May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand. May God be with you and bless you: May you see your children’s children. May you be poor in misfortune, Rich in blessings. May you know nothing but happiness from this day forward. May the road rise up to meet you May the wind be always at your back May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home and may the hand of a friend always be near. May green be the grass you walk on, May blue be the skies above you, May pure be the joys that surround you, May true be the hearts that love you
When I was little, I loved to pick dandelions when they had gone to seed. I would make a wish and blow, and watch the seeds scatter in the breeze.
I remembered the dandelions as I thought about all the people I have met during my chaplaincy internship at HHH, and of what we have all been through in recent months.
I saw the dandelion seeds as my work and my presence with people.
I saw time as the breath that scattered them in all directions.
Each seed is so small, and seems so insignificant.
Yet each seed also contains the potential for a new dandelion and hundreds of new seeds.
The dandelion seed is a gift from the past to the future.
The breath of time brought it to me, and I am a short stop on its way.
That breath, that flower (the first place a bee will go to find food after a winter of fasting), and those seeds are my reassurance that I am part of the great cycle of life, and that I made a difference.
We have spent twelve months in a Covid world. The emotions that accompany this milestone are many. We have also adjusted our clocks. We’ve exchanged an hour of sleep for more light. I realize that this year unlike others years I am so thirsty for light that I want to gulp it down as if it were icy water gushing from a hose on a hot summer day.
C.S. Lewis wrote that people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed. So today I am reminding myself and maybe you too that things are changing. The light is a reminder of what we already know but easily forget: darkness does give way to light, eventually. I wrote this poem for the Thanksgiving service in 2019. It was an attempt to acknowledge the struggles we face and recognize that with time the edges of hardship soften. May we sit in the quiet, welcome the light, and let it remind us of what we may have forgotten.
I SIT IN THE QUIET
C. Shaw
I sit in the quiet
of the morning, on my chair, in stillness.
The sun rises As it always does
The birds sing As they always do
The earth spins As it always will
And joy holds hands with sorrow And hello embraces good-bye And today becomes tomorrow
In this stillness
Loss is kissed by sweetness Change ushers in the new
Regret bleeds into gratefulness Grief dons a gentle glow
Wholeness is created From pieces Beauty is made from ash
I recently lost my best friend. I’ve been receiving some cards and notes in the mail, but honestly I find them very difficult to read. As much as I enjoy sending cards to others, they’ve always been hard for me to receive. I once put an unopened birthday card in a stack of mail and found it a year later. Maybe it’s the written form that makes things too real. I’m not sure.
The other day I opened a card from my CPE group-mate Sarah that had arrived a few days before. I’m so glad I opened it. In the card Sarah shared “A Blessing for the Brokenhearted” by Jan Richardson:
Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love.
Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound when every day our waking opens it anew.
Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this —
as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,
as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own stubborn and persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.
These words are so comforting to me. They express exactly what I’m experiencing now — my reality is that love was taken away from me, but now that emptiness is being met with more love. I’ve always cared for my friend’s mother, but now it’s almost as if I’ve taken on all the love my friend had for his mother as my responsibility to live out for him. I’m witnessing regrets and brokenness in his family being transformed into peace and reconciliation. I’m receiving more love and daily support from my sister than I ever have. I’m finding myself asking for help from friends and being met with more gracious care and concern than I could have imagined. My loss and pain and grief is co-existing with an abundance of love flowing in and out. This place feels new and uncomfortable, but perhaps it’s the way.
May you too experience an abundance of love this day to fill those parts of you that are in need of healing.
We want to live our lives to the fullest. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden Pond, “I do not want to come to the end of my life and find that I had not lived.” With all of life’s stresses, it is sometimes hard to find the energy to devote our entire being to the work we are called to do. Regardless of whether we can always accomplish this, the desire is frequently still there. In order to live a full life, we often have to take risks to make sure we are living the full authentic life. These aren’t risks like being a race car driver, or parachuting out of an airplane. But going to places a little outside our comfort zone: agreeing to make a presentation our boss has asked us to do; agreeing to sew a costume for our child’s fourth grade play (and not being a seamstress); driving someone to a medical appointment an hour away and not feeling comfortable driving that long of a distance. (And I am sure you can think of many more things that are outside your comfort zone.)
But Helen Prejean writes in an essay entitled How Can I Find God: “The ‘God part’ of us is always the one stepping out…(the one) to walk on water and to take the risk. To go to places beyond the part of us that wants to be safe and secure and with the comfortable and the familiar…”
There are things we are asked to do that feel risky to us (not unethical). We sometimes, however, have to take the risk and put our toe in the water, but we don’t have to swim out to the deep end. Often times there are great rewards with taking even a small risk.
I love children’s movies. One of my absolute favorites is Moana. It’s a movie filled with music, adventure, and humor. A must see! This weekend I discovered a ‘must read’ children’s book, “Hope for the Flowers,” at a Zoom interfaith retreat. Unlike my favorite movies there was no animation, but the Zoom screen shared the beautiful illustrations to spark my imagination. The story, originally published in 1979, is about two caterpillars; Stripe and Yellow. They set off on a journey – to climb the caterpillar pillar. The first moments on the pile are a shock as caterpillars jostle for position. During the struggle to get to the top, Stripe asks, “Do you know what’s happening?” Another caterpillar answers, “Nobody has time to explain they’re so busy trying to get wherever they’re going – up there.” “But what’s at the top?” Stripe asks. “No one knows that either but it must be awfully good because everybody is rushing there. Good bye, I’ve no more time.”
