Shirking grace

Restless in your presence, Lord. As if You detain me. As if I have so much to do to avoid You.

Reading for spiritual nourishment

This morning, while meditating, these words formed in my mind. "Some books are prayers, you say, if they tell the truth, unzip culture's tight corset, reveal the wild longing creature within, release her to fly."

I'd just finished reading Kathleen Jesme's Motherhouse for the second time and taken a lyric journey into a shared past. Each page shimmered with a mystery grounded in the earth yet daring to breach the galaxies. Even the structure of these poems, latticed throughout with readings from the rule book used by her religious community and quotations from mystics and saints, quiver with mystery. One line of verse eliciting wonder, three lines of insight,


"Rain and more rain. Dense. I dreamed of green worms.
Saw a moth "open-winged on a tree trunk, looking like
a piece of bark. Like my selves --
some so perfectly camouflaged they resemble me. "5/17 Wednesday, Feast of St. Paschal"

Harsh, tender, reflective, brooding ... poems like a rosary of light and dark. A perfectly lovely read.

Scruples and Teresa of Avila?

This week, I began reading Saint Teresa of Avila: Collected Works translated by Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriques CD starting with “The Book of Her Life.” 

I'd looked forward to connecting with this great lady. My first reaction, however, was one of irritation. Why did Teresa continually insist that her actions were so sinful? Wasn't this just a case of scruples? The Catholic Encyclopedia defines scruples as "An unfounded apprehension and consequently unwarranted fear that something is a sin, which, as a matter of fact, is not.“

Her vagueness about her so called “sins,” bothered me. To what loose and dangerous activities did she allude, save for some hints at friendships that were perhaps more secular than spiritual. Yet how were these friendships sinful when she was always trying to encourage these persons to a life of prayer?  What could be sinful in that, save that perhaps she sought some degree of personal glory in the attentions and love of these persons?

Then I remembered that saints do not view their behavior the way we do. Aware of God’s tremendous love for them, they view anything that might distract them from God, as sinful. While we might deem these “sins”  simply as distractions due to our humanity, saints view everything through the lens of love – God’s love for them and their feeble response to that love. I remember once having tried to become a saint and remember how the sense of sin tainted everything, even my efforts at prayer, so aware was I of wanting to excel.

During the intervening years, I've had to come to terms with my "sinfulness." While once shame had me praying while hiding my face in shame, I now view sin -- not as something deserving punishment but as something we do to ourselves.By choosing to ignore the movement of grace we block the door to the gift God brings us. My spiritual director once suggested that rather than berate myself for my failures of grace, why not celebrate the times I did respond. Why not view our failures as reminders that God is waiting to assist us. They force us to acknowledge our helplessness and dependence on our constantly loving creator.

Teresa (thanks to that infinitely loving God she remembers to praise constantly throughout her autobiography) speaks much the same way. She asks how God can work within us if we avoid opening ourselves to that loving presence because we are ashamed of our imperfections. If we take the time to turn to God, she reminds us, God will shower his graces upon us. 

Whether or not Teresa suffered from a surfeit of scrupulosity, no longer troubles me. Her efforts, despite her reluctance (and even repugnance), to live a life of prayer provide us with a mirror in which to observe our own unwillingness to pursue a similar course. “Don’t give up,” I hear her telling us. "Yes. You’ve been a miserable failure thus far, but keep turning toward God. That’s all that’s necessary. God will guide you the rest of the way.”


Pastel by Beryl: Fall on a Lake Superior back road

Lake Superior in Advent

Lake Superior’s North Shore is a craggy, rugged land with only six inches of topsoil on some of the oldest rock exposed rock on earth. Over 90 % of the land is state and national forest. Two thousand square miles of land with an average population according to the latest census of 3.6 persons per mile. Towns are small. The town where I live boasts fewer than 200 residents.

