Love and Kindness

      Ubi caritas et amore,ubi caritas Deus ibi est.

 

Where there is love and kindness, God is there.

Suchness

      In Buddhism the word "suchness" is used to mean the essence or particular characteristic of a thing or person. If we want to live in peace and happiness with a person, we have to see the suchness of that person. The key is knowing the person's essence. We must not expect a person always to be a flower. We have to understand his or her garbage as well.
                                                   ~Thich Nhat Hanh~

Always Laugh

The most utterly lost of all days is the day on which you have not laughed.

 

   I'm always curious at the end of a Chinese meal to unveil the little saying in the fortune cookie. This saying I will carry with me as a reminder that laughing, joy, and humor is key to happiness and of being mindful. 

  Recently, I've been reading about the life and philosophy of a great teacher, poet, writer, Zen Master and Vietnamese Buddist monk. Thich Nhat Hanh or Tie as his students call him. He was born in Central Vietman in 1926, and has lived in southwest France where he was exiled for many years. In his book Answers from the Heart Tie reveals how we can live a life of peace and happiness by being mindful of what our environment is revealing to us and how we can respond to the demands of everyday life in a serene and meaningful way. He says, "Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what's the use of seeing?" In other words peacefulness and happiness can be obtained when we can fully see that our connection here and now is not of the past or in the future. The things we must see are the moments we are living now.





Earth Day Celebrate Creation

Let the Blooms Begin

     A wonderful childhood memory of mine is arriving home after church one Sunday to find a clump of yellow, daffodils beaded with rain. To this day, nothing says spring to me like the fragrance of a simple daffodil. As my gardens begin to awaken to the first signs of spring, I delight in the beauty of these harbingers of a new season. I agree with John Keats that a thing of beauty is a joy forever.
     The best things that can come out of a garden are gifts for other people.

No Reason

One is loved because one is loved.

No reason is needed for loving.

Paulo Coelho

Waking Up Early

Taken April 13, 2013 6:55am

Why I Wake Up Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good
morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

          ~Mary Oliver~

Empty Spaces

Empty Spaces

An un-green forest provides a near

Leafless canopy for our pray-ers

Though

Birds chirp heralding spring.

Mighty trees nestle in forest closeness

Providing perches

For

Birds chirping to herald spring.

 

Midway branches serve as a vestibule

To their feeders

A rustle is heard not from treetops

But from a carpet of fallen leaves.

 

The leafless spaces are gateways to

Vistas, light, possibilities.

These cathedral high silhouettes

Beckon us as we search for

Divine grace.

 

No reason to speed up the search

For we need look no further

Than our own empty spaces.

             ~Marion Panyan~

           April 2013

 

        

Welcome All

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~Derek Walcott~

 

Whose Shoes?

   Consider how the sun (Son) illuminates what we are to see if we are present to see what He presents. Consider the sun that constantly holds everything in its pull. It sends its power millions of miles until it hits a beautiful flower, waterfall, or tree with its rusty brown leaves and a pair of shoes swaying in the branches.  A strange sight I thought! No one else has mentioned shoes hanging in a tree, or said, “Have you seen…?" So I continued to wonder why I was the only one to notice this illumed sight at this time and in this place.   The answer was revealed to me a few days later as I again stood looking up at the shoes with another person, a person whom I saw through my own set of filters.

   Just as we can look at God’s creation and never see its beauty until it is revealed in sudden light. We can look upon others again and again and never see the beauty in each other until one or both are suddenly revealed. The gentleness of spirits came together that evening as we stood together pondering the shoes in the tree. And now I have my answer as to why I was to see a pair of shoes in this particular tree, at this particular place and time. It was for my growth and understanding that gives room for once again the practice of letting the light reveal what is to be really seen.  It is the gentleness of heart that allows us to see and be seen. It is with this humbleness that two people actually saw each other as they both pondered the dangling shoes as they stood together beneath that specific oak tree.

Thanks to everyone at the University of Creighton Retreat Center for a wonderful week of prayer, fellowship, and self-reflection. The week of April 6^th through the 13^th was truly a time of silencing mind, body and heart.

Retreat into the Woods

 Use what talents you possess:

the woods would be very silent if

no birds sang there except those that sang best."

Henry Van Dyke

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