Stripe and Yellow struggle until they’re exhausted, then return to the bottom of the caterpillar pillar. When they’ve rested and regathered their strength Stripe, who is consumed with a desire to get to the top, leaves his love, Yellow. He returns to the pillar and begins to climb. Yellow is despondent, but stays behind. Ultimately she discovers an alternative to the struggle to the top of the caterpillar pillar. Perhaps she can fly? She takes the risk and transforms into a beautiful butterfly.
Butterflies are deep and powerful representation of life. Butterflies are not only beautiful, but also have mystery and symbolism. They are a metaphor representing spiritual rebirth, transformation, change, hope, and life. The magnificent, yet short life of the butterfly closely mirrors the process of spiritual transformation and serves to remind us that life is short.
It’s so simple and so hard at the same time. It’s so easy to see, an archetype of movies and literature. It’s a message we hear as children, yet it’s a life long journey to fully understand. At 58 I’m just beginning to get it. “It” the “Big Thing” is not out there, it’s not at the top of the caterpillar pillar, it’s in me, and it’s in you, in all of us. As the 13th Century Sufi mystic Rumi said, “We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.”
May you see the beauty in who you are today and every day.
The red-osier dogwood is common in New England. It’s not a showy shrub in summertime, but it does have blooms in May and offers berries to birds in the fall.
In the winter, however, when our natural world fades into browns and greys, a red-osier dogwood’s younger branches come alive in bright blood-oranges and reds.
Our natural world is gifted a burst of color during its darkest and coldest season.
It’s like that with people, too.
Most of our lives are pretty ordinary most of the time.
Then there comes a moment when we can offer something special to those around us.
The season of cold and dark has been especially long and difficult this year. But you who have been able to care for others during the pandemic — who have worked overtime on testing and vaccination, who have been there to check and double-check on people’s welfare – you have been like the red-osier dogwood.
You have been the burst of red in a brown-and-grey world.
You have been color when there was little to catch our eye.
You have been making a difference.
Take a moment to breathe, to appreciate how wonderfully ordinary yet how wonderfully special you have been, are, and will continue to be.
Growing up I remember hearing people say that the church is a building, but the people are the church. I fully agree that people are priority, however I am still enchanted by cathedrals, small country churches, church bells, stained glass, candles, and beautiful altars. Attending church may not be a part of your spiritual practice, but I came across a poem about a church that may speak to the way we long to show up in the world.
In this poem by e.e. cummings, he personifies a little church and uses each stanza to say what a building is unable to say. Maybe he is also shining a light on what church really is and how we can echo the words of this little church in the way we live.
i am a little church
i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying – i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature – i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
The budding Star Magnolia outside our entrance door 3/7/21
Can you feel it? The days are getting longer and we are getting more light into our days. This week we are going to get a wave of spring warmth. I am feeling like I can breathe more deeply these days. The long deep winter of darkness and the heavy weight of the pandemic are receding a bit, not gone but receding. With the deep breathing of today, I can let the blue of the sky be a balm to my soul.
Have you noticed the buds on the Star Magnolia at the corner as we come out of the basement? (pictures above) It has pussy willow-like buds. They are like buds of hope breaking into the cold sky of today. Watch. I bet they break out into something new with the warmth of the upcoming week.
As a wise staff member said to me this morning, “Change is good”. With the opening of our campuses and opening to visitors and family, how might we open to the change that the unfolding 2021 year will bring for us? We will still be dealing with the feelings of 2020 isolation and the loss of a year under the pandemic for sure. Can we hold the weariness and let the blue sky and the warmth of spring and the invitation to change be a hope for something different and just as real?
Oh Creator of the early bud, Open our hearts and our very depths to your invitation, Each day, each breath, an opportunity for change. To let the outside in and the inside out. To hold each other tenderly like a delicate bud So that we may all blossom into ourselves more fully And build a better world in the process of blossoming. Amen.
Let the blue sky wrap you round and let its light help you blossom.
You may have heard the saying, “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” According to this weather folklore, early March is a time when we often experience a Lion’s fierce roar of frigid cold, the long white teeth of biting winds that can cut through flesh.
March certainly came in like a lion this month. No sooner did we turn the calendar from February to March, than bitter cold and blustery winds from the Artic polar vortex descended into New England. In its wake, power lines and trees toppled causing power outages at Havenwood Heritage Heights and throughout the area.
As I looked out my window, I saw how the trees around me were responding to the wind. I can’t help feeling that every life encounters windstorms and, like the trees, we must respond. The question is, how? What can we learn from the trees?
Many sacred writings from different spiritual traditions provide teachings that rigid trees break in gale winds, but flexible trees survive.
Chapter 76 of The Tao cautions:
“…. the stiff and hard are attendants of death, the supple and soft are attendants of life.”
An old Shaker hymn puts it plainly:
“Yielding and simple may I be, like a pliant willow.”
In unsettling times, may we look to the trees as reminders of how to be supple and flexible in the midst of the storm.
