not gone to the beggar’s aid, she could never have appeared to him again.
David Whyte
…and when we are lost
Just before turning back, his mission unfulfilled, we read in the Torah, “a certain man found Joseph and behold he was wandering in a field.” That man asked Joseph a two-word question, ma t’vakesh, “What are you seeking?
….this great short question, ma t’vakesh, was not a question about the location of his brothers, but a question about the location of his life. And what happened to Joseph in the fields happens to us in our lives. We meet angels and they change everything. The man who met Joseph in the fields was of course not a man, he was an angel, or to say it more precisely, he was not only a man he was also an angel. Judaism has always taught that it is quite possible to be both at the same time.
In Hebrew, the word for angel is malach, which means “messenger,” and so for Judaism any person with a message from God is a malach, an angel. When we are about to lose our way it seems to me absolutely obvious and unarguably true that God will send someone into the fields of our lives to ask us, ma t’vakesh, “What are you looking for?”
Marc Gellman, What are You Looking For?
When things are tough…
Don’t despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish.
Because the best things are always growing in secret.
Ben Okri
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