Tag: honesty

Holy Wednesday

“At times we will be asked to let go of things that we have always wanted to keep for ourselves, or things that we would never have thought that we would to have to let go of, such as the loss of a loved one or the betrayal of a dear friend. A tree never hesitates to shake off her leaves during fall, and so we must take another lesson given to us by the nature: let go when it is time. Although such losses can be difficult and painful, rise above this suffering. Focus within your mind, the image of the Lotus prospering above mud. We are the lotus; rise above.”

Quote: Forrest Curran, Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

John 13:21-32 –  the betrayal of Judas

Lent 2 – Definition

 

“If I were really asked to define myself, I wouldn’t start with race; I wouldn’t start with blackness; I wouldn’t start with gender; I wouldn’t start with feminism. I would start with stripping down to what fundamentally informs my life, which is that I’m a seeker on the path. I think of feminism, and I think of anti-racist struggles as part of it. But where I stand spiritually is, steadfastly, on a path about love.”

Quote: Bell Hooks
Image: source unknown (Pinterest)

Once the door is opened

 

Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clear air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain
who helped to make it.

 

Doors — They begin an adventure. They end a long day.

Doors — They stand open to call us toward a time of growth. They slowly close to create a space for quiet when it’s time to gather and reflect.

Today, I sit at a door. Today, I welcome a new year… My 65th. It is a day to pause. I never imagined what it would be like to reach this birthday. As a person with a disability, it is a challenge to plan for the future because so many things can come up along the way. Yet, here I am at 65 – healthy, able to pursue my interests, and still full of curiosity.

There have been adventures leading to this birthday and there will be adventures following this birthday. I greet each like a new door, calling me to trust as I move over its threshold.

I celebrate this day with gratitude and look ahead with anticipation.

From Mameen in David Whyte: Essentials
Many Rivers Press © David Whyte

A beginning and an end…

an entry from a friend- I share in honor of David’s vision and Buechner’s life… (Live and Learn- David Kanigan)

 

5:10 a.m. No. I didn’t sleep in. And No, I didn’t take magnesium before bed. Or drink a cup of Tonic Water. Or eat a banana. Or take melatonin. Why? Who the Hll knows? Maybe it gives me something to btch about.

I walk.

It has been 837 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. That’s 2 years, 3 months, 15 days, like in a row.

There’s a thin sheen of cloud cover over the moon. Even God found at Ōita couldn’t get a clear shot at this. Elsewhere overhead, the cloud cover is heavy and near complete. It’s dark.

It feels like a “down” day. Too much cloud. Too many people. Too much high tide.  Sigh. 837 days, and you’re going to have an off day. The odds are such.

I approach the location in the photograph up top.  A scene that I, and you, have seen many times.

I can make out the fisherman’s silhouette, but nothing else.  Something pulls me to lift the camera up and look through the viewfinder…WTH is that? I stare through the viewfinder, a Kaleidoscope.

I take the camera away and look out again. It’s dark. I see nothing of what I see in the viewfinder.  I lift the camera, and do over. God, no. It can’t be my eyes deteriorating further.

I lift the camera again, and sure as sh*t, it’s there. God found at Ōita has returned. The pink hue watercolors are airbrushed on the water, the sky, the low hanging clouds and the horizon.

It’s dark, and yet it’s not.  What I see. What I want to see. What I can see. What I don’t see. What I feel.

This string of babble pulls me back to my early morning papers.

Frederick Buechner died this week.  David Brooks, in his must-read essay titled “The Man Who Found His Inner Depths” described Buechner’s faith as “personal, unpretentious and accessible. ‘Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward.’ It is sensing a presence, not buying an argument.”

I look over the Cove, it’s lighter out now, twilight is lifting. Now that I see, I believe.

But damn it if I’m not sensing Something out there.

Something ethereal, Lori’s magic word def. adj. //əˈTHirēəl/ extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.

No, this brick-head isn’t buying ‘jack’ yet, but he’s out Shopping, and Something is there.

He can feel it. 

DK Photo @ 5:30 a.m. August 20, 2022. 8-° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.

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