Food for the Soul | October 7th, 2020
10/07
Dear Friends,
As a souvenir from the NY Botanical Garden I bring you a lotus flower. I was there with a friend on Saturday. The weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold, plenty of sunshine, and so many occasions to see God in creation. I pray that you all may be well and healthy, and are able to enjoy the fall.
The current pandemics have affected everybody in some way or another. Mostly negatively. We feel lonely, anxious, angry, impatient, bored, maybe we have or have had Covid-19 and are suffering the physical pain associated with it; many have a deep longing for the way things were before. By now we have probably conceded that the old normal, the old order of things, is not coming back. We are in a period of disorder or transition before we claim a new order or reorder. How long will it take? Impossible to say. We will know deep down when we have arrived at the reorder phase. Meanwhile all we can do is safeguard that Immortal Diamond (Richard Rohr’s term) we all carry in us, the Divine Spark, or the True Self, which allows us to be in communion with God, to live peacefully and productively with ourselves and our neighbors. We can be assured that it is not in God’s nature to abandon us. God is with us in all our longings and suffering. Let us live in the hope of better times.
-Lilian Revel, Pastoral Care Associate
A PRAYER - A PRACTICE - A POEM
Prayer
Psalm 42
My soul thirsts for God, the living God.
When can I enter and see the face of God?
…
Deep calls to deep in the roar of your torrents,
And all your waves and breakers sweep over me.
By day may the Lord send his mercy,
And by night may his righteousness be with me!
I will pray to the God of my life
Why are you downcast, my soul,
Why do you groan with me?
Wait for God, my savior and my God.
Practice
The poem below says it all: slow down, live in the now, in the present; be gentle with yourself, even excessively gentle. Pour yourself a cup of tea and listen to the wind in the trees, or to the waves of the sea. Light a candle at dusk to warm your spirit. Sit in silence.
Poem
For One Who Is Exhausted
When the rhythm of the heart has become hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness takes over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rush through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
-John O’Donohue, from To Bless the Space Between Us