YOUR BODY IS SMARTER THAN YOU IMAGINE
Writing in *Whole Earth,* Dr. Andrew Weil says, "Any level of biological organization that we examine, from DNA up to the most complex body systems, shows the capacity for self-diagnosis, for removal of damaged structure, and for regeneration of new structure." I urge you to keep that idea close to the front of your mind, dear readers. Contrary to what authorities in many fields would lead you to believe, you have a lot of innate power to figure out exactly how to fix your own problems, both the health-related kind and any others.
*
"The biomedical model we have used for
the past century has reached its
limit of effectiveness. The word
"healing" is not used in medicine
today, with one exception. The
first-year histology course includes some talk about wound healing, But outside of
that, the word healing is not used in medicine. One of the points that I made in
Spontaneous Healing suggest that the human body has a healing system. Not a very
radicalidea. All you have to do is watch cut finger heal to see very clearly
that the body has a capacity for awareness of troubles and the mechanisms for
repairing tissue. Yet it is discouraging to find thatit's much easier to talk with
children about the body's healing capacities than with most of my colleagues. If a
kid gets an "owie" you say watch what happens. If you try to talk to most physicians
about the body's system, it's easy for them to dismiss this as more New Age fluff.
It is not New Age fluff, it is physiological reality. Any level of biological
organization that we examine, from DNA up to the most complex body systems, shows
the capacity for self-diagnosis, for removal of damaged structure, for regeneration
of new structure."
YOUR BODY IS SMARTER THAN YOU IMAGINE, PART TWO
*Health Is Simple, Disease Is Complicated: A Systems Approach to Vibrant Health* by James Forleo.
Doctor James Forleo proposes a return to the body as the site of self-healing. The problem, he says, is that we don't understand the language of signs and symptoms it uses to communicate it's healing messages. Health is Simple
helps readers decipher that language and helps to access the great realms of health and vitality that the body contains.
*
The Star Market
The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday.
An old lead-colored man standing next to me at the checkout breathed so heavily I had to step back a few steps.
Even after his bags were packed he still stood, breathing hard and
hawking into his hand. The feeble, the lame, I could hardly look at them:
shuffling through the aisles, they smelled of decay, as if the Star Market
had declared a day off for the able-bodied, and I had wandered in
with the rest of them: sour milk, bad meat: looking for cereal and spring water.
Jesus must have been a saint, I said to myself, looking for my lost car in the parking lot later, stumbling among the people who would have been lowered into rooms by ropes, who would have crept out of caves or crawled from the corners of public baths on their hands and knees begging for mercy.
If I touch only the hem of his garment, one woman thought, I will be healed.Could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?
*
THE WORLD
By Marie Howe
I couldn't tell one song from another,
which bird said what or to whom or for what reason.
The oak tree seemed to be writing something using very few words.
I couldn't decide which door to open -- they looked the same, or what
would happen when I did reach out and turn a knob. I thought I was safe,
standing there
but my death remembered its date:
and so many summer nights still stood before me, full moon, waning moon,
October mornings: what to make of them? which door?
I couldn't tell which stars were which or how far away any one of them was,
or which were still burning or not -- their light moving through space like a long
late train -- and I've lived on this earth so long -- 50 winters, 50 springs and
summers,
and all this time stars in the sky -- in daylight
when I couldn't see them, and at night when , most nights, I didn't look.
**
Weekend Read: “May Christ send you sorrow and a serious illness”
"I had begun this letter with the intention of being, if possible, as intolerably rude as yourself."
"One wishes to learn, one wishes to learn, to be a better writer, to think better, and one wishes to learn, period. In spite of some kind of so-called higher education (Cambridge, Eng.) I have just arrived at that state where I realized I know nothing at all. A cargo ship, to paraphrase Melville, was my real Yale and Harvard too. Doubtless I have absorbed many of the wrong things. But instinct leads the good artist (which I feel myself to be, though I say it myself) to what he wants. So if, instead of ending this letter “may Christ send you sorrow and a serious illness,” I were to end it by saying instead that I would be tremendously grateful if one day you would throw your gown out of the window and address some remarks in this direction upon the reading of history, and even in regard to the question of writing and the world in general. I hope you won’t take it amiss. You won’t do it, but never mind."
