Tag Archive for: New England

Loving Kindness Meditation

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There is an ancient and transformative meditation that the Buddha encouraged that elicits a gentle spirit, towards ourselves and others.

It is a practice that opens the heart toward forgiveness, even towards those who we may have deemed enemies. We may have people in our life who have caused us great pain or we may feel have stolen from us our essential self.  This, of course, is an illusion (though it can hold a powerful and long lasting spell on us if we are not awakened to it).  With loving kindness meditation, we can be restored to remember who we are, to listen our own good heart, our own best Self.

We can discover the wisdom to open the doors and windows of the Spirit.  It begins, always,  with a loving kindness towards ourselves.  It is after all, almost impossible to truly love others…until we know, love, and accept ourselves.  From this touchstone, we can spread our ability to love towards those in our inner circle, and then out into the wider world.

Begin with the breath of mindfulness, it is the breath that calls us to this moment.  It is life’s breath.  It is the breath that breathes through you, that you do not have to control, that you do not ultimately control. Be in your body.  It is a good body, and worthy of your care and respect.

Each day, for as many days as you can be present, repeat these ancient words:

“May I be filled with loving kindness/May I be well in body and mind/May I be safe from inner and outer dangers/May I be happy/Truly happy and free”*

*(taken from Jack Kornfield’s Audio Meditation on Loving Kindness)

I do this, dear reader, and it is changing me.  I watched a woman laughing on a 100 degree day in Charlotte, NC with her labrador retriever, getting cooled off in a beautiful fountain in the park.  She was directing her dog to the places that he could catch a drink of water.  She maneuvered him so deftly, so joyfully…it was only as I left that I realized that she was blind, and that this dog was her eyes.  Or perhaps something more?

With loving kindness, we are given eyes to see.  She was seeing, though not without the aid of  natural sight.

And last night, I caught a glimpse of early summer evening light on two church steeples and the glint  of their brass weathervanes…signs of old New England, and felt blessed, blessed to be exactly where I was.  Steeped in love and kindness towards myself, the ones I have been given to love, and towards those who crossed my paths…all bathed in this light.  Blessed be.

WORSHIP

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Today’s word of the day is worship.  It comes from roots of words sprung from the West Saxon and Anglican languages (very close in their etymology) meaning the condition or state (ship) of being worthy, of having honor or merit (worth).  It a primarily used as a verb and involves action.   Traditionally, we think of worship as a noun/verb.  It is something we engage in on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday mornings (depending on our faith) and is something we go to (noun) and do things at (verb).  Worship is usually segregated in our minds to the religious aspect of our lives, communicating about God with other like minded souls.

This notion of worship is good.  It allows us for the continuity of rituals and theological language that may have been a part of our family for generations.  It may be the vocabulary of words for God and talk about God that we have waited for our whole lives, that before this time may have seemed elusive to us. We may feel like we have finally come home.

Sharing our own ideas about God with others and finding that this God that we are talking about is worthy of our time, devotion, effort… and love, can only enrich the Giver and the Receiver, those that hear the words and those that speak them.       

Yet, so much that is beyond our immediate control is worthy of our devotion or at the very least, our recogntion. With the daily reminders of new life sprung from dormant earth in the blessings we call early spring, I join with a multitude of others in nature worshipping.  The forsythias, the daffodils, cherry blossoms, dogwoods, apple blossoms, lilacs, pansies, jonquils, and the bright, bright green on the buds of all variety of trees are worthy of my wonder, my gratitude, and my belief in the continued promise of rebirth  when all seems dark and gray and colorless.

Yesterday in the early morning hours, I was driving past one of the most beautiful farms in all of New England (that declaration must be so) and there was this mist lying low, formed in response from the cold early air and warm ground.

I have been driving past this property almost every day for close to two decades and its ability to inspire has not waned in the least. The light streamed through with celestial rays and even though my children thought I was completely a “noob”  at this moment, I was giddy with worship.

I would like to conclude with a poem that I wrote in 2006:

Saltonstall Farm

God is not a secret/Tucked away in a special person, distant place or thing/Exotic and ethereal/Turn left, make a right, follow due east after the fork.

Instead, wonder everyday in this…

Green Green Green/Ever and spring and sage and pea./ Sprawling fields/Busily breeding/Open to all.

White farmhouse/rambling/black shutters/red barn/A silo/battered tin roof/America’s  young antiquity, new england.

