Seasons by Jeanne Lounsbury
From Eternal Echoes
by John O’Donohue
In prayer, we come nearest to making a real clearance in the thicket of thought. Prayer takes thought to a place of stillness. Prayer slows the flow of the mind until we can begin to see with a new tranquility. In this kind of thought, we become conscious of our divine belonging. We begin to sense the serenity of this clearing. We learn that regardless of the fragmentation and turbulence in so many regions of our lives, there is a place in the soul where the voices and prodding of the world never reach.
It is almost like the image of the tree. The branches can sway and quiver in the wind, the center of the tree, there pertains the stillness of its anchorage. In prayer, thought returns to its origin in the infinite. Attuned to its origin, thought reaches below its own netting. In this way prayer liberates thought from the small rooms where fear and need confine it.
Despite all the negative talk about God, the Divine still remains the one space where thought can become free. There we will be liberated from the repetitive echoes of our own smallness and blindness . . Prayer is the path to the secret belonging at the heart of our lives.
In this season so full of turbulence, may you find a center rooted in stillness. As you breathe in, may you breathe in peace. As you breathe out, may you breathe out love.
Why We Stay
By Jack Ridl
I am on the porch with strong coffee. All the artists, poets, philosophers with no reason, and the haphazard gardeners are sleeping in or waking to their visions. At the feeder - the first birds of the morning: chickadees in their black-and-white cassocks, the house finches, their muted red scarves head to shoulder, nuthatches upside down. This is the way the day is to be - loved without definition. Joy known without needing sorrow. It is only quiet, first light moving in its unencumbered way across each leaf, branched or fallen. Deep in itself the earth trembles, our own way lost and lingering at an unfelt edge.
Achilles
At times in the space between inhalation and exhalation vulnerability exposes skepticism about where life actually resides asking, where is here and how is it there we seek evidence of having arrived to place
Meanwhile sensation exists breathing and amazed dizzy, disoriented. suspended by exquisite beauty and unspeakable suffering tied to mystery tethered between emotions hung on uncertainty fettered to fragility bound to humanness
Grasping the certainty that change is security wisdom is ~ I don’t know surrender gravity vacate assumption abandon control
Conceive life to swing free the unknown path embrace reckless joy as faith shimmies the force
And should life fall from still point twisting orbits setting life on end impossibly insane an unruly constellation of belly and heart clutched tightly in the mouth
Then relinquish ~ open up in a wild ejaculation of fear and limitation
Howl an invitation joining all that is spinning between Heaven & Earth bound together in a delirious felt whisper
Submitted by Kathleen at the request of the Women’s Spirituality Group after she shared it with them.
Watercolor by Melody Fuller
Holding Hands by
Hafiz
Out of a great need we are all holding hands and climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, the terrain around here is far too dangerous for that.
~ Hafiz
Offered by Libby Black
Ways to Listen: An Incomplete List
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
There’s lonely listening, when sitting in a crowd. Open listening as one listens, eyes closed, to the wind in the cottonwood leaves. Numb listening, as one listens to detergent commercials. Baffled listening, as one tries to discern if the speaker could possibly believe what they say. And full-body listening as the cello plays. Sometimes, I’ve felt my whole being break with delight in joyful listening to my daughter’s laughter. And break equally with the unbearable listening as the soil falls on the casket. There’s the holy listening when we listen for the dead, and greedy listening, in which every other utterance is merely a ladder rung for stepping into your own story. Selfless listening knows only to receive. There’s the way you sometimes listen to me, as if my words are waves on the river, not something to interpret, but something familiar. And the way you sometimes listen to my silence and know precisely what I mean. There’s nervous listening, as one listens to the mouse in the wall. And vast listening, like when on a clear night lit only by stars, I can almost sense how the universe not only sings through my body, but listens, too, listens to itself, and knows itself in the listening.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Offered by Jane Strohm
Musical Meditations
Music provides a powerful antidote to the uncertainties of our time, a time when Yeats’s despairing phrase “. . . the centre cannot hold” seems so distressingly relevant. The following works are offered with the hope that you may find in them comfort, serenity, perhaps even hope.