**
By Thomas Kelly
The holy Now is not something which we, by our activity, by our dynamic energy, overtake or come upon. It is a now which itself is dynamic, which lays hold actively upon us, which breaks in actively upon us and re-energizes us from within a new center. The Eternal is urgently, actively breaking into time, working through those who are willing to be laid hold upon, to surrender self-confidence and self-centered effort, that is, self-originated effort, and let the Eternal be the dynamic guide in recreating, through us, our time-world.
In the Eternal Now all become seen in a new way. We enfold others in our love, and we and they are enfolded together within the great Love of God as we know it in Christ. In the Now, people aren’t just masses of struggling beings, furthering or thwarting our ambitions, or, in far larger numbers, utterly alien to and insulated from us. We become identified with them and suffer when they suffer and rejoice when they rejoice. One might almost say we become cosmic mothers, tenderly caring for all.
The Eternal Now breaks through the time-nows and all is secure. A sense of absolute security and assurance of being linked with an overcoming Power replaces the old anxieties. All things of value are most certainly made secure through Presence. Faith, serene, unbroken, unhurried world-conquest by the power of Love is a part of peace.
For the experience of Presence is the experience of peace, and the experience of peace is the experience not of inaction but of power, and the experience of power is the experience of pursuing Love that loves its way untiringly to victory. The one who knows the Presence knows peace, and the one who knows peace knows power and walks in complete faith that that objective Power and Love which has overtaken him will overcome the world.
When we lived in the one-dimensional time-ribbon we had to think life out all by ourselves. The past had to be read cautiously, the future had to be planned with care. Nothing was to be undertaken unless the calculations showed that success was to be expected. No blind living, no marching boldly into the dark, no noble but ungrounded ventures of faith. We must be rational, sensible, intelligent, shrewd. But then comes the reality of the Presence, and the Now-Eternal is found to underlie and generate all time-temporals. And a life of amazing, victorious faith-living sets in. Not with rattle and clatter of hammers, not with strained eyebrows and tense muscles but in peace and power and confidence we work upon such apparently hopeless tasks as the elimination of war from society, and set out toward world brother/sisterhood and interracial fraternity in a world where all the calculated chances of success are very meager.
Thus in faith we go forward, with breath-taking boldness, and in faith we stand still, unshaken, with amazing confidence. For the time-nows are rooted in the Eternal Now, which is a steadfast Presence, an infinite ocean of light and love which is flowing over the ocean of darkness and death.
Thomas Kelly was a Quaker whose passion for the depths of faithful living is shared in the book, A Testament of Devotion, compiled by Douglas Steere in 1941 following Kelly’s sudden death at age 47. This piece is an excerpt from that book.
Typology Test
More testing, for those of you who have been working on the enneagram, Myers Briggs, and the rest.Father T. has this up on his *new* blog, so hit the links and test away, if that appeals to you.
I do agree, having taken these tests in numerous forms and over time, they come up again and again the same for me.
*
"The most well known personality sorter is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. This test identifies various random behaviors and sorts them into four categories:
Since the Myers-Briggs survey is rather extensive, a popular alternative is the Keirsey Temperment Sorter. You can read more about the four temperments here.Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).
Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).
Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).
Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
Your Personality Type: When you decide on your preference in each category, you have your own personality type, which can be expressed as a code with four letters.
So, if you are willing, try this Typology test, and find out what type you are. After taking the test, links are provided to learn more about your particular type.
Do keep in mind that this test is abbreviated, and so not terribly accurate. Also remember that we are each a work in progress; whatever type you are today may not be what you will be tomorrow, or even two hours from now.
Brenda Ueland "If You Want To Write"
Idle, Limp and Alone
Our idea that we must always be energetic and active is all wrong…. That is why these smart, energetic, do-it-now, pushing people so often say: “I am not creative.” They are, but they should be idle, limp and alone for much of the time, as lazy as men fishing on a levee, and quietly looking and thinking, not willing all the time. This quiet looking and thinking is the imagination; it is letting in ideas.
Willing is doing something you know already, something you have been told by somebody else; there is no new imaginative understanding in it. And presently your soul gets frightfully sterile and dry because you are so quick, snappy and efficient about doing one thing after another that you have not time for your own ideas to come in and develop and gently shine.
