Reading Journals

"That God should have time for you, you seem to take as much for granted as that you cannot have time for God." -- Dag Hammarskjold, Markings.

Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk and famed spiritual author, filled 70 "reading journals" with notes and commentaries on the books he read throughout his life time, as careful a reader as he was a writer. (The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals)

Though I have only two such reading journals, one very fat and one very thin, they continue to nourish my spiritual life as I daily find, and add to, some quote to ponder.

I came across the above quotation from Dag Hammarskjold this evening while preparing to meditate and felt as if I'd been dealt a hammer blow. I'd copied that quote years ago, and though it impressed me then, tonight's reading propelled me to my knees.

What immense, divine humility that God -- the "I AM" of all creation -- should be always at our disposal while we, filled with insane hubris, spend but a few moments of our day, if at all, with this ineffable presence in return.

Photo of the Holy House of Loretto at the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Washington New Jersey.

Just Go For Walks

"just Go for walks,
live in peace,
let change come quietly and invisibly on the inside" -- Thomas Merton, Woods, Shore, Desert: A Notebook.

What a simple recipe to expand the heart? To allow what Philip Toynbe calls "seepage." Seepage is slow, often invisible. I find this consoling as I view the sluggish pace at which my journey to God progresses. In her lovely little book, Lost in Wonder, Edith De Waal writes the pilgrims, "the peregrini were clear that it was because they already held Christ in their hearts that they could set out on their journey to find him. So too, the journey I take day by day, minute by minute.

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.

Expanding the Heart

I stand with hands uplifted . . . a willing heart all I have to offer. After 50 years of searching I am still a beginner pilgrim. Today I think about the way love expands the heart, the way the fire of longing opens us not because of our efforts but because of God's longing for us.

To Say Nothing But Thank You

On a gray morning, having just uncovered the newly planted flowers that I had to cover yet again because of frost, my favorite literary magazine, The Sun, offered this lovely bit of light.





To Say Nothing But Thank You
by Jeanne Lohmann


All day I try to say nothing but thank you,
breathe the syllables in and out with every step I
take through the rooms of my house and outside into
a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden
where the tulips' black stamens shake in their crimson cups.

I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring
and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy
after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work,
when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly
hair combs into place.

Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute,
and with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I
remember who I am, a woman learning to praise
something as small as dandelion petals floating on the
streaming surface of the bowl of vegetable soup,
my happy, savoring tongue.

-- published in the May 2009 issue of The Sun


This poem requires no commentary, yet its words speak such wisdom to my heart: All the things I've been "trying to" learn about living in awareness, the gratitude it triggers, and the wondrous fact that we need go nowhere save within this moment to commune with God. Perhaps my favorite line of all is "with surprising gaiety I am saying thank you as I remember who I am."

Upping the Senses to download the divine

Last week, I gave a talk on how to "pray always" to a group of young mothers. To prepare for the talk, I reviewed all my favorite authors on the subject of prayer: Anthony De Mello, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton, St. Therese of Lisieux, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross.

Preparing for this talk was like a crash review of the practice of attentive awareness moment by moment.

Though I no longer have little ones clamoring for and needing attention, I still know the feeling that young mothers often experience. Harried! Deadlines, others' needs, emergencies still seem to collide with noticeable frequency. Now, however, the feeling of being "harried" is the trigger that most frequently lifts me from my panicked mind and into the present moment.

Stop, quiet yourself, breathe, and listen. You will emerge from that brief respite, healed and focused.

Select several triggers that will remind you of God's presence. Whatever you are likely to notice, such as seeing a butterfly, tripping on a shoelace, a chocolate-covered coffee bean, the chiming of a clock, changing diapers. It will get you into the habit. Notice that I've used various senses as examples: seeing, feeling, tasting, hearing, smelling.

It takes only takes a few moments to respond this way: to remember God's presence within you. To respond to that presence. To recognize the blessing in the "now."

I was touched by a small ceremony in which these young women participated prior to my talk. They passed a "blessing basket" around the room. Each mother recognizing a blessing in her life stood up, shared that blessing with the group, and dropped a dollar for charity into the basket.

"My Sarah slept through the night for the first time."

"Timothy took his first step."

"When Naomi threw a tantrum in Target, I had to leave. A woman came up to me and said 'you're a good mother'."

"Steven turned four this week."

Their words reminded me of similar blessings in my children's lives. That was their blessing for 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