On Healing
Light and Dark Perhaps healing is the opposite of brokenness—or breaking, really. Breaking apart—putting the pieces back together is healing, isn’t it? Gluing the pieces back into its whole state. Or the perceived whole state, anyway. I think we get lost in our understanding of healing when we force our idea of the outcome onto the process. Take a serious illness, for example. We only see healing as a complete restoration of health into life. Death, for us, offers no glimmer of hope for healing. As though death were the opposite of...
read moreThe Autobiography Of A Sea Creature
(by Wendy Patrice Williams) Coming Home To My Body Prologue Giraffes surrounded me on the wall, those long necks. Covered by plastic, they were cold when I touched them. The smell of alcohol reminded me of the nurse who would dab my arm with a wet cotton ball and prick me with a needle. Dr. Constad’s voice was warm gravel. “Look at you,” he said, squatting so his eyes were at equal height with mine. “You are a miracle.” Happiness filled up my little body, like air rushing into a green balloon. “Unbelievable,” he continued. “I wouldn’t...
read moreOn Brokenness
Look to the Soul What is brokenness except the absence of wholeness? But when you break a whole apart, each piece is, in itself, another whole. Science teaches us that—that no matter how many times you break something apart, you find another whole. So what exactly does that mean in terms of humanity? Because when you take a child out of its family, he might not remain whole in terms of integrity. But then being part of a whole family that is corrupt might compromise the integrity of any of its parts. But, again, maybe not. Saints come out...
read moreWaiting For Healing
(by Kathryn Belicki) Five years ago I had a remarkable lunch with my friend Linda. It was a tough period for both of us—Linda had cancer and dearly wanted to avoid the prescribed surgery, and so had turned to naturopathic medicine and prayer. I had an undiagnosed neuromuscular disorder and was in the nail-biting “wait and see” period, which would tell whether this was benign or something that would kill me. After greeting each other with a hug, we squeezed into our seats. It was one of those narrow cafés that would comfortably...
read moreOn Home
Arena For me, home is associated with a person that you want to be with. The idea of home. The reality of home is something else completely different. Different from the idea. Different from the ideal. The reality of home is like being on a roller-coaster out-of-control at Niagara Falls in a hurricane. It is an emotional challenge, a continual confront to my sense of balance. The assault is something I hunker down against. But the weapons I use against the onslaught, the attempts to rip me limb-from-limb, are the sharpness of my mind, and...
read moreOn Burdens
The Unseen Side Of Honor Burden is what shows us the unseen side of our responsibilities—our load. Instead of honor, it is burden. Or, to be exact, it is both honor and burden. We have each other. And the burden of each and every breath. Each and every touch. Each and every exchange. There is family. There is friend. There is enemy. All have his own basket of regrets, of unfulfilled wants, of unreached goals. It’s a flowing stream. Not meant to become anything. Just movement. But we don’t know that. We think the people in our...
read moreOn Mystery
The Unknown My whole life has been about The Mystery. The mystery of God. The mystery of life. And this whole mystery thing has meant two things to me: the unknown and being wrong. The unknown feels like a bottomless chasm. It only feels bottomless. But, in fact, when it’s time for The Mystery to be resolved, I land at the bottom. Hard. Absolute. The Truth Revealed. But in the meantime, between knowing that there is some knowing looming in my future and the actual knowing, there is only the sensation of falling—without support,...
read moreBirdsong
(by Anne D. LeClaire) Learning the Difference Between Listening And Waiting To Talk When she first arrived at her uncle’s estate and was exploring the grounds, Mary Lennox caught sight of a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the topmost branch of a tree, “and suddenly he burst into his winter song – almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.” On one particular morning my friend Ann and I were sitting in her backyard, which is bordered by woods. Suddenly Ann leaned forward, her body as poised as a...
read moreOn Retreat
Walk Away It’s a battle term—retreat. It is the opposite of attack. To remove oneself from the fray. To hide amongst the trees, out of the sunlight, off the plain of conflict. It means to drop your weapon; to run, empty-handed away. It means to stop fighting; to stop thinking about fighting, even. Retreat. We want to think of it as a time of rest, of serenity, of knitting our frayed souls back together. But it’s really about Battle, or the lack thereof. There is no shame in retreat because it isn’t necessarily ...
read moreHere Is Good News
(by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt) Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. (Matthew 15:29-31) Great crows came to Jesus, bringing the lame, the maimed, the blind, the dumb and putting...