If You Want to Write
*****
The Inner Fire
By Brenda Ueland
Van Gogh and Chekhov and all great people have known inwardly that they were something. They have had a passionate conviction of their importance, of the life, the fire, the god in them. But they were never sure that others would necessarily see it in them, or that recognition would ever come.
But this is the point: everybody in the world has the same conviction of inner importance, fire, of the god within. The tragedy is that either they stifle their fire by not believing in it and using it; or they try to prove to the world and themselves that they have it, not inwardly and greatly, but externally and egotistically, by some second-rate thing like money or power or more publicity. Therefore all should work.
First because it is impossible that you have no creative gift. Second: the only way to make it live and increase is to use it. Third: you cannot be sure that it is not a great gift.
If You Want to Write
Now…This Moment
By Brenda Ueland
Sometimes say softly to yourself: “Now…now. What is happening to me now? This is now. What is coming into me now? This moment?”
Then suddenly you begin to see the world as you had not seen it before, to hear people’s voices and not only what they are saying but what they are trying to say and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal - not this object and that - but as a translucent whole.
If You Want to Write
How to Know Truth or Beauty
By Brenda Ueland
Try to discover your true, honest, untheoretical self. Don’t think of yourself as an intestinal tract and tangle of nerves in the skull, that will not work unless you drink coffee. Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.
Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle! (Think if Tiffany’s made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was!) If you are never satisfied, that is a good sign. It means your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it. Again I say, the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them the ocean is only knee-deep…. Don’t be afraid of yourself…. Don’t always be appraising yourself….
And why should you do all these things? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. Because the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it.
If You Want to Write
from
"The Art of Christian Listening"
by Thomas N. Hart
"The first principle of prayer is to be yourself. Prayer is being yourself before God. This may sound obvious, but it bears a little developing.......
...How do you learn to talk with or be with another human being? Do you begin completely ignorant and have to learn every step of a proper procedure? Or are the instincts and inclinations already in place, so that you can begin easily enough and grow in facility through experience?
... A lot of prayer is defeated by pseudo ideals. One ready way to misconceive it is to think of it as making something beautiful for God. You will think good and holy thoughts. You will have warm and loving feelings. ......
...You seek a religious experience...... You have no religious experience. Instead God seems distant and disinterested, and you struggle to make contact, felling alone and rejected.
...The problem...... is not really personal failure but pseudo ideals. Prayer is not making something beautiful for God, or having God make something beautiful for you, or getting into a separate space where your life cannot touch you. All the living models of prayer we have considered show us that prayer is rather being yourself before God, coming as you are..........
not putting on a face and manufacturing appropriate thoughts and feelings, but being yourself and working with the thoughts and feelings that are there."
"You have duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped. You are stronger than I, and you have prevailed, and I have become a laughing stock all the day. (Jer 20:7)"
"I loathe my life: I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath... How long will you not look away from me, nor let me alone till I swallow my spittle? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of persons? Why have yo made me your mark? (Job 7:16-20)"
"How long, O Lord, will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all the day? (Ps 13)"
**
from "The Wisdom of Yoga"
by Stephen Cope
Most contemporary practitioners of yoga assume that postures are meant primarily to cultivate some kind of supernormal state of physical training. this is not quite so. In classical yoga, asana was not meant primarily for physical training at all. Says Rajneesh, "Postures are concerned not really with any kind of physiological training, but an inner training of being -- learning just to be." In the classical tradition, asana is a continuation of the attentional training found in early meditation practice. The single posture with which Pantanjali concerned himself was the posture for meditation.
The Sanskrit word asana literally means "seat." I posture practice, we find the seat from which we can witness the play of experience. Joseph Campbell, the great American scholar of myth and comparative religion , called this seat the "immovable spot," or the "still point." Asana cultivates the still point at the center of the dance of experience -- the still point at the center of the play of sensation. The immovable spot from which we can witness the chaining of sensations, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
What are the essential ingredients of this "seat"? Pantanjali lays it out succinctly.
"The postures of meditation should embody steadiness and ease.
This occurs as all effort relaxes and coalescence arises, revealing that the body and the infinite universe are indivisible.
Then one is no longer disturbed by the play of opposites.
(2.46-48)
**
"The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.
--Thomas Merton
**
"The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to
something other than your own constructions."
W. H. Auden
Parents
by William Meredith
What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.
The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.
They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.
Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.
They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.
It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them.
The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.
Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.