Arvo Pärt, De Profundis. This setting of Psalm 130, which begins with a cry from the depths, rises with the hope that comes from waiting for the Lord and ends with the calming assurance of redemption.
https://tinyurl.com/dnasxw5f
Arvo Pärt, Spiegel im Spiegel. A secular work composed for violin and piano that lends itself to contemplation or meditation. The title translates as “mirror in the mirror,” suggesting a pair of mirrors facing each other that produce infinite reflections.
https://tinyurl.com/3v2vapm7
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Benedictus” from the Missa Solemnis. Text: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in excelsis.” In this late and expansive work, Beethoven’s use of the solo violin throughout the “Benedictus” (some suggest that it represents the Holy Spirit) and the gentle singing of the soloists and chorus convey serenity and peace.
https://tinyurl.com/nebk9zk2
Spiritual: “There is a balm in Gilead.” To Jeremiah’s question “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?,” this comforting spiritual affirms that “Yes, there is.”
https://tinyurl.com/5akzdud6
Schubert: “Andante sostenuto” from Piano Sonata in Bb. Although Schubert’s final piano sonata is not a sacred work, its slow movement easily could be. The opening of that movement evokes despair that is relieved by a more animated and hopeful central section, only to have the opening return, but eventually altered to dissipate the anguish before coming to a peaceful close.
https://tinyurl.com/2p9pvarc
Dmitry Bortnyansky: Let My Prayer Arise (Psalm 141:2-4). In the opening portion of this Psalm David prays that God keeps him from speaking evil and creating excuses for his sins. https://tinyurl.com/46xrjw8z
Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Who Has Need, I Stand with You
By Alberto Rios
In this hour, let us grant to each other the grace that is ours to give. In each other, let us see ourselves, and ourselves again,
That all the times we have looked at our faces in a mirror Should have added up—each face our own, but a reminder as well
We are more than ourselves, that our eyes can see Into that silver world as far as, and beyond, what we understand.
Looking into a mirror, into a window pane, into the water of a lake, A photograph—we are here and over there as well. In that moment
All things are more possible. In this hour of ourselves, you and I, One stronger than the other, let us speak evenly, and make plain
The hope that all this time has held us. Let us extend ourselves Beyond ourselves into the silver, ourselves bigger and farther,
Ten thousand bodies to choose from suddenly in that mirror, us Needing only one, so that things seem again so simple.
Her Soul Will Soar. Watercolor by Catharine Woods. Copyright 2018.
Prayer Walks with Jane Ireland
Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20).
Prayer walking is a spiritual tool to bless the land upon which we walk to provide for and benefit its inhabitants and to honor God. Join Jane Ireland and others as you are interested and able for one or more prayer walking loops encompassing town and city centers and across our landscape. Scripture passages, selected by Jane, will accompany you on your journey.
Prayer Walk Loops: Encompass
• Quantity - 8 prayer walks: new beginning (includes one family walk)
• Frequency - Every 5th day: grace, Tuesday, Oct 1 thru Tuesday, Nov 5
• Time - 3:00 pm: a number signifying divine completion
• Distance - 2 walks around the venue
Encircle the venue once, then encircle once the immediate city blocks.
Prayer walking is a spiritual tool to bless the land upon which we walk to provide for and benefit its inhabitants and to honor God. We are praying peace and righteousness over our cities, towns, county, state, and federal government.
For more information visit - https://tinyurl.com/3y6s8rau
Prayer Walk 5 - City of Louisville
Monday, October 21 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in front of Louisville City Hall at 749 Main St, Louisville
Prayer Walk 6 - Town of Superior
Saturday, October 26 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in parking lot of Superior Town Hall, 124 E Coal Creek Dr, Superior
Prayer Walk 7 - Chautauqua
Thursday, October 31 at 3 pm
Location: Meet in the Chautauqua parking lot below
Chautauqua Auditorium, 12th St, Boulder
Prayer for the state of Colorado
Prayer Walk 8 - Flagstaff Summit
Tuesday, November 5 at 3 pm
Location: Meet at Flagstaff Summit, Flagstaff Dr, Boulder
Prayer for Washington DC: United States Supreme Court Building, Capitol, and White House
A Blessing of Solitude
By John O’Donohue
May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.
May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful and eternal happening. May you learn to see your self with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.
Philippians 4:4-7
Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.