read moreTo Wrestle
Open Hands A funny word, I thought when I first read it. Not just a funny word for a topic for contemplative prayer, but a funny word just on its own. Period. Full stop. Wrestle? Of course, all I could think of was the very common use of it these days—and very common indeed in terms of the quality of life—the term, mud wrestling. So, I am sitting in contemplative prayer and wondering what in Heaven’s name does mud wrestling—or even high-school varsity wrestling—have to do with anything. Wrestle, though. Not wrestling. To wrestle. Not...
read moreOn Freedom
Change There was the idea of openness at the beginning of the prayer. But that soon changed to change. Freedom as our ability to change. To change things around us. To change things about ourselves. To be changed. I don’t know why I saw this. To me, just off the cuff, what I would say freedom meant was the finding of an open door. Through which I could walk. Not to be trapped. Isn’t trapped the opposite of freedom? But perhaps “unable” is the true opposite of freedom. “Unable” to move. Perhaps that is why...
read moreA Turtle Came To Visit Me Today
Spiritual Warfare On The Move, Very Slowly I don’t know why, but I looked out onto the stoop of the back door. And there he was. I wondered what magic had brought him there. He wasn’t there on his own, so to speak. Next to him was an empty peanut shell, broken in half. When I first spotted him, the turtle was vigorously wrestling with one piece of the shell. Perhaps he was trying to eat it. If so, he didn’t get much into him. Perhaps he thought it was an enemy and was going to get the best of it. Well, if that was...
read moreOn Prayer
Slide Show What a full prayer this was! The images never stopped. It was a slide show, with many images all montaged together. By the end I thought it had become a mosaic. And then the mosaic was on the ground, under my feet. Instead of being on a wall. It was too much, really, to look at. To take in. My life has been a path of prayer. I even wondered, during this time of prayer focusing on the concept of prayer, if every single lesson I have ever learned from God has been about prayer. But then my mind took a moment and ran a finger...
read moreOn Love
Another Door It seems, these days, that when I do some contemplating doors are a recurring theme. I am grateful to you for teaching me about who I am. Picture: door. Death is behind a door. A closed door. Life is at the top of an open door—a door leading up—not in. Strange. Now here is 20 minutes of contemplative prayer on the concept of love. You’d think I’d get a lot. Such an immense subject. So fresh in my mind. And on my heart. And all I get is the image of a door. And then behind the door all sorts of scenarios. Nothing...
read moreOn Doubt
No Doubt I couldn’t find any doubt in me. Perhaps it’s my age. Perhaps it’s just the nature of the valley I’m currently in. Perhaps it’s just the stage of spiritual growth I am in. But there was no doubt around my heart. Where I would most expect it to be. For the first time in my life, I feel as though the path for my emotions is clear. Absolutely clear. And happy. A most unusual state for my heart. And my thoughts were in no way twisting around on each other, tripping over the others, trying desperately to find...
read moreTo Fast
Cleaning The Gutters Again—again after the last writing I did—what I saw in my prayer while focusing on the concept of “fast,” was parts. Parts of me that lie alongside each other, and between them are gutters. The gutters collect the runoff from the individual parts. And, for me, to fast means to keep those gutters clean. To keep the parts whole and on their own. Maintaining the integrity of the parts so that the whole functions in a preferred manner. A good way? When I thought about food—around which the concept of...
read moreOn Simplicity
Mind, Body, Soul When I closed my eyes and prayed, using the word, simplicity, as my anchor—my rock to sit on during the prayer—what I saw was myself—my body—separated into three parts: my head my torso my hips and legs I kept looking at that image. It reminded me of that game we could play as children. A person—perhaps just his face—broken into three parts. Multiple faces, all broken along the same lines. All layered on top of each other. So you could flip different parts at different rates and mix and match the face. A woman’s...
read moreOn Faith
Hands I remember when I was learning about the five realms of God. The second realm is surrender. This is when God gives you something you don’t want to accept, but you have no choice. This is where all the pain of our lives comes to us. The key to surrender is faith. And I remember very clearly the visions I had about this. I am in a very small boat, with a mast and sail in the middle. And a big storm comes up. A huge storm. And the definition of faith that I was taught was that faith is the hanging on to that mast in the face of...
read moreOn Stillness
The Sneeze I sat down in my big, over-stuffed chair. I lit two candles: one on the mini-altar across from the chair, and the other on the little table by my hand where I keep my books for prayer time. I set the countdown timer: 20 minutes. I closed my eyes. I began immediately to feel that sensation that a part of my insides was melting, and part of me was starting to drip. Down. Down. Down. Deeper into contemplation. I was reaching for that experience of complete stillness. And then it happened. The sneeze. In the quiet of my mind, it was...
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