Sit and Eat

A Poem for You

After a recent conversation about tradition and oceans, my friend and esteemed colleague Kurt Nelson sent me this sharp piece by Donald Babcock.  I'm pretty in love with it.

The Duck
Donald Babcock

Now we're ready to look at something pretty special. It's a duck, riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf. No it isn't a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him. This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.

He isn't cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it.

He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.

Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he realizes it.

And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it! He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity — which it is. He has made himself a part of the boundless by easing himself into just where it touches him.

I like the duck. He doesn't know much, but he's got religion.

 

Learning to Pray: Faith and Belief

I'm making my way through Harvey Cox's latest book, "The Future of Faith" at the moment.  He uses this story to begin a conversation about the difference between faith and belief, which he believes to be a hallmark of the religious age we're carving out:

"The Spanish writer Miguel Unamuno (1864-1936) dramatizes the radical dissimilarity of faith and belief in his short story "Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr," in which a young man returns from the city to his native village in Spain because his mother is dying.  In the presence of the local priest she clutches his hand and asks him to pray for her.  The son does not answer, but as they leave the room, he tells the priest that, much as he would like to, he cannot pray for him mother because he does not believe in God.  "That's nonsense," the priest replies.  "You don't have to believe in God to pray."
"The priest in Unamuno's story recognized the distinction between faith and belief.  He know that prayer, like faith, is more primordial than belief."

We believe with our heads.  Faith lives in our gut.  Whether we feel God to be present or absent, we can always return to ritual: to breaking bread, sitting quiet and still, retreating into the rhythm of our breath, singing one phrase, and then the next.  The practice leads.  Everything else follows. 

A Poem for You

I'm late posting my sermon this week because I'm waiting for permission for two folks who are mentioned in it.  It should be up soon, but to tide you over, here's a lovely little something from Jane Hirshfield.

Three Times My Life Has Opened

Jane Hirshfield

Three times my life has opened.

Once, into darkness and rain.

Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts

     to remember each time it enters the act of love.

Once, to the fire that holds all.

These three were not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves

     like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door.  It opens.  Then it is closed.  But a slip of light

     stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,

     or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

A Poem for You

Rachel found this poem in last week's New Yorker and we read it at Dinner Church.  I've fallen head over heels for it.  Read it aloud and it will pray you.

The Lightkeeper

Carolyn Forche

A night without ships.  Foghorns called into walled cloud, and you

still alive, drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks,

darkness once crusted with stars, but now death-dark as you sail inward.

Through wild gorse and sea wrack, through heather and torn wool

you ran, pulling me by the hand, so I might see this for once in my life:

the spin and spin of light, the whirring of it, light in search of the lost,

there since the era of fire, era of candles and hollow-wick lamps,

whale oil and solid wick, colza and lard, kerosene and carbide,

the signal fires lighted on this perilous coast in the Tower of Hook.

You say to me stay awake, be like the lensmaker who died with his

lungs full of glass, be the yew in blossom when bees swarm, be

their amber cathedral and even the ghosts of Cistercians will be kind to you.

In a certain light as after rain, in pearled clouds or the water beyond,

seen or sensed water, sea or lake, you would stop still and gaze out

for a long time.  Also when fireflies opened and closed in the pines,

and a star appeared, our only heaven.  You taught me to live like this.

That after death it would be as it was before we were born.  Nothing

to be afraid.  Nothing but happiness as unbearable as the dread

from which it comes.  Go toward the light always, be without ships.

Learning to Pray: Doing Laundry

Every week I drag home a big bag from St. Lydia's full of dirty napkins and wet dish towels and soiled tablecloths.  It gets stuck in the basket of my bike or toted on the subway, and then I cart it down to my neighbor's, who's lucky enough to have a washer and dryer in her apartment.  Sometimes my own laundry gets mixed in, sometimes not.  Sometimes I do it Monday like I'm supposed to, sometimes I wait till too late on Saturday.  Most times I grumble about it.  But it always gets done.

 

St. Benedict founded a monastery in Monte Cassino in 529 ad.  The community there was built on a foundation of ora et labora: prayer and work.  In fact, the two are the same.  At Lydia's work is another kind of prayer, acknowledging that the stuff that makes up our daily lives is the most sacred stuff of all.

In his rule for the community, Benedict's writing merges the mundane and the sublime:

Let the brethren serve one another, 

and let no one be excused from the kitchen service

except by reason of sickness

or occupation in some important work.

For this service brings increase of reward and of charity.

The one who is ending his week of service

shall do the cleaning on Saturday.

He shall wash the towels

with which the brethren wipe their hands and feet;

and this server who is ending his week,

aided by the one who is about to begin, 

shall wash the feet of all the brethren.

He shall return the utensils of his office to the cellarer

clean and in good condition,

and the cellarer in turn shall consign them to the incoming server,

in order that he may know what he gives out and what he receives back.

It's almost comic, Benedict talking about who's job it is to wash the towels and that the forks really should be clean before they go back in the drawer, but this is the stuff of life, and the stuff of God.  That we serve one another "brings an increase of reward and charity."  That we serve one another makes us love one another.

At Lydia's we all work together to prepare the meal, to set the table, to clean up.  I drag the laundry home every week, not because there's no one else to do it, but because it teaches me to love.  Our work is our prayer.  After a while, the work does work in us.

