Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well!
In today's Meditation, Irene Desharnais sends along the morning prayer from her Genesis Retreat House Community. Enjoy the centering breathing, Howard Thurman's feeling one with the world and with God and Cynthia Bourgeault saying wisdom is knowing with more of yourself--knowing deeper.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in healthcare, in the workplace, in the Church--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that in God’s economy of abundance, when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you and your loved ones experience genuine peace of mind and heart, and remain in good health during this challenging time.
As Spring comes to birth, may you find peace, healing, hope, and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron & Jean
MEDITATION 344: Breathing, Howard Thurman and Richard Rohr
Good morning, fellow sojourners. As we begin our day, let us be like the steady rising sun - illuminated from within by God's grace and spirit. Sharing light and warmth with others. Waking up to ourselves in this new day.
This choosing to come together in silence and stillness that we do daily or nightly, is becoming as ordinary as breathing in...and breathing out. A familiar rhythm. A constant. Like the beating of our hearts. We are like the waves of the ocean -- coming and going. Like a mountain standing solid season after season. Like the flowers that close up their petals at night and re-open in the day - dandelions, tulips, poppies, gazanias, crocuses. Like trees coming into their fullness, then later bare, then full again. Like the ocean, the mountain, the flowers, the trees -- our kin and our teachers -- we are at home in the rhythm of God's creation. We are one of God's creation. God is in all and we are in God.
Breathe in
Hold a moment at the top
Breathe out fully
Hold a moment at the bottom
"Feel the earth receive you, let your body gently sink down. and at the same time sense the area just above your head being drawn up toward the infinite expanse of the sky. As your awareness reaches up to meet it.
Breathe in
Hold a moment at the top
Breathe out fully
Hold a moment at the bottom
A reflection by Howard Thurman:
The true purpose of all spiritual disciplines is to clear away whatever may block our awareness of that which is God in us. . . .It will be in order to suggest certain simple aids to this end. One of these is the practice of silence, or quiet. As a child I was accustomed to spend many hours alone in my rowboat, fishing along the river, when there was no sound save the lapping of the waves against the boat. There were times when it seemed as if the earth and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for what I did not know—yet I always knew. There would come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to speak to me. My response to the sense of Presence always had the quality of personal communion. There was no voice. There was no image. There was no vision. There was God.
BELL, SILENCE, BELL
From Richard Rohr:
Wisdom is clearly more than mere intelligence, knowledge of facts, or information. Wisdom is more synthesis than analysis, more paradoxical than linear, more a dance than a march.
In order to grow in wisdom, we need to move beyond cerebral, rational knowing. As wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault puts it: “Wisdom is not knowing more, but knowing with more of you, knowing deeper.”