Bovine beauties and their babies/Perennially bask against this bucolic backdrop/Chocolate and cream/Doe-eyed and docile/Sticking together/Telling the weather.

Turkeys race back and forth, back and forth/Zigzagging the country road/Can’t decide…gobble gobble gobble/Which way…gobble gobble gobble/To go…so like us/Imperfect, indecisive; but still moving.

Neat rows of cornstalks line up/Good little soldiers/Giving life for life./The trees, acres of them, pine and oak, maple and birch, frame the scene.

One lone elm sits deep in the middle of the field/Shades the cows, flaunts its splendor.

At Christmas time, lights dress its empty branches/Clothing its nakedness, clad in white light/ Glad tidings for the harried, the weary; the traveler. 

And in the morning, a cool mist hovers low and mysterious over the land.

And in the evening, the moon rises high, casting shadows, sculpting all like a bas relief.

And Always, whispers between created and Creator.

DAWN AND RESURRECTION ARE SYNONYMOUS

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This morning, I woke up before my dog, to attend one of our local church’s annual Sunrise Easter service. I am not a member of this church, but have lived in this little hamlet of 4500 souls for 18 years. It’s an everyone knows everyone kind of place.  And yet, for one reason or another, I’d never attended before.  It’s held at the shore of our Town Pond, which is lovely and secluded and has an ancient history (if one could call New England history ancient.) As I walked the path to the pond, there were luminarias lighting the way (white paper bags weighted with sand and little tea candles in them).  The hot pink and grey-blue sunrise rose up over the water, blessing our sleepy-eyed band of celebrants.  And while I understand that many past services had a frost and a chill in the air, today’s early moments began balmy.  The crackling bonfire was more symbolic perhaps than necessary.  Although, I don’t think we can ever get enough of the symbols, the concepts, or the people that bring light to the world.   The mood was meditatively quiet. The prayers were simple, direct, and ready for immediate application.   

I saw some of my dear friends around that fire, those who know the kind of challenging year I’ve had.  I felt their good will towards me through their eyes, their smiles, and hugs.  I hope they sensed the same from me. Resurrection is the happy part, but its significance is diminished if we don’t remember what comes before it.   For most of the world’s Christians, today is Resurrection day. It means that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and returned to life everlasting… AFTER suffering a torturous, laborious, and unjust death.  Even outside of Christianity, many faiths believe in a future state after death, where there will be a resurrection, a rising again, to new life in some shape or form.  Yet resurrection’s power, its gift of joy which passeth all understanding (no matter your faith) comes from the awe, the incredulity of being brought back from our darkest places, when we are crippled or broken or blind and death seems certain.  

Ena Zizi was there. (From an excerpt from Paul Jeffrey’s article, “Out of the Rubble”, March 23rd,  The Christian Century:

After having been buried for a week in the rubble of Haiti’s January 12th earthquake, Ena Zizi was rescued by the Mexican team called the  Gophers (rescue workers, some of them survivors themselves of a horrific earthquake in Mexico city in 1985).  As they pulled her dirty and injured body out on a broken piece of plywood salvaged from the rubble and carefully passed her down over three stories of debris to the ground, the 70-year-old woman was singing.  Her singing was inarticulate, as she hadn’t had any water to drink for seven days.  Yet her joy was infectious.  The members of the Mexican rescue team who were carrying her began crying. 

Zizi, who was severely dehydrated and had suffered a broken leg and dislocated hip, yelled for help for hours, then for two days, conversed with a priest, and when he grew silent, she “talked only to God.”   Her singing was gratitude, the indominability of the human spirit, and a way for her rescuers to find her.  To the South African and Mexican rescue teams surrounding her, she was very real proof of resurrection.

Resurrection is never just personal.  It is always in relationship.  Yesterday, while I was out on my daily run, I ran into a neighbor out for a walk with her two school age children.  Her 11-year-old daughter has been struggling with leukemia since May.  I noticed her hair was growing back in a full, spiky, long crew cut fashion.  And she had dyed it in  colors of the rainbow.  I wept later to witness her resurrection, the “resumption of vigor” (one definition).  And her courage to wait on it, expectantly, faithfully.       

Song of the Day: Amazing Grace by John Newton (1725-1807) (Ex-slave trader)

Stanza from the Song of the Day: “Through many dangers, toils, and snares/I have already come/’Twas Grace that brought me safe thus far/and Grace will lead me home.”

Quote of the Day: “Dawn and resurrection are synonymous.  The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.” -Victor Hugo