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About Tree of Life Spiritual Direction
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
Sharon’s Christmas Prayer
She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.
She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars,
The baby was God.
And she jumped in the air
whirled round, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.
John Shea
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that another made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider
–lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may encourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give – yes or no, or maybe –should be clear:
the darkness around us is deep
William Stafford
The Man Watching
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister.
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great.
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestlers' sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Antonio Machado
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
Emily Dickinson, 539
The Province of the Saved
Should be the Art – To save –
Through Skill obtained in
Themselves –
The Science of the Grave
No Man can understand
But He that hath endured
The Dissolution – in Himself –
that Man – be qualified
To qualify Despair
To Those who failing new –
Mistake Defeat for Death –
Each time –
Till acclimated – to –
Earth is crammed with Heaven and Every every common bush is afire with God But only he who sees takes of his shoes The rest sit round it and pick blackberries And daub their natural faces unaware.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of Truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.
John 16:12 NIV
My Prayers Must Meet A Brazen Heaven Gerard Manley Hopkins
My prayers must meet a brazen heaven
And fail and scatter all away.
Unclean and seeming unforgiven
My prayers I scarcely call to pray.
I cannot buoy my heart above;
Above I cannot entrance win.
I reckon precedents of love,
But feel the long success of sin.
My heaven is brass and iron my earth:
Yea, iron is mingled with my clay,
So harden'd is it in this dearth
Which praying fails to do away.
Nor tears, nor tears this clay uncouth
Could mould, if any tears there were.
A warfare of my lips in truth,
Battling with God, is now my prayer.
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.
Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
Albert Camus
How to be a grateful soul by Kassi Wilson
When the moon pulls you close and you
rise as ocean tides that sink and swirl
at the edge of the earth…
When you have more than one personality
each with unfulfilled dreams…
When your appetite for life is ravenous
won't fit in the squares of a linear week…
When you have mood swings that mimic
the weather, one minute you're breezy
as October leaves, before long fog lumbers
through throwing wintery hail…
Your heart despairs mid changing
temps, so you wither and freeze
as a bullfrog hanging on for dear, dear life.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
Jeremiah 17:8b
Open Mind, Open Heart- Thomas Keating
"Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a conversion initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union. One’s way of seeing reality changes in this process. A restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one to perceive, relate, and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the divine presence in, through, and beyond everything that happens.”
Thomas Keating
from Open Mind, Open Heart
Life is a discipline for lay people.
Thomas Keating
Daily Meditation for 5-16-22 by Richard Rohr
German scholar Heinrich Zimmer (1890–1943) studied sacred images and their relationship to spirituality. He said, “The best things can’t be told: the second-best are misunderstood.” [1] So we settle for talking about the “third-best things,” which, in my culture, I suppose are things like sports, television, the weather, and other safe topics.
The best things can’t be talked about—they can only be experienced. And then if we try to talk about them, we know that we see “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Our best attempts will still be merely stammering, grasping for good enough words. But one of the great difficulties of theology and spirituality is that its subject matter is precisely those “best things” that cannot be talked about. If religion does not have humility about knowing, it ends up being smug, silly, and superstitious.
The second-best things which, according to Zimmer, “are misunderstood,” are those things that merely point to the first-best things. These belong to philosophy, theology, psychology, art, and poetry, all of which—like sacred Scripture—are so easily misunderstood. Yet what I have tried to do in my work is to use those second-best things that point to and clarify the first-best things. What else can we do? All our words, beliefs, and rituals are merely “fingers pointing to the moon.”
Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.