It’s quiet up here, the predominant sound that of waves crashing against ledge rock, and the peregrine falcons and ring-billed gulls cruising above. It’s a place where you’d better love the out-of-doors because there is little indoor activity to distract you. TV reception is inaccessible unless you have satellite and that’s expensive. Night life focuses primarily on lodges and taverns, when they’re open, the occasional community theater production or visiting musical group.

Those who don’t live here wonder what we do with ourselves. There’s little industry save tourism. Mostly the area caters to tourists, artists, people wanting to escape city life. In warm weather we hike, pick berries, watch birds, canoe the boundary waters and challenge Lake Superior in kayaks. The lake is too cold for swimming. In winter we hunt, snow shoe, ski, run sled dogs, watch the night sky. Deer, wolves, bear and an occasional moose wander our woods.

It’s a perfect place for a monastery, here where God’s bounty is so clearly visible. Contemplative living should flow naturally in such a place, one would think, yet perfect places do not guarantee perfect lives. Always we lug ourselves around, not seeing clearly, not listening closely, always dependent on God’s love to rekindle the fires of yearning within us. Advent approaches, reminding us that the Incarnation was willed through eternity as an expression of God’s love for us.

In a beautiful meditation on Advent, Sallie Latkovich CSJ writes that in Advent we contemplate the three ways of Christ’s coming: in history, in our daily lives, and in the second coming.

“I’ve been thinking that we’ve got it all wrong,” she writes. “We need not wait for God. God is always present, always with us . . . this Advent I’ve come to see that it’s GOD who waits for us . . . [God who] waits for us to notice the myriad ways in which God is with us, always.”

Morning apparitions

Every morning, for the past week, as I sit to meditate and raise my face to the rising sun, an eagle has soared past -- so close its wingtips seem to brush the window.

Sitting so still that . . .

Today a chipmunk confused me with a climbing pole. I was sitting on the deck, meditating, when I felt a few ounces of something skitter up my leg and then beat a quick retreat. Shocked from my "mindfulness," I saw the little fellow cowering in a corner of the deck next to the house, looking at me curiously. Clearly, I was not supposed to be there.

The visitation by a little neighbor delighted me, though I found it impossible to resume meditating. Instead I gazed about me and enjoyed the sun and breeze. Lake Superior gentle today and whispering against the ledge rock, the pin cherry and ash trees preparing to launch the fruit for which the birds (and bears)yearn, the chatter of the gold-finches as they swooped around the feeders.

When the cry of a gull drew my attention, I was treated to another of those marvels we see up here -- a larger animal being chased by a smaller one. This bald eagle, hounded by only one gull, was in great haste to get away. (I've seen very small birds chasing eagles which makes me wonder why it was chosen as a sign of national pride.)

When I returned to my computer a bit later, I did so with a light heart and smile -- God's presence so visible in the life surrounding me.

Finding silence within sound

My husband Bill is noise sensitive. Sounds of traffic, noise from factories, lawn equipment and machinery drive him batsy. I, on the other hand, having spent many years in a cloistered monastery on a busy urban street am not bothered by noise. Bill will ask me if I hear a particular humming emanating from the rocks on which our house is built. I don’t, not until he’s pointed it out.

Anthony de Mello, in Sadhana, A Way to God: Christian Exercises in Eastern Form, addresses the issue of noise sensitivity during meditation. His Contemplation Groups often complain about the sounds around them, he writes, which intrude on their quiet and distract them. Rather than protect them from sound, he deliberately chooses places above or near busy streets.

“If you learn to take all the sounds that surround you into your contemplation,” he writes,”you will discover that there is a deep silence in the heart of all sounds.”

Modern life is noisy. No place is really free of noise as even the airwaves hum with electromagnetic and seismic signals. If we are to meditate (or simply to live in peace with noise) we must learn to find the “silence in the heart of all sounds.”