This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,
they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,
how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,
taking the last link
of that chain with them.
Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.
William Meredith
Partial Accounts
**
23. Easier To Think About the Body
Easier
to think about the body of the comet than the human body. Easier to see
its white hair stretch out in the solar wind than to visualize a
synapse in the brain. And to understand the progress through bleak
space, thousands of years to complete an orbit -- that is easier than
to picture a life.
And yet if I told you that death would set you in the heavens like a comet, how would you live your life, knowing your state of grace would be to form a head of ice, hurled beyond Pluto, rapt in a meditation of the sun?
Your hip aches. Your rectum itches. Your hair falls out or is replaced by coarse white wire. Your nostrils and ears fill with bristles (these also white). The skin around your eyes crumples into wizened crepe and droopy sacking. And your brain empties its rooms. You wander through vacancies.
I write to you today about soteriology. But first, let me tell you about the spring. Inside its dykes the city is on fire with dogwood blossoms, denser and whiter than cataracts. The comet has dragged its whiteness through the trees and it hurts the eyes. Knowing it can't last hurts, too.
The world sees the lonely traveler and calls, "Comrade!" Surely the comet has a soul. Surely, in some age we can easily imagine (more easily than infancy), the doctrine of salvation fell from its wake and caressed the planet and created rain.
Thus every eye that looks back at us seems to speak a word. Thus every surface that surprises us with touch seems to know us.
I am talking to the least of you. That man squatting fully alert behind his desk. That boy between two desperate parents, slapping himself on the chin. That girl just before she understands the powerlessness of beauty. That woman hiding inside her house. Those fishing with their own flesh for bait. Those too hungry to lift food to their mouths. Those posing naked. Those with them.
We fly off. We rush headlong, growing harder and colder. We leave a star behind and find a star before us. It becomes a face, its mouth uttering love and its breath flaying us alive. We rush off. We fly headlong.
And all
the while, throughout our lives, our solitude defines us like a body we
wear inside our body, bone in muscle, muscle under skin, thought inside
of skull, light within the eyes, until we think salvation, if it comes,
will come to save that solitude.
Mark Jarman
Epistles
****
ENDURING LOVE
It was the way
as they climbed the steps
they appeared bit by bit
yet swiftly --
the tops of their hats
then their faces
looking in as they reached
the top step by the door, then
as I flung the door open
their dear corporeal selves,
first him, then her. It was
the simultaneously
swift and gradual advent
of such mercy after
I had been wounded.
It was the little familiar
net attached to her hat,
it was especially
the think soft cloth of his black
clerical overcoat,
and their short stature
and their complete
comforting embrace,
the long-dead
visiting time from eternity.
Whiskey River:
link
"You have seen that
the universe is at
root a magical
illusion and a
fabulous game,
and that there is
no separate
you to get
something
out of it,
as if life
were a bank
to be robbed.
The only real "you"is the one that comes
and goes, manifests and withdraws itself
eternally in and as every conscious
being. For "you" is the universe looking
at itself from billions of points of view, points that come
and go so that the vision is forever new.
Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no
one except the all-and-everything,
there is never anything to be gained -
though the zest of the game is to pretend
that there is."
Hakuin
link
"Though I do not expect that I shall be reborn directly as a crocus, I know
that one day my atoms will inhabit a bacterium here, a diatom there, a
nematode or a flagellate - even a crayfish or a sea cucumber. I will be
here, in myriad forms, for as long as there are forms of life on Earth.
I have always been here, and with a certain effort of will,
I can sometimes remember."
- John A. Livingston
One Cosmic Instant, A Natural History of Human Arrogance
Free Will Astrology
++++++++++
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "Two chemicals called actin and myosin
evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and
relax," writes Deepak Chopra in *The Book of Secrets.* "Today, the same
two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart."
Likewise, Sagittarius, actions you take or ideas you embrace in the
coming days will send reverberations deep into your future. They will
show up many years hence in altered form, but imprinted with the
essence you give them now. This is your chance to bestow a profound
blessing on the person you will later become.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Here's a passage from Kurt Vonnegut's
novel *Breakfast of Champions:* "Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story
which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing
the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own
excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to
guessing that they were making champagne." This scenario has some
resemblances to what you're doing, Capricorn. Fortunately, you're much
smarter than the two pieces of yeast, and so you will not do the
equivalent of drowning in crap. But I bet you'll create something
comparable to champagne.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "The question of evil," writes psychologist
James Hillman, "refers primarily to the anesthetized heart, the heart that
has no reaction to what it faces, thereby turning the variegated sensuous
face of the world into monotony, sameness, oneness." Your assignment in
the coming week, Aquarius, is to triumph over this kind of evil in yourself.
