Listen to the long stillness:
New life is stirring
New dreams are on the wing
New hopes are being readied:
Humankind is fashioning a new heart
Humankind is forging a new mind
God is at work.
This is the season of Promise.
-Howard Thurman
A week from Wednesday the Lenten journey begins. On Ash Wednesday we always hear the words of the prophet Joel:
“Return to me with your whole heart.”
Lent is an invitation toward whole-heartedness. The heart is an ancient metaphor for the seat of our whole being – to be whole-hearted means to bring our entire selves before God, our intellect, our emotional life, our dreams and intuitions, our deepest longings. Many of us feel divided, in internal conflict between what we most desire and how we live our lives. The ancient monks described the “cave of the heart” as that inner place where we encounter God and wrestle with our inner voices. Instead of resisting these voices, and dividing ourselves, the desert mothers and fathers invite us to be fully present to them, to create a welcoming space within. All of our “negative” feelings have something to teach us about ourselves and even about God when we stop running and create room in the cave of our hearts to tend to what is really happening in us. We become aware of our interior dynamics and slowly becoming attuned to the promptings of our inner wisdom and respond to life through this lens, discovering God in each moment both within and without.
Lent is a time when we consider the commitments we want to make to cultivate our whole-heartedness and the things we want to let go of to make more room for presence to God. The desert journey is one where our comforts are stripped away so we can see more clearly.
What are the things which numb your heart from really feeling life?
How do we make space in the midst of busy lives to experience this whole-heartedness?
I invite you into a very simple Heart-Centered Practice which only takes about five minutes and can be done almost anywhere, but can completely shift your grounding and awareness so you respond to the world from a more heart-centered place:
Begin by becoming aware of your body. Notice how your body is feeling, simply being present to sensations you are experiencing, welcoming in both the body’s delight and discomfort.
Connect to your breath, deepening it gently. As you inhale, imagine God breathing life into you. As you exhale, allow yourself to experience a moment of release and surrender into this time and place, becoming fully present. Take a couple cycles of breath to simply notice this life-sustaining rhythm which continues moment by moment even when you are unaware of it.
In your imagination, gently allow your breath to carry your awareness from your head (which is your thinking, analyzing, judging center) down to your heart center (where you experience life from a place of greater integration, feeling, and intuition). Consider placing your hand on your heart to experience a physical connection with your heart center and draw your awareness to this place.
Breathe into your heart center and begin to notice what you are feeling right now in this moment without judging or trying to change it. Take a few moments to simply be present to whatever it is you are feeling and making some room within yourself to experience this without pushing it away.
Call to mind the spark of God which the ancient monks and mystics tell us dwells in your heart. Bring the compassion of God to however you are feeling right now, not trying to change anything, but just gently holding yourself in this space.
As you experience yourself filling with compassion for your own experience, imagine breathing that compassion out into the world and connecting to other hearts – both human and animal – beating across the world in a rhythm of love.
Gently allow your breath to bring your awareness back to the room and take a moment to name what you noticed in this experience.
This practice is especially powerful when we find ourselves feeling tenderhearted, anxious, sad, or any emotion which feels uncomfortable or confusing. The idea is not to resolve the emotion or figure it out, but to simply allow it to have a moment of space within us. Try pausing once or twice a day for this practice in the next few days and see if you discover anything.
What other ways are you preparing for Lent?
Feel free to list some of your favorite resources in the comments below.
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If you’d like to have some support in your Lenten journey toward whole-heartedness I invite you to register for my Lenten E-Course on the Benedictine Spiritual Practices of lectio divina, centering prayer, and praying the Hours. Included are two books, six weekly lessons, three guided meditations, and daily emails to support and encourage you in listening more closely to your heart and God’s whispers there. The books are mailed out by Priority Mail, but to make sure you receive them in time, I recommend registering by this Wednesday.
The Spring Session of Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist filled up a couple of weeks ago and now Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Contemplative Practice is also FULL for the Spring Session dates.
Summer dates are still available- both classes are offered July 19-August 29, 2010 and are currently a little over half-filled so register soon for summertime reflection. Click “Teaching” for links, more details, and registration.
I will be posting Fall Dates in April and both classes will be offered again in case the Summer Session dates don’t work well for you. Subscribe to the Abbey Email Newsletter to be notified when new dates and classes are posted.
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The season of Lent begins on February 17th (in just a week and a half!) so if you have been contemplating the Lenten E-Course on Benedictine Spiritual Practices (lectio divina, centering prayer, praying the Hours) I am offering I encourage you to sign up very soonso your books can arrive on time (they are shipped Priority Mail.)
Make a commitment this Lent to spiritual deepening and immersion in contemplative practices for a transformative journey.
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Come back to the Abbey Blog on Monday for more reflections on contemplative practice and creative expression.
