Food for the Soul | March 2nd, 2022

3/2/2022

Dear Friends,

Today you have probably heard the words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” You may recall Genesis 3:19 when God expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and says to them: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Sometimes you might hear the phrase “Stardust you are, and to stardust you shall return.” I like this phrase; for me, stardust contains the entire cosmos, divine DNA, and thus I can be confident that I am divine.

We start the season of Lent today. Lent is a time for introspection, for discernment, for transformation. Jesus goes to the desert to be transformed. He wanders around in solitude to figure out what his calling is to be. The desert is a lonely place with little to do and little to distract him.  Out of this desert will grow the Light of the world, and one of the things he teaches us is that we too, can be light to the world.

Lent is partially coincidental with the season of spring. In Dutch (the language I grew up with) the word Lent means spring. How appropriate! In spring we can finally observe our days getting longer again; we celebrate the increasing light. Although we are experiencing more light, at this very moment nature is still quite barren, here in the northeast even covered with snow. I went for a walk yesterday, near the beach (the salt marshes by Silver Sands State Park), and took the above photo. It looks so desolate. In the summer this land is teeming with life, birds and plants that are alive and growing; now everything looks dead. But the light is gradually starting to activate growth. I sense the promise of new life in the air. Can we perhaps take this promise, or maybe I should say hope, to mean that we, too, are ready to emerge out of the isolation of the pandemic? This turns out to be difficult for some people. We may have lost the habit of being physically around others. Let’s work on this for the duration of Lent. Let’s turn our faces to the light, to God.

We also need this time for our own transformation. For this first week I propose that we reflect about how God’s divinity is also with us; how we are the light of the world. In the proposed meditation practice, we learn to go back to our true self by letting go of all thoughts and attachments. This is almost like a prerequisite for becoming aware of our unity with the Divine.

During this season of Lent, I will be writing again on a weekly basis, and focusing each time on a specific aspect that may help us to achieve our transformation. Today I leave you with the following thoughts about light and letting go:

Uphold the Light that your inner light
may illumine fear-filled hearts...
Light comes with each new dawn.
yield to the Light within;
become a chalice of light
for the world!

~ Nan Merrill from LUMEN CHRISTI...HOLY WISDOM

PRACTICE

Let us start this season of Lent by practicing letting go and just being. Letting go of our judgements and just observing what is. Letting go of our egos and just accepting our true self. Here is a practice that helps us to achieve this state of being.

Sit comfortably or lie down. Close your eyes. Center your attention on the feeling of the in-and-out breath. As you feel the sensations of the breath, make a very quiet mental notation of breath, breath with both the in-breath and the out-breath. When a thought arises that’s strong enough to take your attention away from the breath, simply note it as not breath. Whether it is the most beautiful thought in the world or the most terrible, in this meditation, it is simply not breath. Some of your thoughts may be tender and caring, some may be boring and banal; all that matters is that they’re not the breath. See them, recognize them, very gently let them go, and bring your attention back to the feeling of the breath. In this meditation we practice staying detached, centered, and calm when we encounter thoughts. We simply recognize it is not breath and very gently let the thought go, returning our attention to what is breath. When you feel ready, you can open your eyes and relax.

POEM

Gravity’s Law

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing—
each stone, blossom, child —
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke from "Gravity’s Law" in RILKE'S BOOK OF HOURS, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy