Growing in tune with the seasons

Today I'm in a preparing-for-fall mood, feeling the coolness of the air, noticing the slight changing of the colors of the trees. Internally, there's a sense of nesting, which I particularly love. Each year September is an important month for me, a time of new beginnings and a celebration of all the inner growth from the previous year. I was thinking about arriving in September again, along with this idea of living in tune with the seasons, and I noticed that, for me, each month has a kind of correlation to the inner spiritual growth and learning that's happening for me through the year. I guess I am in tune with the seasons, more than I knew! Here's a kind of playful calendar for inner work that connects to the seasons of nature (at least in the part of the world where I live):

September: Decide where in your inner and outer life you want to learn and grow next.
October: Harvest the learning and growth you’ve done over the summer.
November: Share your bounty with others and say thanks.
December: Celebrate hope, vision, love, healing, new light, growing consciousness.
January: Start fresh in a relationship, a project, or your understanding of yourself and relation to God.
February: Practice unconditional love toward all beings—whether they are hibernating or not. :)
March: Love the winds of change and open to all possibilities. Life is bringing you good things.
April: Let the seeds of hope, vision, growth, and consciousness be planted (and don’t be afraid to shed a few tears; they enrich the soil).
May: Witness, participate in, and celebrate the euphoric, exploding abundance of your early growth!
June: Tend your growing lovingly, feeding and watering (and appreciating) as needed.
July: Intentionally weed out the thoughts, opinions, and actions that can hold back or delay your growing.
August: Notice how far you’ve come! The season is almost complete. Continue to nourish your growth by caring for it with water, food, shade, and love. Begin thinking of ways to celebrate it at harvest.

How is your life in tune with the seasons? I'd love to hear, if you want to post a comment and share your thoughts.

Namaste, friends. :)

God's Happy Love

Catherine of Sienna said it all this morning in this quote from her Letters:

If you live every day with respect for others, God's happy love will be your best friend.

Wonderful! Blessings on your day, :) k

Buddhist Proverbs

I got Pema Chodron's Getting Unstuck audiobook from the library yesterday and today after I dropped Cameron off at school I listened to the first part of the first CD. She has such a lovely voice, lyrical and gentle with humor and space. Her words and thoughts and teachings are grounded in such a moving sense of self-awareness and self-acceptance; I found myself wanting to listen just for that loving blessing of the sound of gracious openness, a type of beautiful music.

Visiting her site led me on to other Buddhist teachings, and I found her referenced on this site, along with a huge list of Buddhist proverbs written in the 12th century. The site displays how each of several teachers of Buddhist thought phrase the various proverbs. This captured my imagination and I decided that for my own learning I would create a PowerPoint presentation of the various proverbs, to cycle through on my laptop as a screensaver. What a great way to fit awareness and spiritual practice in with my work! :)

So, just in case you're interested in the same thing, here a link to the simple presentation. Be forewarned--it's long; I think there are close to 70 slides. But don't work too hard at taking it all in; just let it wash over you, like cool mist on a mountain walk. :)

Buddhist proverbs
PowerPoint 1997-2003 version

Note: For some reason the file isn't running automatically as a PowerPoint show, so if the PowerPoint file opens on your computer, just press F5 to start the slide show.

So True

Well, I have to admit this quote of Thomas Merton's is a little deflating for people like me who try to put words--emotions, images, something--on the tiny transformative spark that occurs when faith, heart, and consciousness come together:

No writing on the solitary meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Thomas Merton. Honorable Reader. Robert E. Daggy, editor. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991: 91

Today I have the windows open in the sunroom (it was only 59 degrees this morning when I woke up! Wonderful!) and I'm sitting here listening to the wind in the forest as I write. The trees, the locusts, and the voices of children on the school playground a quarter of a mile away all mix together to make the most delightful music proclaiming the goodness of God, the wonder of life, and the real and inexhaustible hope that keeps us loving each other and envisioning a healed world. What else is there to say? We can only listen, receive, and offer our breathless thanks.


Note: To subscribe to the Merton Institute's Weekly Reflection (which is how I received this Merton quote today), go to https://www.mertoninstitute.org/weekly_reflections.php and click Subscribe Now on the right.

