Tag: unity

Open to All

Rachel Henry2 Comments

Let’s start with the poem this week because it is breathtaking:

Eagle Poem
By Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

The hills in this corner of California are covered with wild mustard just now, a striking yellow flower that grows tall. An eagle searching for prey amid the mustard sees colors we will never know and cannot even imagine, including those in the ultraviolet range.

Hills covered in yellow wild mustard flowers.
Wild mustard in bloom in Shoreline Park, Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Photo by carlfbagge on Flicker. Shared under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 2.0.

Every plant, animal, person, or rock we meet contains a world, a mystery that we can no more comprehend than we can see what eagle sees. If we are to live as prayer in this world, we must “open [our] whole [selves]” to these mysteries, including our own.

The haiku poet Basho wrote, “Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.” That is, open your body, mind, heart, and spirit to that encounter with pine or bamboo. Or with the earth beneath your feet or the person in the cubicle next to you. Let the other’s mystery speak. Encounter a reality rather than projecting one outward.

When we can let go of our selves, of the set of beliefs and perceptions with which we order the world, we come to understand that all creation is “one whole voice that is [us].” Then we can “Breathe in, knowing we are made of/ All this.”

We are physically composed of the sunlight and rain we ate for dinner last night in the form of plants and animals. Our emotional reservoirs are filled with love from family, friends, pets. Our spirits share one fabric, one ground with everything on this Earth and in this universe. We are made of all this.

And so “we must take the utmost care/ And kindness in all things.”

We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

 

All That’s Happening

Rachel Henry1 Comment

On Tuesday morning, after a long weekend of mostly solitude—more Netflix-watching solitude than holiness-in-a-cave solitude—I remembered to pray that my day’s work would contribute to the incarnation of God, an idea found in the Camaldoli oblate rule. The prayer reminded me that even while doing my job, I exist not primarily to get things done but rather to manifest God’s presence in the world.

Then on Wednesday I forgot all about it. As a friend said recently, imperfection is a…pain.

But imperfection is part of the deal, part of life, part of the practice. “Enter your practice until all of life is your practice,” Jim Finley says. What exactly are we practicing? Finley again: “Assuming the stance with the least resistance to being overtaken by God.” Because all that’s ever really happening is union with God, though we spend most of our lives not-so-blissfully unaware.

I’m not saying that there’s nothing more important than our relationship with the Divine; I’m saying that there’s nothing else period. Everything belongs to that relationship, as Richard Rohr often says. All the intractable limitations that I mistakenly think define me—they are part of the practice.

I don’t know how to include hatred and violence in this reality of belonging. Including them is not an argument for their continuation, but change doesn’t happen by exclusion; it happens by engagement. Plenty of terrible things we wish didn’t exist do, both internally and externally. How can we welcome actions and situations that are so clearly wrong?

Perhaps it helps to see that the most violent places are the hurting places, to know that, to one extent or another, every human being carries a wound. Physical wounds don’t heal by ignoring them, and neither will spiritual ones. Maybe we can grant our most difficult moments the same grace I attempted to grant my work, the possibility of being the presence of God in the world. Maybe that’s how healing happens. Maybe that’s redemption.

God’s Will: Greater Unity, Greater Love

Rachel Henry5 Comments

While trying to process the U.S. presidential election results, I picked up a book of Hafiz poems. I closed my eyes, asked for what I needed to know, and opened at a random page.

Here’s what I got. If you’re like me, you’ll love the beginning and want to throw this blog across the room somewhere in the middle. Just keep reading.

There Could Be Holy Fallout

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort,
It may seem, all alone.

Sit down, my dear,
Take a few deep breaths,
Think about a loyal friend.
Where is your music,
Your pet, a brush?

Surely one who has lasted as long as you
Knows some avenue or place inside
That can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot slay your panic,
Then say within
As convincingly as you can,
“It is all God’s will!”

Now pick up your life again.
Let whatever is out there
Come charging in,

Laugh and spit into the air,
There could be holy fallout.

Throw those ladders like tiny match sticks
With “just” phantoms upon them
Who might be trying to scale your heart.

Your love has an eloquent tone.
The sky and I want to hear it!

If you still feel helpless
Give our battle cry again

Hafiz
Has shouted it a myriad times,

“It is all,
It is all the Beloved’s will!”

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future

Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy fallout

Filling your mouth and palms
With Joy!

Let’s talk about God’s will for a minute because that was the part that made me think, you have got to be kidding, except in slightly stronger language. I tend to think about God’s will in human dimensions, which in election terms would translate to God picked a certain candidate to win. Given that political systems rarely if ever reflect the kind of justice that wisdom traditions describe—regardless of which group is in power—I think it’s safe to say this can’t possibly be what God’s will means.

This poem still speaks to us almost 700 years after it was written because God’s will is always the same. It is self-emptying love, as Richard Rohr would say, the manifestation of love in space and time. We are manifestations of that love, all of us—the people we agree and disagree with, the ones who love us and who hate us, the animals, insects, plants, planets, black holes, etc. “It is all the Beloved’s will!”

Hafiz isn’t recommending submission to situations that injure our hearts and souls. He is urging us to get a wider perspective, to remember that we are all in this together and that there is something larger than human choices and actions moving in and through creation. We can pick any issue we want to divide ourselves over, but in the end it won’t work.

God wills ever greater unity, ever greater love. That’s what we, collectively, are growing toward. We don’t have any choice. That’s what God does, and all of us are manifestations of God.

If we can get clear on this—individually and together—Hafiz tells us, and I agree, that our destination is joy. Bring on the holy fallout.