Dear Friends,

We hope that you are safe and well!

In our Meditation today, Joyce Rupp reflects on strengthening the field of compassion passed on to us by generations of human beings living out loving compassion. It is interesting, I was participating in a webinar the other day offered by Ilia Delio on Christogenesis and Teilhard de Chardin that talked about the same kind of cultivating our fields of loving compassion.

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 Summer unfolds, may you find peace, healing, hope, and the infusion of joy in your life!

With our love and care,

Ron & Jean

Meditation 400: Joyce Rupp: Strengthening the Field of Compassion

Reflection - July 2021

Last week I led the workshop for our new Boundless Compassion facilitators who had gathered for a week of growing in compassion. I marveled anew at the desire, dedication, and determination of people like themselves who are willing to tend to their own suffering and that of others with kindness and hope. They renewed my belief that each person who lives in this way can add to the strength of bringing about a world where genuine peace and love abide.

Something I read years ago convinces me of this possibility. The scientist Rupert Sheldrake developed his theory about fields of energy that can be strengthened and influential the more they are activated and practiced. These non-material realms of energy contain information that forms a “collective memory upon which all organisms draw and to which they contribute.” I recently came across a story in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders that exemplifies how Rupert’s theory works:

“There’s a spot over Lake Superior where migrating butterflies veer sharply. No one understood why they made such a quick turn at that specific place until a geologist finally made the connection: a mountain rose out of the water in that exact location thousands of years ago. These butterflies and their offspring can still remember a mass they’ve never seen, sound waves breaking just so, and fly out of the way. How did they pass on this knowledge of the invisible? Does this message transmit through the song they sing to themselves on their first wild nights, spinning inside a chrysalis? Or in the music kissed down their backs as they crack themselves open to the morning sun? Does milkweed whisper instructions to them as it scatters in the meadow?”

The butterflies carry the memory created by the field of energy residing in their ancestors and pass it along to the next generation. In the same way, I believe that the more we practice kindness and compassion, the stronger that energy of love becomes within us and within those who follow after us. Judy Cannato describes this reality in her Field of Compassion:

“We live in a world of grace, and as we more consciously receive grace, each of us becomes a Field of Compassion. Each one of us becomes open to love a little more completely, and then love pours out of us and into the world. As we become free, others experience freedom in our presence and can choose to be open to love, too. This is our life work, our great work, what the Universe asks and what this moment in time demands. Our work requires all that we have become and all that we are becoming. It requires a “yes” that at one moment may be whole-hearted and the next tentative and unsure. But together our “yes” is empowering. Let us imagine the grace, then, hold it in our hearts and manifest, one day at a time, a Field of Compassion.”

We are not butterflies with the memory of a former mountain urging them to veer around it. We are humans carrying the memory of love, the kind reflected and taught by Jesus and all compassionate leaders before him and since then. The possibility for reinforcing this quality of the human heart dwells within each of us. It flows forth with every gesture of kindness toward those who suffer, and strengthens the field of compassion as it does so.

Abundant peace,

Joyce

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