Continuing to Learn

This blog was for a particular time and place. I am continuing to exercise mind, body and spirit in a number of ways.

See our book group about flunking sainthood and the spiritual practices that go with that.

Blessings!

Reflection and attention for activists

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi

From an essay by Carla Goldstein entitled "Spiritual Activism: Building The Empathy Superhighway"

Exercise for bringing more balanced attention to the means and the ends in our activism

"Recognizing that all of our actions have impact, we work to bring alignment between our dreams for peace and our actions for peace, our dreams for equality and our actions for equality, our dreams for compassion and our actions for compassion.

At the end of each day spend a few minutes reflecting (keeping a journal helps) on whether your means and ends have been in alignment on this day. Ask yourself the following questions, “Today, has my activism led me to be unkind, violent, dishonest, manipulative, unfair, or disempowering? Today, how could I have brought greater alignment between values of peace, justice, compassion, and love and my actions for peace, justice, compassion, and love? Did I do anything today that felt effective or satisfying because I brought more balance between the means and ends of my activism?

Over time, this practice of bringing awareness to the relationship between your means and ends should help you bring more compassion and love into your activism, thus bringing more compassion and love into the world."

Reflecting on grief

While our child knows how to play and create, our earliest self knows grief and sorrow too, and knows how to express it. Using the non-dominant hand bypasses a lot of our social rules processing, and lets us tap directly into that child-like core of ourself. Sometimes, it doesn't feel okay to express our grief, or we don't have a safe way to get started.
Using the technique of drawing and writing with your non-dominant hand, to get to a place of your feelings, let the dominant hand ask the question "Why are you sad, what is your loss?"

With your non-dominant hand and crayons, write or draw your answer.

Then, the dominant hand can ask the question, "what would comfort you or make you feel better?"

With your non-dominant hand and crayons, write or draw your answer.

Attention: focused presence

While I think of mindfulness as openness and awareness to ourselves, to others, to the world around us, to the Divine, attention is a focusing practice, more directed than broad. Being present and focusing in the moment is powerful, both as giver and as receiver. We all love good attention.

Using the reflective practice of spiritual reading, let's start our exploration of attention with this reading by James Hillman, taken from Spiritual Literacy, ed. by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat.

"Not only persons call for service; their things do, too--the oil changed, the VCR cleaned, the dryer repaired, the message transmitted. Ceremonies of the repairman. Objects have their own personalities that ask for attention, just as the ads show the smiling bathtub that enjoys the new cleanser or the wood siding that likes the fresh stain which prevents it from decay. Treating things as if they had souls, carefully, with good manners--that's quality service ...
This idea of service demands surrender, a continuous attention to the Other. It feels like humiliation and servitude only when we identify with a ruling willful ego as mirror of a single dominating god. But what is a God is in each thing, the other world distributed within this world?
Theology calls this distribution of the divine within all things the theory of immanence, and sometimes, pantheism....
A theology of immanence means treating each thing, animate and inanimate (perhaps the distinction no longer clearly obtains), natural and man-made, as if it were alive, requiring what each living thing requires above all else: careful attention to its properties, their specific qualities. This plant needs little water; this wood won't bear great weight and burns with a smoky fire. Look at me carefully: I am an aspen, not an oak. Notice differences, pay attention, give respect (re-spect = look again). Notice what is right under your nose, at your fingertips, and attend to it as it asks, according to its needs."

If you need a reminder about the steps of spiritual reading, take a moment.

As you read and re-read this passage, what do you notice? What words or phrases draw you in? What catches your eye or ear? What speaks to your own sense of service, of attention, of care?

Then as you come out of the quiet of your meditation, and go about your day, attention is the practice of focusing on what it is you are doing. If you're getting up to make a meal, just make a meal. If you are having a conversation with your child or partner or friend, just be present for that conversation, not five other things. Thomas Keating reminds us, "This is where attentiveness to the content of the present moment is a way of putting order into the myriad occupations, thoughts, and events of daily life. Attention to this context simply means to do what we are doing. This was one of the principal recommendations of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth century. The disciple would come for instruction and say, “I am interested in finding the true self and becoming a contemplative. What should I do?” The desert guides would reply in the most prosaic language, “Do what you’re doing,” which means, bring your attention to the present moment and its immediate context and keep it there. For instance, it is time for supper. Well, put the food on the table. This is true virtue. Turning on the television at that time or making a needless phone call might not be. Attending to the present moment means that our mind is on what we are doing as we go through the day. We are thus united to God in the present moment instead of wondering about what we are going to do next or tomorrow."