By whatever ingenious and imaginative means you can dream up, you
must awaken your heart fully to the unpredictable, ever-shifting beauty
and ugliness you encounter. Drink it all in like a thirsty wanderer who has
just emerged from a long trek lost in the desert. [The source of Hillman's
quote is his book *The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World.*]
*
"The only way anyone is ever cured of desiring nonsensical things is by
getting the nonsensical things and then experiencing the unpleasant but
educational consequences." - Ann Davies, http://www.bota.org
*
Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no
matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort
them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the
divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive
patients, Jung said: "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low
level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval
language: the union with God."
*
Therapist James Hillman echoes the theme: "Psychology regards all
symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way." A
preoccupation with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to
dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into
an obsession with images of love. "Follow the lead of your symptoms,"
Hillman suggests, "for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is
an expression of soul."
+
"If Spirit has any meaning, it must be omnipresent, or all-pervading and
all-encompassing. There can't be a place where Spirit is not, or it wouldn't
be infinite. Therefore, Spirit has to be completely present, right here, right
now, in your own awareness. That is, your own present awareness,
precisely as it is, without changing it or altering it in any way, is perfectly
and completely permeated by Spirit._
"Furthermore, it is not that Spirit is present but you need to be
enlightened in order to see it. It is not that you are one with Spirit but
just don't know it yet. Because that would also imply that there is some
place Spirit is not. No, according to Dzogchen, you are always already one
with Spirit, and that awareness is always already fully present, right now.
You are looking directly at Spirit, with Spirit, in every act of awareness.
There is nowhere Spirit is not.
"Further, if Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or
without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would
be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means,
as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened.
You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then
that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true
enlightenment._ _
"Rather, Spirit, and enlightenment, has to be something that you are fully
aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now. We
are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don't recognize it. We
have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition."
- Ken Wilber, *Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing in the Life and Death
of Treya Killam Wilber*
When we find ourselves loved, we begin to lose our sense of alienation. God's love, and the self-love that it breeds within us, restores to us a sense of real belonging in the world. We stop seeing the world as a place of strangers. We begin to find community--one of the most joyous ways of experiencing God. By community I mean a coming together that puts us in touch with ourselves, with others and with God's presence.
One way we can nourish community in our lives is by gathering together with a small group in order to share our spiritual journeys. The promise of God's presence in community is in these words of Jesus, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."God's Joyful Surprise
**
I’ll turn my face
and keep it fixed on you.Make this wish come true
in my life.Just to remain before You,
just to keep my mind raised to You
in all pain, in all desires,
in the midst of every day.My desires flit about
in many directions
Just make this one desire
come true.Night after night make this single wish
awaken in me a single pain,
making one day after another
form a garland on a single string,
in a single song of joy.**
By Richard Rohr
God loves us so perfectly, God lets us be the heroes. God lets us wrestle with the angel of Yahweh, lets us struggle with God and win. When we try to let go and give our life to God, God gives it back to us. Should we be surprised? That’s what love does. That’s the only thing you can get excited about when you’re in love–giving your life to the other and seeing enjoyment in the other. That’s the union toward which God is calling us. The lover delighting in the beloved and the beloved delighting in the lover.
Job and the Mystery of Suffering
***
BY Mark Jarman
from his collection "Epistles"
God said your name today. He said, "Tell me about X." And everybody had a lie you'd like. The solutions for X were all X + 1. X is charming as a firefly, and know a formula for cold fusion. X's good will is equal to the radius of earth; the fall of the meteorite, the passage of the gritty asteroid, the comet's lonely visit: X notes them all. The biological children of X adore their parent almost as much as the many adopted ones, and all of them are making money close to home. X will donate any duplicate organ for a loved one, and X loves everybody: ask for an eye, a kidney, a lung, a lobe of cerebellum.
And so God, boasting to the devil, said, "Consider my servant X."
