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The Gates of Thanksgiving

Giving thanks unlocks the gate we have closed to God’s presence. It is like a secret password that is so simple and obvious we overlooked it.

The principle is that gratitude opens into presence. So as we lift our hearts in gratitude we become more aware of God’s presence and we enter his realm.

Gratitute is like putting on glasses to see through the material and the circumstantial into the eternal. To see past the gift into the presense of the giver.

And then all things become like glass, transparent and open, and we recognize that we are home.

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A Sky-wondering Wind-hurling Day

Today is one of those days where the sky takes your breath away.

An armada of vapor giants are puffing out their white chests as they pass overhead.

They move swiftly, accepting their place in the unfathomable blue depths.

Everything within and without seems sharper and crisper, and able to respond.

The grasses bend and bring new colors, and the tree leaves flip over and flash silver.

There is a spark in the air that calls out the same within, and so I greet with gladness this Holy Wind

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The Park Bench

When a sacred space opens amidst the chaos and stress of life it is often unexpected and triggered by something as simple as a deep breath, a fresh scent, or a babies smile.

It has the power to launch a wave of gratitude that moves into our inner city like a liberating force clearing the streets of protestors and imposters.

It declares a temporary cease fire in the bombardment of doing and achieving, and invites us to sit on the park bench of acceptance in the shade of our being.

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Sea of Love

White sails, hope unfurled, wind-whipped, slicing the sea. 

Ocean spray, salt taste, stinging the face, a foretaste. 

Bow bounding into blue mystery, riding high, and happy at the helm. 

We are bound together on a high adventure, and joined with the sea, we become three. 

The blue expanse, the unfathomable depths, I feel the sea beginning to rise in me. 

Life preserver within reach, I could jump and float, but the blue depths keep drawing and calling.  

I lean in, let go of helm, grasp the mast, and freely bind myself to thee, as we go into the sea. 

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The Prayer of Tehard

Since, by virtue of my consent, I shall have become a living particle of the Body of Christ, all that affects me must in the end help on the growth of the total Christ. Christ will flood into and over me, me and my cosmos.

. . . May my acceptance be ever more complete, more comprehensive, more intense!

May my being, in its self-offering to you, become ever more open and more transparent to your influence!

And may I thus feel your activity coming ever closer, your presence growing ever more intense, everywhere around me.

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The Door of Suffering

Suffering is like a door, and the hinge of that door is our intension.  Our intension emerges from a deep place of interior freedom. We can either close the door, and wall ourselves off, creating a space of bitterness and self isolation, or we can open the door by making ourselves an offering, and in so doing we step into the wide open space of surrender, acceptance and grace. 

Without this door of suffering, it becomes difficult to find the open and unitive space, and we get confined and compressed into our egoic or false self.  The suffering that seems to limit us and break us down is that which paradoxically expands our capacity and connectivity. It is the door of powerlessness that opens out onto a vast terrace of grace. 

Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and as we open and enter into his life, which is really our pascal mystery, it opens out to eternal life. We come to realize that we are stronger than death, and suffering need not be a tragedy.  Yes, for a time we may have to squeeze through a difficult and narrow passage, but along the way, my pain has become His pain, and our pain. His glory is my glory. His joy, my joy, and our joy.

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A Wind of Being

As I walk in fields of thought, and feel the the crunch of earth below. 

Something arrises out of the plain, a wind of being, without a  name. 

What embraces me, no hands can hold or eye can see. 

It breathes into me, like the sea, eternal and free. 

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Thanksgiving Manna

The manna that God provided for the Israelites in the dessert is described as flakes like hoarfrost or dew upon the ground. It was not recognizable as bread, and they did not see it falling from heaven, it just appeared in the morning as naturally as the dew.

Here we have a mysterious interplay between nature and grace. The morning dew tastes like sweet bread, and the evening birds are real flesh. Strangely natural and supernatural.

The Eucharist presents a similar mystery. It is just a wafer of bread in a liturgical service, a shared meal, and yet through the eyes of faith it becomes Christ, our passover, and real spiritual food for the journey.

Does the Eucharistic (Thanksgiving) presence of Christ appear everywhere that love is shared? Does it fall as naturally as the morning dew, for all who are journeying within the pascal mystery of life?

It seems as if the spirit by its very nature is drawn into matter.  God descending into our humanity in Jesus, and then even further down to become bread to eat.  A divine mist condensing on the ground of our lives like  the morning dew.

Our own lives are also to become a kind of Eucharist, a bread for others, and a descent into nature.  As we are led  into this vulnerable land  we learn its language of trust and self emptying, and then manna appears all around us.

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The Silent House

The entrance way is constricted, and cloaked,
my own breath I breathe, and I’m choked

A single candle flickers in the hall,
and my thoughts cast shadows on the wall

I move quickly past this scary host
of haunting, taunting, self-ghosts.

The faint smell of embers in hearth,
Gives courage to draw me further in.

The fire, just embers unattended,
I draw near, a stranger, undefended.

The fire awakens, fed upon my breath,
And then rises to the rhythm of my chest.

And the light rises into luminous depth,
revealing no walls or boundaries.

I feel someone else  here in this space,
A palpable presence with no face.