Listening & Guidance

It occurred to me this morning--after an exciting, jam-packed, creative week--that the most profound change and deepening in my spiritual life over the last 10 year has not come about because I did more, understood more, or prayed more. It wasn't the books I read (although those certainly helped), the situations I lived (although at each place I found God right there in the midst of it), or thousands upon thousands of prayers, actions, and thoughts that went streaming to the Loving Presence I know as God. Rather, the big inner shift, the opening, the deepening, the enriching happened when all the outer striving and trying and working and acting ceased, and I began to notice a need for listening more. Just a quiet, open, gentle space, where I listened quietly and in love for whatever God would or wouldn't say to my heart. The listening became the prayer, the act, the communion, the point. It is a refreshment like nothing else, a moment of gathering in beauty in the Garden. I highly recommend it, whether you use something like the Centering Prayer (here's a great site for that) or the Jesus Prayer or the simple and beautiful Quaker method of silent worship. Take even the smallest moment and just breathe with God. There's no refreshment like it, and from that still centered spot in the core of your being, everything else begins to blossom. :)

The Gift of Perfect Peace

The other day Ruby (my 22-month-old granddaughter) was here spending the day with me (which is joy enough) and we had just finished running a bunch of errands. As we turned onto our street, Ruby nodded off to sleep, her arms and legs hanging limp in her car seat, her little head snuggled against the padded cushion. Earlier in the afternoon, we'd spent more than an hour "trying" to go to sleep at naptime (which for Ruby means repeatedly playing the music on her Fisher Price aquarium, singing to herself, and saying "Mama-Dada-Nana" like a mantra). As an active almost-two-year-old, she's fascinated with everything and has lots of good ideas and really doesn't want to give it all up and go to sleep. (I can identify--when I was little, I used to stretch out on my babysitter's bed and sing "These Boots Are Made for Walkin!" at the top of my lungs instead of taking a nap. I guess that dates me, doesn't it?!)

When Ruby slipped off to this peaceful sleep, I knew this was precious time--and a rest she really needed. Come to think of it, maybe I did, too. It was a beautiful day; I parked the car in the garage, rolled down all the windows, left the sunroof open, and enjoyed the breeze, the goldfinches I could see in my rear view mirror, and my sweet, sleeping grandbaby for an entire hour. What did I do? Simply enjoyed the time, loved her, thanked God.

It was the best rest I've had all week! Wonderful. May you find surprising gifts of respite in your day as well.

Singing Thanks

Yesterday I wrote this in a note to a dear friend, and the thought and feeling has stayed with me, so I thought I'd share it here: "In the moments when I feel most awake and present, I get a sense that all creation—-literally all creation—-is singing Thanks! to God. When I am really here without defense, projection, or pretense, I am singing it, too."

Really Sing It today! Countless angels are your backup singers. :)

Living Gratitude

Yesterday afternoon my sons and I spent two hours in the waiting room of a MedCheck while my oldest son found out about chest pains that had begun earlier in the afternoon. Ordinarily this wouldn't be the best place for contemplation--the waiting room was full, my older son was grim and concerned; my younger son was anxious about a school project due today. The fear that usually accompanies an event like this for me wasn't present--I knew from Christopher's voice and color and breathing that all was reasonably well (although I did feel it was important to have his symptoms checked out because my dad had heart problems). After two EKGs and lots of listening, the doctor told Christopher he had strained a muscle in his chest, just above his heart. Nothing a few Ibuprophen and a couple of days' rest can't fix.

While we waited, I read an old book by the Dalai Lama that I found at the library last weekend: Kindness, Clarity, and Insight. The book is a compilation of lectures he gave the U.S. 20 years ago, and they are wonderful, simple, and clear.

In the midst of this experience, the Dalai Lama's voice and thoughts washed soothingly over me. He wrote about compassion, compassion for all beings. This type of compassion is not simple empathy but a kind of love and gratitude that begins within a heightened awareness of our own blessing. He suggests we remember a great kindness someone in our life has done for us--perhaps a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a friend. Then we allow our gratitude for that great kindness to shine brightly within us. Soon we respond to others with that same sense of gratitude, a thank-full approach for the blessing they are bringing into our lives. And from this ever-growing underground stream of gratitude, true compassion pours out naturally--beginning with my thankfulness for you, I want happiness for you and as well as health, freedom, creativity, joy, and love. When I act from compassion, it is because the idea of us as two separate beings has dissolved and I recognize that as you love, I love; as you hurt, I hurt; as you seek peace, I seek peace.

May we flourish in the true compassion that arises from the grateful Heart of all being.