De Mello claims that sounds distract us when we attempt to run away or fight them. Rather than trying to tune out such sounds, he advises us to listen to the sounds surrounding us, even the smallest; to attempt to discover the sound within sound, the variations in pitch and intensity. In this way we become aware, "not so much of the sounds around you, as of your act of hearing."

Alternating between the awareness of sound to the awareness of your hearing can lead to the awareness that sound is produced and sustained by God’s almighty power. “God is sounding all around you . . . Rest in this world of sounds . . . Rest in God.”

The photo above is of an open courtyard off a busy San Juan street

A recipe

I seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time cooking lately. Now that we can no longer afford to eat out, I have been trying to bring variety and interest to our meals by using recipes. My husband, who has been semi-retired (out of work) for six months, goes a bit stir-crazy with just me and the computer for company so we've been inviting family and guests to share these meals with us.

I'm ashamed to say that I'm not always the happiest of chefs, even when I know that cooking provides some wonderful quiet time, time when I can place myself fully in the now, and as the Buddhists would say, cut the carrots in order to cut the carrots.

I want to finish my next book and write the two articles I've got slated for publication later this year. I don't really want to cook. And, there's the difficulty in finding focused concentrated meditation time.

Perhaps all that God wants of me right now is to accept what is. To be there for others, to put my own plans on hold and to give thanks that we've got food to share. To take each moment as the gift it is no matter what that moment consists of, including cooking.

Waiting for the sun

At three in the morning, I find it difficult to meditate. I prefer the sun to shine across my prayer mat and shawl. The light behind my eyes warms me and I settle into that presence.

Breath

If I escape from the clamor of my thoughts into the silence of the breath, why do I find this journey so difficult? Thirty years of practice and my mind continues to rebel. Sometimes I find myself closer to the divine midst the stress of the daily. I stop and enter the presence.

A Backyard Labyrinth

My husband Bill often calls our home Beryl's Monastery and in many ways it is. I am often here alone as Bill's work as a consultant takes him away from home for much of every week. I am blessed that my husband shares my desire to live spiritually. When he is home, we recite Lauds and Vespers together (sometimes the other liturgical hours) and we meditate together.

Bill is also responsible for the meditative paths we have around our house. One of these paths features several meditation benches overlooking Lake Superior and circles the knoll where we buried my daughter Francesca's ashes. But by far the most amazing meditative path is the labyrinth he built for us (and for whoever else wants to use it).

A labyrinth is not to be confused with a maze. A labyrinth is path designed to lead purposefully, in tight concentric circles or spirals, toward a center space. The walker then retraces his/her steps from that center back to the beginning.

I think of the labyrinth as a physical metaphor for our life’s journey and the meditative walk one takes through a labyrinth as a mini-pilgrimage. Walking the labyrinth slowly calms and opens heart and mind. Used meditatively, the labyrinth is a vehicle for inner healing and transformation.

Ours is not a traditional labyrinth, one that follows a pattern such as those found in ancient cathedrals or monasteries. Our labyrinth conforms to the topography of our land. It is defined by the shape, the ruts and ridges, of the wildflower field in front of our home.

It looks quite pretty tucked among the grasses and wildflowers, its meandering spirals bordered with split logs and filled with wood chips with Lake Superior providing a gorgeous blue backdrop. Bill and I have been walking it since he first laid it out two years ago.

My favorite time to walk the labyrinth is after supper as the sun begins to set. In winter the labyrinth disappears under the snow, but in spring, summer, and fall, it provides a wonderful place to remember that life is a journey and to walk it attentively.

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2008

See Road Writer for my travel blog.

10 days of silence

When I left for my first Vipasana retreat (insight meditation) last July with Resources for Ecumenical Spirituality -- an experience that combines Christian with Buddhist meditation practices -- I'd pictured a cozy silence where I didn't have to talk and could just moon around being thoughtful. I was sadly but wondrously mistaken. This retreat was not mystic rapture. This retreat was Dark Night of the Soul.