Full attention to another person is perhaps one of the best gifts you can give someone. Being fully present with one another in love is the best practice for relationship health that I have found. As Keating says, "we are thus united to God in the present moment," manifesting the divine in that moment of presence.

Reflection: spiritual reading in a group

If you are fortunate enough to have or motivated to start a group, you can also do spiritual reading and reflection in a group. You can use any common texts: the Psalms, devotional materials, poetry, books.

from Weavings Magazine Guide to Spiritual Reading:
SPIRITUAL READING (lectio divina) is the ancient practice of savoring a text with patient playfulness. This way of reading is alert with expectation that a transforming word of life will make its way from the written narrative of the author to the lived narrative of the reader. Spiritual reading holds out the promise of fresh meaning, insight, or truth emerging between writer and reader that transcends time and space. Yet this experience assists the reader to enter more reflectively and faithfully into his or her own time and space. In this respect, spiritual reading embodies the pattern of the Incarnation, where Word becomes flesh for the life of the world. Peter of Celle, the great twelfth century Benedictine abbot, describes spiritual reading this way: “Reading is the soul’s food, light, lamp, refuge, consolation, and the spice of every spiritual savor. It feeds the hungry, it illuminates the person sitting in darkness; to refugees from shipwreck or war it comes with bread. It comforts the contrite heart; it contains the passions of the body with the hope of reward. When temptations attack, it counters them with the teaching and example of the saints.... In the bread box of sacred reading are breads baked in an oven, breads roasted on a grill, or cooked in a frying pan, breads made with the first fruits and sprinkled with oil, and barley cakes. So, when this table is approached by people from any walk of life, age, sex, status or ability, they will all be filled with the refreshment that suits them." Remember the invitation heard by Augustine in the garden on the threshold of his conversion: “Take and read."

Reflection: spiritual reading/lectio divina

The idea of reading holy texts, or of reading the contemplative writings of others, and reflecting upon them is among the oldest contemplative traditions. I am recommending a further, powerful step in writing down your reflections--in a journal, in a blog.
Unlike many of the exercises in this blog this is not a five minute practice, but it is possible to do five or ten minutes of reading and come back to that several times during a day. I often find that something that I read in the morning pops into my head during my commute and I can ruminate about it, but putting the reflection in written form takes some time, and I often come back to it again several times for editing and additions.

Reading poetry is a wonderful spiritual practice in itself, but spiritual reading of poetry can take you even deeper. I invite you to take a look at a process of spiritual reading of poetry :
I abbreviate it here.
1. Breathe deeply for a couple of minutes.
2. Read slowly, aloud if possible--linger over words & phrases. (If doing this as a group, take turns reading aloud, with different readers giving different voice and emphasis.)
3. Look and listen for nuance and detail.
4. Continue to read for the amount of time you've allotted.
5. Give thanks and sit in silence, waiting to hear what else might speak to you from this reading.
6. Record your reflections in your journal.
7. Pick one gleaning to carry with you for the day.

Reflect upon this poem by Sufi poet Rumi, translated by Daniel Ladinsky from the anthology, Love Poems from God.

HEY

The grass beneath a tree is content
and silent.

A squirrel holds an acorn in its praying hands,
offering thanks, it looks like.

The nut tastes sweet; I bet the prayer spiced
it up somehow.

The broken shells fall on the grass,
and the grass looks up
and says,
"Hey."

And the squirrel looks down
and says,

"Hey."

I have been saying "Hey" lately too,
to God.

Formalities just weren't
working.

Read the poem aloud, as well as silently. How does this poem speak to you? What phrases stay with you the first time? What new things do you notice the second time? Write your thoughts.

Vary the emphasis and inflection, particularly on the the word "Hey." Is it a tone of wonder, intrusion, friendliness, irritation, or something else? How does that change the meaning of the poem?

Check out the list of poetry links to the right for both daily written and audio poems.

Grieving, forgiveness, and gratitude

These practices don't stand alone. We can and will integrate many of these practices in our lives. Certainly we understand the need for forgiveness as part of our grieving process, if only that when we suffer a loss we are left to deal with the consequences and may well feel angry about that, and forgiveness is a way to move through anger and hurt.

But what about gratitude and grieving? Is there value in our "blues?" David Steindl-Rast thinks that we can mine our grief for gratefulness. He suggests several reflective practices as a way to get to what we can be grateful for in our grief that we will also begin to explore in future sessions.