May your weekend be filled with the blessings and delight and rest, may your spirit be renewed.
Last week I offered 50% of the profits from registrations for my Lenten E-Course on Benedictine Spiritual Practices between January 25-31 to be donated to Haiti relief efforts. I am so delighted to report that we raised $500! I will be making a donation of half that amount each to Partners in Health and to Mercy Corps. Many thanks for your support of the Abbey.
I’d also like to offer a limited number of partial scholarships for the Lenten E-Course to those who work in ministry in the margins and want to participate but can’t afford the full fee. Supporting self-care for those who extend that care to others is a passion of mine. Send me an email at Christine@AbbeyoftheArts.com and tell me a bit about yourself.
Monastic practice offers me the gift of paying attention to the seasons of the day and the year. February 1st is a potent time. On the Celtic wheel of the year it is Imbolc (meaning “stirring in the belly”) which is one of the cross-quarter days falling between the Solstice and the Equinox. Imbolc marks the first day of spring, the time when the very beginning of earth’s stirrings and awakenings from winter can be seen. In Christian tradition it is the Feast of St. Brigid (an Irish Saint who is associated with fire) and on February 2nd is Candlemas which is the day traditionally when priests would bless the beeswax candles for the year ahead. In secular society February 2nd is Groundhog Day when the groundhog emerges from his burrow to see if there will be six more weeks of winter. On Saturday it was the Jewish feast of Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees which marks the time when the sap begins to rise and winter’s waning. Earth and fire are the sacred elements of this threshold time when many cultures and traditions honor the first stirrings of the earth’s belly.
Yesterday I led a group of women in retreat. We tended to the stirrings in our own bellies and listened to the world around us for whispers of how creation invites us into blossoming. As we began, I invited them to put their hands on their bellies – that tender and vulnerable place – and sit for a few moments in stillness listening.
You might pause right now and try this:
Connect to your body, hand on your belly, breathe deeply, and pay attention to what you notice stirring in you.
What feelings, images, memories are moving in you?
After savoring these, listen for the invitation you are sensing.
How does what you are experiencing speak to what wants to sprout forth from the fertile soil of your soul in the months ahead?
Take these invitations for a walk with you and see how the world around you helps to ripen your sense of what is stirring.
How does creation call forth what is just beginning to burgeon within you?
The photos below were taken in Ireland last autumn at the site of St. Bridgid’s holy well, a place of pilgrimage and reflection. The ribbons on the trees are prayers left by pilgrims seeking solace and inspiration. It is incredibly moving to witness this gathering of prayers, this sacred site holding people’s deepest desires. The green ribbon is the one I left for Bridget, carrying my own longings into winter’s incubation. The next couple of days I will listen to how this prayer uttered in my heart several months ago is now being transformed in the earth of my being into an offering for the world.
If you were to tie a ribbon on Bridgid’s tree today, what would your prayer be?
The flock thickens
over the roiling, salt brightness. Listen,
maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world
in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,
but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,
is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,
but of pure submission. Tell me, what else
could beauty be for? And now the tide
is at its very crown,
the white birds sprinkle down,
gathering up the loose silver, rising
as if weightless. It isn’t instruction, or a parable.
-excerpted from Mary Oliver’s poem “Terns”
It has been a week full of tenderness for me. My sorrow and doubt are subdued by listening to the world around me, as Mary Oliver describes so beautifully. Creation tells me a story – this is what beauty is for - it whispers, to soothe your wearied spirit, to enliven you, to invite you into dancing once again, to imagine gathering with a whole flock of kindred spirits who journey alongside you in grief and delight, who don’t ask you to be anywhere other than where your pulsing heart carries you right now.
Sabbath begins for me this evening, a time when I can surrender into the restoration this time offers, a time to simply be and delight in my flock.
Shabbat Shalom to all of the kindred souls who gather here virtually to find refreshment. May the spirit of restoration knit itself deep into your bones until you find yourself dancing again. May your wings carry you to the place where your heart sings.
May the peace of Sabbath be yours and flow out into the world like the power of a hundred beating wings.
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I took these photos last October while on pilgrimage in Ireland.
I wrote this poem in my journal on Sunday and discovered this morning that a former student died suddenly yesterday. I offer this here in honor of Rob and for all those who are grieving for a multitude of losses:
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*** Let it Be Winter Still
Let it be winter a while longer,
Let darkness be my closest companion
cradling me in her inky velvet shawl.
Let the owl cry softly from his place
among the long aching branches,
under the bone-white face of the moon.
Let my heart break for the dead in Haiti,
buried under collapsed stone and wood
and the seeping river of death flowing underground.
Let me shed tears for widows and widowers
in Iraq and Afghanistan,
who must walk through each long day without the
warm calloused hand of their one true love.
Let me weep for the man dying less than a mile away,
alone as he reaches for that bright doorway.