In July of this year I went back, this time with my husband Bill. Rigorous days. Rigorous nights. For 10 days we sat in meditation, walked in meditation and when we weren't sitting, walking or listening, we were moving purposefully -- reaching for doorknobs, putting on one's sandals, eating one's meal -- everything done as consciously and purposefully as possible. We did not read books. We did not write in journals. We kept total silence save during the lectures (1 lecture, 1 practice instruction daily) when we were encouraged to ask questions, or when we were chanting.

I must confess that this year, with my hubby there, I was not as focused as I’d hoped. Instead I worried about my type-A personality husband. Would he survive the first few days? Two other attendees had bolted early on and I learned later that two days into the retreat Bill was ready to high-tail it out of there as well. But he didn’t. He stayed and entered that intense silence with me. He's glad he went but he's not sure he wants to do it again.

There was one other married couple there. They sat together during their silent meals. Bill and I did not sit together. The other retreatants were not even aware that we were married – that’s how hard we tried to walk the Vipasana experience. I’ll write more about our retreat in my next post.

This retreat was offered by Resources for Ecumenical Spirituality -- an organization founded by 2 Carmelite priests and Mary Jo Meadows, an author, clinical psychologist, former professor of religious studies at Mankato State University and a practitioner of meditation for more than 30 years in the Christian, ashtanga yogic, and Theravada Buddhist traditions. For more information on their retreats and workshops, contact them at resecum@msn.com.

Tools of the Trade: unnecessary but nice

This is where I usually meditate.

The table was made by a local craftsman who used a piece of mahogany my deceased brother Greg gave me over 30 years ago. We call it Greg's memorial table.

In front of the table are my Zafu meditation cushion and a prayer rug made by my husband Bill's father.

On the table are two photos. One of my deceased daughter Francesca, and one of my son Thomas and his little family.

Not shown is a meditation shawl brought back to me from India by a dear Yogi friend.

I have several other places where I can meditate which I shall show in future posts. My husband calls our home, Beryl's Monastery.

A good day to start

For more than 30 years I've been journaling, charting the daily thoughts and happenings in my life but, until today, I'd never considered the option of writing a public journal about my efforts to live a God-centered life.

So here goes. Day one.

Though I've spent most of my life searching for God: rising daily intending to make my day one of praise, I continue to retire every night having to accept the poverty of my efforts.

This morning for example, I woke to the sound of thunder and dashed downstairs to my office to unplug my computer. As I entered the room, a bolt of lightening thrust itself into the lake and I sent a quick plea heavenwards that it would stay on the lake and keep a safe distance from my house -- at least until I got the appropriate electric cables, phone and satellite, disconnected. Having done so, I went back upstairs to begin my 40 minutes of silent meditation.

After all these years, one would think that I've gotten this morning schedule thing down pat but I'm still working on it. Almost daily I debate the option of stretching first and then meditating or meditating first and then stretching. Stretching calms my mind, which at 5 am is already busy planning its day. Stretching helps me focus. Something to do with exerting oneself and breathing deeply. Meditating first thing in the morning, however, is the option preferred by spiritual directors.

This morning, meditating first seemed like the more viable option. I'd just experienced the creative power in an electric storm. Certainly focusing on the divine should be easy. But was it?

Of course not. My 40 minutes of silent prayer limped by as thoughts besieged me: remember to confirm lunch with Vicki, don't forget to cancel the appointment with Crystal, remember to bring wild flowers when you visit Virginia. Each time I became aware of these thoughts, I gently returned to my breath and wham, before I knew it I was thinking about the book I'm working on, structural changes to make, conflicts to include, a character's voice.

This morning I actually took a peek at my watch rather than waiting for the timer to chime the end of my session. 35 minutes down. Five to go.

That's enough don't you think, I told myself (and God). Got such a busy day. Better get my stretching done while there's still time.

And, dear God, please help me to remember to remember you throughout this day because I need your help. Desperately. Thank you.