Psalm 23 on a Saturday Afternoon

I periodically read Psalm 23 when among the frail. It is a beautiful psalm of life, and I encourage the residents to read and pray this psalm as often as they pray the Lord's prayer. Sometimes, residents will recite at least some of the psalm from memory as I read. I love those moments. 

This weekend I visited a rehab hospital. There, the residents who gather with us are quite frail. As I read these words: " He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul,"  I noticed that both activity assistants had fallen asleep. While they may have  simply been bored, I sensed a need to rest, and I was grateful they were able to do so in our presence.  

As I continued, Eve came into the room. I had to pause a moment and wave as tears came to my eyes. I was so grateful to see this tiny woman  alive and walking on her own with the assistance of  her walker. I had not seen her since before the pandemic. She waved back and smiled. As she settled in and I handed her a song sheet, the words continued, "for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me." I suddenly had a new appreciation of a walker as sacred. 

 I quietly celebrated the table of people in front of me,  and I knew the goodness and mercy of which the psalmist sang. Then David arrived in his wheelchair. I had not seen him since before the pandemic either. We, too, waved to one another and I knew I was in the house of the Lord. And David, as he always did, finished the psalm with an amen.  At the end of the service, Eve took her song sheet and held it to her heart. She indicated she wanted to keep it. 

When the words come alive and you want to make them your own, that is worship. To be there with those who had been gathered was an anointing and yes, my cup overflows.

Walkers, wheel chairs, weariness, and illness all belong in the house of the Lord. Jesus continues to teach me this, and I am grateful. 

As David would no doubt say, 

Amen.    

   

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
 for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff—
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
 in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.   

  

Psalm 23, NRSV      

   

image: San Leandro, sometime in 2020 

Yet Again

 I woke up yesterday morning thinking of this poem by Rumi and decided to share it with those I meditate with. So much of life consists of starting over, trying yet again one more thousandth time.  Let us remember that we travel with one another. We have a place in this great caravan.  As we journey, let us remember to pause and rest in God's love.

Ours Is Not A Caravan of Despair

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.

— Rumi    

  

photograph: San Leandro, November 2021. These leaves  look like they are floating, but they are being held by some netting placed at the foot of the tree. There is a lesson there for us all. We, too, are held. 

Learning the Art

 I have been thinking of this poem since I received it a couple of days ago. I do not quite understand the last line, but regardless, there is some good advice here. Learning to accept loss is important and helps keep bitterness at bay as we learn the art of compassion. Growing  accustomed to not having everything at our beck and call is a spiritual practice that helps us understand that often what seems to be a disaster is actually just a setback. Be gentle with that word disaster, and invite God into the empty places. If we can do that, we will find more than what we think we are looking for.   

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

"One Art" by  Elizabeth Bishop  

   

photograph: San Leandro, October 2021. Our neighborhood persimmon trees are not as heavy laden as I have seen in the past. I think it has just been too dry. Something I must learn to hold lightly. 

Experiencing Place

"Faith is the highway of the spirit. Every act of faith we make is an uncovering of the labyrinth of spirit. Belief, sundered from faith, leads to a maze of mirrors, a series of infinite regressions, the egotistical maze. Mazes lead to dead-ends and the more we get lost the more we panic. Labyrinths only ask us to follow faithfully their strange but ultimately symmetrical loops and bends in order to lead us home to the centre."  

   

Laurence Freeman, OSB, First Sight, The Experience of Faith, Continuum 2011, p. 14     

   

To cling to those ideas that we tenaciously call beliefs, leads to separation. Separation is indeed a dead-end. One thing about dead-ends though, is that we can usually turn around and go back out. Faith allows us to maneuver, sometimes with some dexterity, our way to love. In yesterday's group meditation, we discussed the November 3 entry in  John Main's book, Silence and Stillness in Every Season: "What we think of as our 'centre' is too often an illusion of the self-reflecting ego, somewhere we like to take up our stand and observe God at work in us. But this can never be the way.  The challenges that face us point to the mystery of union we are summoned to enter. But we find our way into this mystery of union with others and with God only when we reach in ourselves that place where Jesus experiences His oneness with the Father. That place where he prayed, 'I in them and Thou in me, that they may become perfectly one.'"*  

  

In other words, center (or centre) is not some private dwelling place, but rather a place of union with all.  For there Christ (or whatever sacred entity you worship) is. We are not called to ourselves but to the universal self.  We are that related. 

    

* I think Father Main threw in that word perfectly.  The translations I have seen of John 17:21 read, "That they may all be one." Even the King James version reads, "That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." However, so far, I have not seen Laurence Freeman or John Main cite what translations they are referencing when quoting scripture.   

       

photograph: San Leandro (just a block from our house), November, 2021 

Mantras

 I have finished, for the second time, Laurence Freeman's book, Jesus, the Teacher Within. I highly recommend it, whether you are a meditator or not.  It is a beautiful, thoughtful  and inspiring book. 

I will say that my Lenten decision this year to practice meditation in the Christian tradition is beginning to bring some subtle gifts to my life.  I worry  less and impatience is slowly loosening its grip. I am trusting my path a little more because I sense Jesus' presence there.  I am grateful and humbled. 

I  want to share what Laurence Freeman included in his book about mantras. I find having a mantra a helpful navigation tool, and I think this must  be generally true regardless of what meditation tradition is practiced, or if one does not practice at all. We all have those moments in our lives that threaten to upend us. Slowly repeating a mantra can help bring us back to our center, back to the Christ within us. There, we can find compassion and love that is almost always needed, either for ourselves or for others.  Here, Lawrence Freeman is quoting John Main's book, Word into Silence:   

 

"We usually begin by saying the mantra, that it seems as though we are speaking it with our mind silently, somewhere in our head. But as we make progress the mantra becomes more familiar, less of a stranger, less of an intruder in our consciousness. We find that less effort is required to persevere in saying it throughout the time of our meditation. Then it seems we are not so much speaking it in our minds as sounding it in our heart, and this is the stage that we describe as the mantra becoming rooted in our hearts..."* 

I think it is important for us to remember we all have mantras running through our heads that often we are not even aware of. These are the habitual thoughts that propel us into our lives. Many of these soundings are not positive nor helpful.  Too often, they lead to distraction and a sense of isolation, rather than illumination and a sense of union. 

If you would like to meditate with others on Zoom, but 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday does not work for you, drop me a note. Advent is on the horizon, and adding an evening session so we can come together to meditate in that beautiful season sounds wonderful to me. Meditating with others is an experience I cannot yet put into words. Perhaps it is simply that when we come together in silence, we can actually experience that yes, God is love, and we are knitted together in wonderful ways. I believe this is how we can bring peace to our world: one breath, one syllable at a time. 

 

And this I know in the secret silence of my heart

Where your awareness dwells 

And embroiders me into the fabric of the physical world 

Out of the slender thread only your eyes can see 

Recorded by your hand into the book of the world

All the days of recordable life 

Even before I live them   

 

from Psalm 139, Opening to You, 

Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms, 

Norman Fischer      

  

photograph: Oakland, October 2021   

 

*Jesus the Teacher Within, Laurence Freeman, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, page 222