Category Archives: Meditation

A World of Common Things

2 Replies

Pets. Untensils. Fruit. Clothes. These are the things that we touch and see and hear and taste and smell every day. Pablo Neruda wrote a whole book of odes to them: spoons, an onion, the cat, and a pair of socks. He celebrates how much they have added to his life, and how he loves them for that.

I love this collection of poems because it is clear how much he sees common things as life-enhancing objects of wonder. Not because they can make him happy in more than a fleeting sense, but because they offer a chance to express gratitude for life in a tangible way – deep, inner joy brought into words through a cat, an orange, French fries. Here’s the end of the first poem – Ode to Things:

O irrevocable

river

of things:

no one can say

that I loved

only

fish,

or the plants of the jungle and the field,

that I loved

only

those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.

It’s not true:

many things conspired

to tell me the whole story.

Not only did they touch me,

or my hand touched them:

they were

so close

that they were a part

of my being,

they were so alive with me

that they lived half my life

and will die half my death.

Pablo Neruda (Ken Krabbenhoft, translation), Odes to Common Things, Ode to Things; New York: Bullfinch Press, 2010, p.17

Jane Goodall’s Prayer

Leave a reply

A Prayer For World Peace, Jane Goodall and Feeroozeh Golmohammadi(illustrator), Hong Kong: Minedition, 2015

We pray, above all, for Peace throughout the world.

I happened upon it in Northshire Books a couple of months back, this illustrated prayer of Jane Goodall. These are the opening words. They come from a remarkable woman who has spent the majority of her life seeking deep knowledge about chimpanzees, adjusting her whole life to respectful observation and interaction with our evolutionary cousins. It isn’t just research, though, it’s a labor of love – meaning good things for another species and sacrificing to bring them about. And from this devotion the rest of humanity caught a glimpse of the holiness of another species; from this, all people were offered the chance to value and honor life beyond their own.

I think this is how we learn to pray for peace above all: becoming aware of the holiness of others and valuing it enough to stand up for it.

Foundational Promise

2 Replies

I’ve said the words many times to many people in more situations than I can recall. I’ve said them to friends, relatives, and strangers. Sometimes, they are casually spoken – other times, with an intention way beyond serious. It’s rare that I think of them as the promise they are, and then usually because that promise has been broken. I’ve fallen short of keeping the promise, and I’ve been the one on the receiving end. They are behind every wedding vow, contract, baptism, and social obligation. Trust and forgiveness hang on them, and love grows out of them:

I’ll be there.

[This is one in a series. For more, click Three P’s above]

Uneasy

Leave a reply

Absence

This morning as low clouds

skidded over the spires of the city

I found next to a bench

in a park an ivory chess piece –

the white knight as it turned out –

and in the pigeon-ruffling wind

I wondered where all the others were,

lined up somewhere

on their black and red squares,

many of them feeling uneasy

about the saltshaker

that was taking his place,

and all of them secretly longing

for the moment

when the white horse

would reappear out of nowhere

and advance toward the board

with his distinctive motion,

stepping forward, then sideways

before advancing again –

the same move I was making him do

over and over in the sunny field of my palm.

Billy Collins, Nine Horses; New York: Random House, 2002, pp.19-20

When I leave a particular job or community, I want to leave behind people who are more than capable of carrying on without me. I want them to be glad for my time there but not dependent on my presence or uneasy in my absence. I want to leave people stronger, not weaker. I want them to welcome the new person who takes my place, anticipating the new adventures she or he will bring. New possibilities will come with my departure (saltshakers bring new ideas and opportunities).

It’s a wonderful truth that doesn’t get enough attention: everyone is irreplaceable, but someone else can surely do the work.

What is true in work is also true in life. When I go, I want to leave behind a world stronger for my having visited, and more than capable of joyfully moving on without me.

Earth Prayers

Leave a reply

Each living thing gives its life to the beauty of all life,

and that gift is its prayer. Douglas Wood

It’s almost Earth Day, and there are many reasons to send up a prayer – environmental pain from war, industry, greed, and ignorance is cutting into the life force of our lovely little blue planet. Here’s hoping the words I say are backed up by my actions and my choices…

Creator of earth, sea, and sky, kindle the fire of your Spirit within us that we may be bold to heal and defend the earth, and pour your blessing upon all who work for the good of the planet.

God, Giver of life, Hear our prayer.

[Quoted: Douglas Wood, Grandad’s Prayers of the Earth; Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 1999]

Take My Word For It

I use them for online orders, plane tickets, work expenses, and for a couple of recurring monthly bills: credit cards. Visa, MasterCard, Discover – all of them have high interest rates if you don’t pay off the balances at the end of each month, even higher for people with low credit scores or no credit history. American Express has a yearly fee for the privilege of not leaving home without it. To get one, you sign a piece of paper (virtual or physical) that says you are responsible for whatever debts you incur. Some say it’s modern day usury.