A Poem for You

Airport in Amsterdam

Adam Zagajewski

for my mother 

December rose, pinched desire

in the dark and empty garden,

rust on the trees and thick smoke

as if someone's loneliness were burning.

Out walking yesterday I thought again

about the airport in Amsterdam --

the corridors without apartments,

waiting rooms filled with other people's dreams

stained with misfortune.

Airplanes struck the cement

almost angrily, hawks

without prey, hungry.

Maybe your funeral should have been held

here -- hubbub, bustling crowds,

a good place not to be.

One has to look after the dead

beneath the airport's great tent.

We were nomads again;

you wandered westward in your summer dress,

amazed by war and time,

the moldering ruins, the mirror

reflecting a little, tired life.

In the darkness final things shone:

the horizon, a knife, and every rising sun.

I saw you off at the airport, hectic

valley where tears are for sale.

December rose, sweet orange:

without you there can be

no Christmases.

Mint leaves soothe a migraine...

In restaurants you always

studied the menu longest...

In our ascetic family

you were the mistress of expression,

but you died so quietly...

The old priest will garble your name.

The train will halt in the forest.

At dawn snow will fall

on the airport in Amsterdam.

Where are you?

There where memory lies buried.

There where memory grows.

There where the orange, rose, and snow lie buried.

There where ashes grow.

Read more from Zagajewski's volume, "Mysticism for Beginners."  

Learning to Pray: just two

Anne Lamott writes in her book, Traveling Mercies,

 

"Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.'"

Good thing she's around to remind us we don't need much more than that.

I'd recommend the book. 

Learning to Pray: Gratitude

Here's a good way to pray.  Because gratitude is often much more foundational than I give it credit for:

Find a good way to sit.

Breathe for a while.

Relax that place right behind your eyes.

Remember your whole day, bit by bit.  Start in the morning and go straight through, in time with your breathing.  With each breath, each image, say thank you.

If there are memories that stop you, that need more, pause there and pray for whatever needs praying.

Learning to Pray: Humming

My friend Ana Hernandez wrote this excellent piece on humming as spiritual practice in her blog, which I recommend.  Enjoy.

The Great Calm: Humming Your Way to a Peaceful Silence

Ana Hernandez

It may seem paradoxical that one of the most direct routes to silence and a peaceful state of mind is by making sound, but humming is the fastest way I know to achieve a deep meditative state. At the beginning of my prayer time, I sit on my cushion looking for silence and a little peace. Humming helps me to quiet my mind, so I can enter the realm of contemplation. Listening for the silence beyond the sound has helped me to be a little more mindful, and to keep my heart open in difficult situations. More important, the silence created by humming has allowed me to dive deeper than I thought I was capable of, and helps manage my emotions in a healthy, congruent way, through some painful storms.

Some people can practice sitting meditation for hours on end. Some of us have a hard time sitting still for five minutes, much less sitting for an extended period, and some find it difficult to clear enough interior space to be able to listen deeply when we do manage to sit. The first five minutes of sitting are always the hardest for me, and some days trying to calm down feels almost impossible.

In the Bible, there’s a story in Mark’s Gospel about a miracle in which Jesus stills a great storm. The disciples are out in a boat when a great windstorm arises,

“and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.” They wake the sleeping Jesus, and say “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

In his book The Dharma of Jesus, George Soares-Prabhu reminds us that "The great calm is not simply a return to a pre-storm quiet, but the attainment of a new depth of stillness, immeasurably greater than that obtaining during the anxious bustle that preceded the storm… We are suddenly made aware of the fact that the stilling of the storm… is a rescue operation in which the men are saved from the forces of destruction that continually threaten the world we live in. We experience vividly the precariousness of human existence lived out in a world teetering on the edge of chaos. The fragile boat of man’s existence can at any moment be overwhelmed by the sea.”

The fragile boat of my existence can be overwhelmed by any number of things. What I have been able to find through my humming practice is the depth of stillness of which Soares-Prabhu speaks. Humming 10-20 minutes every day has helped me to manifest a more open and reflective state. I can sometimes hear that still, small voice, and the amount of time I can sit quietly (without squirming) has increased. I feel more grounded, relaxed, and better able to cope.

Humming supports our spiritual and emotional health by helping us to be more in tune with what’s actually going on in us, here and now. To get started, just put your lips together and begin. Push your lips out lightly while humming softly, until you feel the vibrations nasally. That’s all there is to it. Try humming softly in the shower; on public transportation (no one will even hear you); while walking, or doing dishes. Hum loudly, softly, high and low, slide around; don’t be afraid to make sound. It’s important to play with your voice and see what it feels like. What you put into it is what you’ll get out of it, so don’t just hum from the neck up. Gently ride your breath. Have fun with it.

As the issues of your life drift by, notice how you feel, what’s comfortable and what isn’t, and revisit those places every couple of days to see what’s different. Pay attention to the changes in your breathing, the way it deepens, the space between your breaths, the energy within and around you. If you’re anything like me, and even if you’re not, my guess is that after a while, you’ll find you are very, very quiet, and you’ll have reached the place where it’s possible to just sit. The vibrations from your humming practice will keep working in you even after you cease making the sound, and you’ll be right where you need to be.

A Poem for You

A friend wrote a short piece that we sing at St. Lydia's as we pray.  The text is simply, "what we need is here."  It's drawn from this poem by Wendell Barry. 

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes.  Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here.  And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye,

clear.  What we need is here.