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Reflections

Category: Lent Easter

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Ancient Wisdom of the Heart – A Practice for Lent

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

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“A Call to Our Senses”

I plan to explore this idea of Practicing Resurrection more in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, I was delighted to listen to the latest edition of one of my favorite radio programs — Speaking of Faith — on Restoring the Senses.  Vigen Guroian speaks from Eastern Orthodox tradition about Easter as “a call to our senses” and offers such lush imagery from his own spiritual practice of gardening.  Resurrected life is life fully embodied. Definitely worth a listen. There were excerpts read from two of his books: The Fragrance of Godand Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening which I then had

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The Rise & Fall of Everything

I awoke this morning and took Abbess Petunia for her walk.  The sky is grey and drizzly here in Seattle, just the kind of weather I love when I have a lot of writing to do.  Checking into my favorite blogs I found a couple of very thoughtful posts on Easter that wrestle with the challenging side of believing in the resurrection: Tess at Anchors and Masts and my favorite “malcontent” Rachelle at her BlogHer column. I also wrestle with the historical, literal reality of resurrection.  The Jesus of boundary-breakers is the one who speaks most profoundly to me rather than the

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Resurrection Poems

Happy Easter Dear Readers! Two poems for you to celebrate the resurrection of the world around us (both by poets who are new to me): The first is a Northwest poet, Emily Warn.  I heard her reading her poem “Hovering” from her book Shadow Architect on our local NPR station and fell in love with her use of language.  Her book is based on the mystical character of the Hebrew letters.  Go take a listen (click on one of the links below “Listen to KUOW Presents”).  The whole piece is just under five minutes, I enjoyed both hearing the poet

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Holy Silence

Be still. Listen to the stones of the wall. Be silent, they try to speak your name. Listen to the living walls. Who are you? Who are you? Whose silence are you? Who (be quiet) are you (as these stones are quiet). Do not think of what you are still less of what you may one day be. Rather be what you are (but who?) be the unthinkable one you do not know. O be still, while you are still alive, and all things live around you speaking (I do not hear) to your own being, speaking by the unknown

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