Let me feel the gnawing sorrow of the woman
pressing her hungry children close against her body.
Let the winter stay a while longer.
Let her invitation to grief
carry me across the haunting threshold
to the places of my own great losses,
until I know this black frozen landscape as my own,
until the mournful songs of my ancestors vibrate in my blood,
wounded in wars, the grand kind, or the smaller battles of daily life.
Let the winter linger until I see each naked tree
as a talisman of my sorrow
and I long to be stripped down to my own essence,
reaching my arms up in supplication under a wide twilight sky.
Let it be winter until the moment the Hour of Spring
breaks through in laboring, gasping, heaving pains.
Until tiny miracles burst forth in an array of buds and blossoms
each one carrying a name: Love. Kindness. Compassion. Hope.
Each name earned only from the long barren journey of heartbreak.
It takes clear space, contemplative time, and good conversation to engage complex problems. Busyness, consumerism, and their accompanying anxiety can easily become substitutes for meaning and clarity of purpose, numbing our capacity to act responsively. Allowing us to be selectively attentive and to filter out complexity and ambiguity, they foster superficial thinking, short-term perspectives, and inappropriate humility. As long as we’re busy, we can feel both overwhelmed and “involved.” Swamped by the demands of securing a life for ourselves, we can more easily justify begging off for responsibility to the commons.
I am really aware this past week of how we live in a time when it is so easy to get overwhelmed by the problems of the world – I can feel paralyzed sometimes by global warming, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course the recent tragedy in Haiti. Then my own stuff feels so small and insignificant and I feel paralyzed because these other issues are so very big and apart from donating money (at least with regard to Haiti) there isn’t much more I can actually do. And my life is very full already, so it can be overwhelming to even consider what needs to be done and the news doesn’t help us break down complex problems into actions we can take.
This overwhelmed and irrelevant feeling is a dangerous place to rest for too long. I may start to believe I am powerless. I may start to discount that doing the hard work of living with integrity and presence is not really that important. I might be tempted to just numb myself with any of a whole host of distractions until suddenly I am walking through my life disengaged, disconnected, settling for something without much passion, or frantically running from one meeting to the next, never really savoring any of it, never experiencing either the depth of my grief or the height of my joy.
Last week I asked if you would be willing to simply be present to the pain with me, to not run away from it, but to allow it to have room in you. Because the work I do in the world is largely of the inner kind I can sometimes start to question its value in a world where suffering is of such magnitude. Then I remember the words above (from one of my favorite books about practices to help sustain committed social action in the world). I remember that one of the definitions of contemplation is “a long loving look at the real.” And I remember that the real is sometimes painful as often as it might be joyful. Staying present really does make a difference. Making room within ourselves to stand in solidarity with the suffering of others increases our compassion, and in the process we may be a little kinder in our daily action to others and to ourselves. A world of increasing compassion and kindness sounds pretty significant to me. It’s not just about Haiti, it is about how we live in a world without allowing ourselves to always be overwhelmed and give up our power to contribute in meaningful ways.
And I know that one thing I can do in this moment – in addition to feeling the pain - is to donate money, which I have already done. But I also want to do something that both increases my financial contribution and encourages others to commit to self-care and deepening contemplative practice, especially if you have needed an extra nudge.
I am making a commitment to the following :
Register this week (until the end of the day Sunday, January 31st) for my Lenten E-Course on Benedictine Spiritual Practices and I will donate 50% of the profits to relief efforts in Haiti. 50 people have already signed up and I am so delighted to share this journey with you. If you have been hesitating, now is a great time to make a commitment to cultivating contemplative practice, to slowing down and creating more internal spaciousness, and connecting with the sacred thread woven through every moment of our lives.
Register by January 31st for Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors (and Chaplains, Counselors, and others in Soul Care Ministries) and not only receive the $75 early registration discount, but I will also donate an additional $50 to Haiti relief for each new registration I receive this week for this program. Have you been contemplating joining Betsey Beckman and myself in the beautiful Northwest for an amazing journey of creative depth? Our co-authored book will be available in the next couple of weeks with loads of resources, but the in-person experience is powerful and you get to gather with other kindred souls seeking the transformative power of the arts in service of soulwork.
I have been feeling tired this week, unwell, my body feels tender and fatigued and so I am taking extra care of myself. My spirit is also feeling tender, in part because my body is vulnerable, but also because of the tragic events in Haiti, my mother-in-law’s gradual decline with dementia, and some much smaller personal struggles where I am being called to stand in my own strength in ways that are stretching me.