Then there are mortgages, car loans and leases, and student loans. A deposit and a signature, and you get keys or an education (and a monthly payment for ten to thirty years, give or take.). You sign several pieces of paper that say you will act in good faith to repay the debt.

When you think about it, it’s an act of trust for the lender, that the money given will be returned; it’s an act of faith for the borrower, that there will be work that allows the repayment of such debts. These are promises, written in ink or with a virtual pen. And there are consequences if those promises are broken, sometimes severe ones.

In the last few decades, predatory lending practices have ruined the family finances of those who didn’t read the fine print or didn’t understand it. I wonder if this would be changed if both borrower and lender saw these transactions as promises, and did their best to insure that the promises made weren’t just words on paper but the beginnings of mutually beneficial relationships…

Pots and Pans

2 Replies

Lord of all pots and pans and things, make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates! Brother Lawrence

Last night’s chicken and roasted vegetables dirtied two sharp knives, a cutting board, two bowls, two plates, ten pieces of silverware, a spatula and a roasting pan. Yesterday’s breakfast produced two coffee cups, a French press, a pour-over, two bowls, two plates, and a handful of silverware; lunch brought a sauce pan, two water glasses, and three bowls. Our daily bread brings with it our daily dirty dish duty.

This work has to be done, and this work will never be done. I can see it as pointless – rolling a boulder up a hill with Sisyphus only to see it roll back down – or I can see it as a built in opportunity to give thanks for the lives of all the people who grow the food I put on the table, the bounty of the land that offers it, and the blessing of the people who gather with me to eat it.

And I can be grateful to my husband, Dave, who does the dishes as often as I do…

Ready for the next meal…

This is one in an ongoing series. For more information, click the Three P’s above.

Holy, Holy, and Holy

2 Replies

We bless you, O God, most high and Lord of mercy. You are always doing great and inscrutable things with us, glorious and wonderful, and without number. You grant us sleep for rest from our infirmities, and repose from the burdens of our much toiling flesh. We thank you, for you have not destroyed us with our sins, but have continued to love us; and though we were sunk in despair, you have raised us up to glorify your power. Therefore, we implore you incomparable goodness. Enlighten the eyes of our understanding and raise up our minds from the heavy sleep of indolence. Open our mouth and fill it with your praise, that we may be able without distraction to sing and confess that you are God, glorified in all and by all, the eternal Father, with your only begotten Son, and your all holy, good, and life giving Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen. Prayer of Saint Basil

The words change, but the general gist doesn’t: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Mother, Son, and Life-giving Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Triune. Trinity. God as community and communion, always one and always internally relational among three Persons. Who God is can’t be reduced to an abstract concept or a list of attributes: God is fluid, dancing rather than cast in stone or gold. Anyone who claims to understand the nature of God fully, even after encountering God on a Damascus road or in a dream, is practicing a particular kind of religious self-deception. God cannot be reduced to any one person’s understanding – or any one faith tradition’s creed.

My best attempt to catch a glimpse of the Mystery is an analogy. Having two sons has shaped the person I have grown into. I’m not defined by my role as mother, but I have been changed by it in ways I cannot articulate. They are both separate individuals, unique and not defined by their being sons. But there is delight in our connection, and life is richer for it.

If that is true of me, it’s true of so many others. If it’s true of so many of us, how much truer it must be of God.

Perhaps I’m better off to open myself up to the mystery rather than try to explain it…

In All and By All

Leave a reply

Open our mouth and fill it with your praise, that we may be able without distraction to sing and confess that you are God, glorified in all and by all, the eternal Father…Prayer of St. Basil

[For full prayer, click St. Basil’s Prayer: Lent 2024 above.]

How different a world this would be if we could honestly sing and confess that God is; if God were truly glorified in all and by all, would we ever raise a hand against another – much less an army?

And yet. Isn’t the presence of God in every life form, in every breath that gives life and movement? Does the sad truth that I cannot see it and celebrate it with any constancy change the sanctity of all that is, or the holiness of the creator of all things?

Distracted

2 Replies

Open our mouth and fill it with your praise, that we may be able without distraction to sing and confess that you are God.. St. Basil’s Prayer

I’ve never been one for keeping a frantic life pace or a packed calendar. I value the spaces in between work hours, life work, social events and community engagements. I don’t want to live a life of repeatedly catching up and inevitably crashing in an exhausted heap. I don’t want my epitaph to be she checked off all the items on her to-do list.

Unclaimed and unstructured space is necessary to restore body, mind, spirit, and heart; it widens my perspective, helping me see myself and my neighbors. It clears away the distractions of my activities and commitments, and opens the door to the place I meet God.

I don’t want to miss out on the singing and confessing because I’m too distracted by worldly cares and commitments. I don’t want to live that life.

Does anyone?