**
A Litany of the Person
image of God
born of God’s breath
vessel of divine love
after his likeness
dwelling of God
capacity for the infinite
eternally known
chosen of God
home of Infinite Majesty
abiding in the Son
called from eternity
life in the Lord
temple of the Holy Spirit
branch of Christ
receptacle of the Most High
wellspring of Living Water
heir of the kingdom
the glory of God
abode of the Trinity
God sings this litany
eternally in his Word.
This is who you are.
(Anonymous Trappist Monk from the Abbey of Gethsemani) October 10, 2007)
From Monastic Mumblings
**
“Freedom of choice is not, itself, the perfection of liberty. But it helps us take our first step
toward freedom or slavery, spontaneity or compulsion. The free man is the one whose choices have given him the power to stand on his own feet and determine his own life according to the higher light and spirit that are in him. The slave, in the spiritual order, is the man whose choices have destroyed all spontaneity in him and have delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to his own compulsions, idiosyncrasies and illusions, so that he never does what he really wants to do, but only what he has to do.”
--Br. Thomas Merton
from Monastic Mumblings
**
If I Were Paul
by Mark Jarman
Consider how you were made.
Consider the loving geometry that sketched your bones, the passionate symmetry that sewed flesh to your skeleton, and the cloudy zenith whence your soul descended in shimmering rivulets across pure granite to pour as a single braided stream into the skull's cup.
Consider the first time you conceived of justice, engendered mercy, brought parity into being, coaxed liberty like a marten from its den to uncoil its limber spine in a sunny clearing, how you understood the inheritance of first principles, the legacy of noble thought, and built a city like a forest in the forest, and erected temples like thunderheads.
Consider, as if it were penicillin or the speed of light, the discovery of another's hands, his oval field of vision, her muscular back and hips, his nerve-jarred neck and shoulders, her bleeding gums and dry elbows and knees, his baldness and cauterized skin cancers, her lucid and forgiving gaze, his healing touch, her mind like a prairie. Consider the first knowledge of otherness. How it felt.
Consider what you were meant to be in the egg, in your parent's arms, under a sky full of stars.
Now imagine what I have to say when I learn of your enterprising viciousness, the discipline with which one of your turns another into a robot or a parasite or a maniac or a body strapped to a chair. Imagine what I have to say.
Do the impossible. Restore life to those you have killed, wholeness to those you have maimed, goodness to what you have poisoned, trust to those you have betrayed.
Bless each other with the heart and soul, the hand and eye, the head and foot, the lips, tongue, and teeth, the inner ear and the outer ear, the flesh and spirit, the brain and bowels, the blood and lymph, the heel and toe, the muscle and bone, the waist and hips, the chest and shoulders, the whole body, clothed and naked, young and old, aging and growing up.
I send you this not knowing if you will receive it, or if having received it, you will read it, or if having read it, you will know that it contains my blessing.
from Epistles
by Mark Jarman
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"In times of personal crisis our attention is caught up in private inner turmoil and in the urgency to find a resolution to the confusion or and escape from it. Rather than be hostage to your anguish, be attentive to the process as it is happening. Be attentive to the shame and fear, the emptiness and despondency, with which the ego greets the dawning wholeness. Take the middle course during the stormy period of transformation. Don't tamper with it. Let it happen. Let go.
Gregory Mayers "Listen to the Desert"
"One of the prime injunctions in the spirituality of the desert fathers is "be watchful," be attentive. The advbice is so central to the mystical teachings of the desert and so easily overlooked that it deserves careful consideration.
Saint Hesychius of Sinai says of attention that it is a spiritual method that, if diligently practiced over a long period of time, does three things: completely frees us from the bondage of ourselves, leads us to an intimate experience of the inapprehensible, and helps us to penetrate the divine and hidden mysteries. The work of "being watchful" progresses slowly but surely through four stage, according to Saint Hesychius. Fidelity to the practice of attention produces inner stability, which in turn effects a natural intensification of attentiveness. Intensification of attentiveness in due measure yields contemplative insight, which in turn opens out into a condition in which a person, free from all images, enjoys complete serenity. Attention draws to consciousness an authentic, mysterious wholeness, and original innocence that is the human yearning expressed by the Garden of Eden myth. It is a reunion with the source and substance of one's being, a reunion that transforms human consciousness."
Gregory Mayers "Listen to the Desert"
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