Novena, Day 5

 I think that starting my morning, before I even get out of bed, with the statement, "I greet this day with Christ in my heart," is helping to keep me honest. I cannot make that quiet declaration and then begin to complain and worry. I have to move into another direction: the one that clears the way with  fidelity and love. 

I greet this day with Christ in my heart. 

I respond to the actions of others with love. 

Adversity and discouragement will beat 

against my shield of love and become soft as rain. 

My shield of love sustains me when I am alone, 

Uplifts me in moments of despair

And calms me in times of confusion. 

I awaken to the new day with vitality

and joy of living. 

As my courage increases, my enthusiasm rises. 

My desire to greet the world overcomes every fear.  

I accept happiness from the sources made available to me. 

As I become stronger, I cast aside the shield

And walk unencumbered among the family of humanity, 

giving and receiving. 

The radiation of unconditional love awakens the joy 

of living in everyone I meet. 

I greet this day with Christ  in my heart.  

  

Rev. Carol Parrish-Harra

(in the first and last lines I have substituted the word Christ for love.)  

  

image: San Leandro, April 2016

Novena, Day 3

I find this novena quite beautiful.  Let us befriend not only those we meet, but also ourselves. Let us be kind with our suggestions. We are all learning and at times we all falter. May we all practice grace.  

I greet this day with Christ in my heart. 

I will love those I confuse as enemies 

and find ways to know them as friends. 

I encourage my friends as they become 

my brothers and sisters. 

I will find ways to applaud. 

I release harmful words and thoughts. 

When I am tempted to criticize, 

I will find compassion. 

When I am moved to praise, 

I will speak out clearly. 

I will join the birds, the wind ,and the sea 

as nature speaks praise for the Creator. 

I will become as music with the children of God. 

As I remember my resolve, I will uplift my life. 

I greet this day with Christ in my heart.   

  

Rev. Carol E. Parrish-Harra (Please note I substituted Christ for the word love in the first line.)   

 

image: artichoke, San Leandro, June 2021

Novena, Day 2

  I first shared Day 2 of the novenas on  June 8, 2005.  It was raining that day. Probably lightly  because rain in June  is rare in our Mediterranean like climate. I welcomed the rain then, and I would surely welcome it today. 

 This morning as I awakened, I did say, "I greet this day with love in my heart."  I then changed the word love to Christ. I then felt my love both expand and deepen. I felt compassion stir. Christ reminds me that this is not just my private journey. We go together. Yes, every one of us.  Feel free to make the prayer your own. 

I also thought of the creatures, trees, and plants that suffer in a drought.  I am saddened. Yet, this morning, the birds still sing.  

However you address the sacred, may you belong to a community that strengthens and deepens your capacity for compassion and love. May you know  your holiness, and the holiness that holds, and is the world. 

 

Day 2  

I greet this day with Christ in my heart. 

Henceforth, I look on all life with compassion. 

I realize the rebirth within myself. 

I love the sun, and it warms me. 

Yet, I love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. 

I love the darkness for it shows me the stars. 

I welcome happiness for it expands my heart; 

I endure sadness for it teaches me compassion. 

I experience the challenges of my life 

as they aid in my growth. 

I greet this day with Christ in my heart.    

 

Rev. Carol E. Parrish-Harra (edited)    

 

Novena, Day 1

I woke this morning with the conviction it was time to return to the novenas. Novenas are a 9 day cycle of prayers. These particular novenas were created by Rev. Carol E. Parrish-Harra.  I first shared them in 2005. If you are so inclined, please pray with me. 

  

At night, I am reading once more the book, Friends on the Path, Living Spiritual Communities, by Thich Nhat Hanh, compiled by Jack Lawlor. Over the years, Thich Nhat Hanh's writings have taught me much about community, and returning  to this book is wonderfully reassuring. He suggests "that the next Buddha may not take the form of an individual. In the twenty-first century, the Sangha [the meditating community] may be the body of the Buddha." This is what I have always believed about Christ. When we come together, living in Christ, we can find healing, and offer healing.  We are here to learn to live together in love.  

Thank you for praying with me all these years, helping me to love. 

Day 1

  

I greet this day with love in my heart. 

This is the great secret to happiness. 

This unseen power of love can open the hearts 

of humanity and bless all of life. 

I will make love my most effective tool, 

Bringing the energy of life to myself and others. 

Love will melt the blocks within and around me. 

Opening me to the joy of life. 

I liken love to the rays of the sun which can 

soften the cold of the harshest day. 

I greet this day with love in my heart.   

 

Rev. Carol E. Parrish-Harris, 

The Book of Rituals 

  

image: San Leandro, June 2021      

 

 

Lake View

During my meditation this morning, the house was quiet. The Monday garbage collection had not yet begun. The dog napped. The candles burned in  their usual silent flames.  I wish I could report that my mind was still. Alas, no. Yet, it was a surprise when the chime sounded.  Learning to meditate regularly, like most undertakings, requires patience and perseverance.  I remember a dream I had years ago of a still pool of water, not very big, with a beautiful light shining upon it. It is an image that brings me peace. 

   

I love this poem and I love that it showed up this morning.  