I find myself drawn back again and again to this statue I posted last week (the images below are close-ups). I am so moved by the angel and beast pondering together. One of the many amazing students in my Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist class reflected in our discussion forum this week on the root of the word “ponder” which comes from the Latin ‘pondus’ for weight. We had been talking about stones and she offered the image of pondering as holding a stone in your palm and feeling its weight. It reminded me of this excerpt of a favorite poem by my favorite poet:
Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
In the midst of the sadness of these days I am called to be present to the weight of my feelings and not pull back, not run and numb myself or avoid the images which break my heart. I am called to feel the grief, to embrace the sorrow. I walk in the mornings and allow each step to be a prayer, pressing myself into the earth and feel the comfort of gravity’s pull, knowing I will not be untethered even in my sadness. The sky has been clear and I can see the mountains and the sea beyond the beautiful city where I live, and I imagine the ocean as a great bowl of tears shed for all of those who have lost their lives. I see the mountains bearing witness to the heaviness our human journeys often bring.
Will you ponder alongside of me? Will you welcome in the terrible sorrow of loss and not run away?
I grew up in New York City where my father worked for the United Nations. He was half Latvian (father’s side) and half Austrian (mother’s side) and at age 12, during World War II, he had to flee Riga where he was raised to go to Vienna and live with his grandparents. For my entire time growing up he would identify as Austrian (never talking about his Latvian roots) and we traveled regularly to Vienna in the summers where until I was 8 we had an apartment. The last time I visited was when I was 19 until two summers ago when my husband and I returned together for the first time. My father is buried in Vienna along with his parents and in returning to this place he loved so much I rediscovered a place of the heart for me. It is a beautiful city where life feels unhurried. Where you can’t find coffee “to go” because coffee is meant to be sipped leisurely in a cafe with friends or while reflecting on life.
I was in Vienna again last October, nestled between my trip to Rome for the World Congress of Benedictine Oblates and to Ireland for a pilgrimage of Celtic spirituality. Benedictine and Celtic monastic traditions are deep roots which shape so much of my work and life. For the week between in Vienna, my husband came and met me romantically at the airport, our flights arrived within 15 minutes of each other and there he was waiting for me at the gate.
We spent the week with no agenda other than to visit the cemetery and wander the cobblestone streets of the city center and discover where our hearts would lead us. When I left for this journey I saw Vienna as more of a side trip from these two other monastic destinations of Rome and Ireland. What I discovered while there was that this city was an expression of how I am invited to live out my monastic practices in everyday life – being fully present to the gift of each moment, keeping the heart of a pilgrim ready for discovery, lingering and savoring a life well-lived. I consider myself an urban monk and Vienna makes a marvelous monastic city.
I have a deep longing to return to Vienna now for an extended period of time. I want to learn German again (I wrote a post for Blisschick on “Unexpected Bliss” back in October about the importance of immersing myself in the language of my ancestors). Here is an excerpt from my conclusion:
Speaking German again over our month of travel, even with all of my stumbling, touched something in me I still can’t quite fully express. It opened up a longing in me, a riverbed of memories shaped by the words of another language. I suddenly could feel myself connected to generations of ancestors for whom German expressed the ‘curves of their deepest longings.’ I began to discover that the shape and trajectory of those longings threading through the cosmos dwelled inside of me and called me forward. That moment in the train I was overcome by joy in discovering that my ability exceeded my self-perceived limits. I was also moved by grief over the nearing end of our trip and my years of neglecting this language which beats in my blood.
My father used to repeat a Czech proverb: You live a new life for every new language you speak.
I am rediscovering within myself whole worlds I had forgotten were there. I feel as though I have re-opened a locked room, one filled with dust but also radiant with sunlight illuminating old, forgotten photos and letters. As my mouth forms these words, I become aware that these were the very sounds which emerged from the mouths of my ancestors to gently comfort one another, to whisper secrets, to cry out at night after a great heart-rending loss, to utter their most essential truths. The nuances of language express the soul of a people.
My unexpected bliss has emerged from the call to begin once more to inhabit this other life. I step through the door again.
The last time I went to see my spiritual director, he asked me where my daydreams have been taking me lately. Vienna I replied without hesitation. I know there is something there for me that I won’t understand unless I commit to spending time there, stretching myself out across its contours, welcoming its words into my soul, dwelling with its invitations. My husband and I are contemplating how one day we might take a sabbatical for several months in Austria and Ireland (the land of his ancestors) sometime in the future. It may be several years before we can manage this, although somehow I think it will happen sooner.
Where are your daydreams taking you lately? What are the landscapes that sing in your heart? Is there a place you long to return to, even if only for a visit in your imagination?
Photos from top to bottom: Lipizzaner stallion, path in the cemetery where my father is buried, crow flying over my father’s grave, vine climbing the side of a church, side detail from St. Stephen’s Cathedral, inside the globe museum (one of our amazing, serendipitous discoveries), and the pond in the city park where I loved to feed the ducks as a child (and discovered I still love to feed them as an adult), hooded crow.