 

All Down the Lake 

It wasn’t so much that the dinner conversation

had bored me as that I was simply tired
of words, particularly my own. So afterwards
I slipped away and followed the path down
to the boathouse, where I sat in a lawn chair.
The lake was perfectly still, the inky hills
on the far shore mirrored between two skies
of deepening blue and streaked with clouds
tinged with the last pink. At first I didn’t notice
the strange sounds, then didn’t recognize them
as human: the faint, distorted, jumbled voices
of dinner conversations all down the lake’s
mile length, sliding across the glossy surface
only to rebound off the shore and swirl together
in a confusion of murmurous babble.
Now and then a weird inflection or wild laugh
broke free from the hubbub and twisted up
like a bottle rocket left over from the Fourth.
It was a relief and, really, a pleasure
not to make out the words, or even the coherent
intonations of sense-making and just focus
on the hallucinatory, far-off din. Then slowly,
as the dinner parties one-by-one dispersed,
the voices dropped away until only
a few remained—less alien-sounding now—
then none, the lake itself a mind
that had finally quieted its chatter
just as the first stars glimmered into being
and a bullfrog started calling, deep and steady.

~ Jeffrey Harrison 

First Sip  

image: Redwood City, 2015.  I don't remember taking this photograph, but I was happy to come across it this morning.  It may not be a photograph of a lake, but it does speak of expansiveness.   

 

Patience

 Learning to live with and in empty spaces is a gift that we all can open.  In Ephesians 4:30 we hear Paul encouraging us to not grieve the Holy Spirit. There is at least one translation that reads, "Do not vex the Holy Spirit."  Either way, worth paying attention to. 

   

Grace fills empty spaces,
but it can only enter where 
there is a void to receive it,
and it is grace itself that makes this void.

The imagination is continually at work
filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

~ Simone Weil   

First Sip 

    

  

image: Oakland, June 2021

Right Sizing

 The most important teaching that I am taking away from this time of  pandemic is the belief that Christ resides in each and every person I meet. Those of a different faith tradition will call this sacred meeting by another name, and I celebrate that. There are, of course, many who simply cannot believe such a notion. However, that most certainly does not mean that my awareness should be diminished.  Quite the contrary. 

Meditation and prayer help us to sweep out our sacred temples. "Meditation is about the radical Christian conversion, a change from being people of theory, taster of ideas, to people of experience, prophets of certainty.  This no doubt sounds rather arrogant. But in the course of that process, which does not happen overnight and yet we can begin whenever we wish, all arrogance is burned away and we are compelled to become extraordinarily humble."*

I have also learned that I have grown too accustomed to thinking in terms of a "mustard seed" size of faith.  On Thursday, Rabbi Yael Levy shared with her class what she calls, "Verses for Protection and Rescue".  She readily admits her translations do include some creativity, and I deeply appreciate her work. She also encourages us to go and ahead and struggle with the more difficult Psalms, while taking  what is meaningful for us at any given time, even if it is only a short verse. The Psalm that I am carrying with me this week is Psalm 61:4 which Rabbi Yael translates as: "You are my refuge, a tower of strength." I am  grateful for this reminder that God can never be diminished, no matter how small the faith. Therefore, my  faith can remain steady and even increase. This is true regardless of whom and what I must face, as long as I remember to make room for Divine Presence and Source.  We are all  capable of living into sizeable, yes, even towering love and courage. 

 

    

*The Selfless Self, Father Laurence Freeman, OSB, page 55-56

photograph: Passion fruit flower, San Leandro, June 2021. I have never seen an all white blossom before. I did not have time to investigate further, as there was a man armed with a leaf blower coming our way. He was stirring up an amazing amount of dust. He seemed determined to keep going, so I felt Jack and I needed to move along.      

Discoveries

 Today on my walk, I came across a small booklet entitled, "Juan Romero, Original Serigraphs and Lithographs in Limited Editions".  The back of the booklet reads, "Perspective Etablissement, Kirchstrasse 1, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein".  I was not familiar with this artist, but the six serigraphs depicted are full of color,  movement, and wondrous creatures.  I am attaching a copy of "Inhabited Tree (1980)" to give you a taste. 

In exchange for this treasure found in one of our Little Free Libraries, I was thinking of replacing it with a book of poetry given to me years ago. Most of the poems in this volume have never really intrigued me.  However, as I peruse it this morning, I am wondering if some of the verses could be used in collages. That would probably mean cutting up the book, something I have never been able to bring myself to do.  As I ponder my next move in this relationship,  I leave you with the poem, "Eternal Father, We Were Locked up in You"  by Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), translated by Willis Barnstone.  I think the three powers she refers to are love, intellect, and will, but I also think that may be  a profound oversimplification, if not completely wrong.  Regardless, I love the last two lines of this poem. 

     

Eternal Father, we were locked up in you, 

in the garden under your ribs. 

You drew us out of your holy mind 

like a flower petaled with our soul's three powers, 

and you planted the whole  plant 

in each power 

so the plant might bear fruit in your garden, 

might go to you with the fruit 

you generated in her. 

And you would come back to the soul

to fill her with bliss and holiness. 

There the soul makes her home 

like the fish in the sea 

and the sea in the fish.