Two books which I have found very helpful in opening my wounds to let the light in:
Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
Heart of Forgiveness: A Practical Path to Healing by Madeleine Ko-i Bastis
Month: January 2018
RELIEF REVEALED
For a few years I rented an apartment located across the street from Volunteer Park in Seattle where I would visit the conservatory to escape the incessant, driving rain of winter. Some of you are experiencing the harshness of desert heat at this time. Others can hardly endure freezing temperatures. Relief, pour out your sweet elixir!
By the time I walked through the conservatory doors
my rain-drenched coat dripped
into rivulets between the tiles of the green ceramic floor.
The moist heat cocooned me in an aura of sensuous pleasure
releasing me from the burden of my winter coat.
I strolled from room to room
Eyes feasting on a kaleidoscope of vivid color
Paraded with pride by paradise flowers
Orchids Birds of Paradise Hibiscus
Reaching the desert succulent wing
I sat for a while to ponder the plants.
How do you survive this intense aridity?
How do I survive this incessant humidity?
They survive because they must
We survive because we know
That relief lies latent
In the recesses of our souls
Warming us like the moist heat
Of a conservatory on a winter day.
Visit often and spring befalls us
Like pollen cascading from fuchsia Hibiscus.
© Rita H Kowats 1-23-18
Welcome, Whimsy!
Good Morning, everyone. Today is a day to take our souls out to play. I will meet you in the backyard at the ancient cedars and we will swing away our cares.
TO BUILD A SWING
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare—
Don’t mix them!
You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.
That sounnds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let’s start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.
I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.
Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Silver hammers,
Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix Them!
HAFIZ
Photo Credit: photopin.com, creative commons
This Cacaphony of Caca: A Spiritual Practice
There has been a lot of cacophony over caca in the last week. Donald Trump’s now infamous racist epithet has left many of us in a deep depression fraught with rage and outrage. Let the cacophony careen until it crashes through every wall erected to protect us from diversity. We wonder how Germany could have raised up Hitler and then remained silent. Now America knows how it happened. There is a time for words, there is a time for action. The time for action is now.
From a place burning deep within my humanity, I have cried tears of anger and tears of shame. I have sat in solidarity with friends as they cried tears of rage and shame. There have been prolonged episodes of reading and analysis of Huffpost, the Washington Post, the BBC. I wrote to my three legislators calling them to gather support in invoking the 25th Amendment. Now I have settled into silence and solitude to support the soulcare that I so sorely need.
SOULCARE
Free The Mind
Distractions enter, threatening to take over thoughts and feelings.
- Acknowledge their presence saying, for example, “Garbage Trucks.” Acknowledge the thoughts and feelings.
- Establish a rhythm to your breathing saying, “Breathing in I acknowledge this noise and it’s hold on me, breathing out I release it.”
- Breathing the intention will eventually create a space for the divine to enter. Say, “Breathing in God is here. Breathing out, I am peace.”
When you feel yourself resting in God’s presence continue breathing and wait for the Spirit’s prompting.
Seek Healing
- Detach yourself from the belief that you are the sole saviour of the world.
- Acknowledge your rage and grief and be grateful you can feel them.
- Send loving kindness to yourself, repeating the mantra throughout your day until you feel a shift in your consciousness:
Buddhist Loving Kindness Meditation
May I be safe from harm.
May I be happy and peaceful
May I be strong and healthy.
May I take care of myself with joy.
- Send forgiveness to Donald Trump and to all of us for our complicity in racism; if forgiveness doesn’t come remember that it is a process. I have sometimes had to ask God to forgive for me:
Buddhist Forgiveness Prayer
If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions I forgive them.
And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions
I forgive myself.
Birth the Divine in the Unjust Situation
A Mantra
Breathing in peace
Breathing out transformed rage.
Breathing in the divine
Breathing out justice
Breathing in the divine
Breathing out justice.
God alive we thrive.
May it be so.
ACT
Photo Credit:
“SoulCards” by Deborah Koff-Chapin. The technique Deborah has created is called “touch drawing.” The cards come in two decks of 60 images and can be used alone or with others as reflection tools. They have enriched my meditation for years and have helped those I companion with. www.soulcards.com
Used with permission from the artist
Collusion
Collusion
The day after
the Shame
the expanse of sometimes blue sky
is speckled with thick, sooty elephant-skin clouds
That bleed disdain on Lady Liberty
who holds vigil in the harbor
of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The Shame
shrieks, reeks inhumanity, holding us hostage
until we dare say it out loud:
Racist.
Brothers and sisters, forgive us,
for we know exactly what we do.
© Rita H Kowats 1-12-18
Photo Credit: Getty
Winter Doldrums
Really, I am truly grateful for Seattle rain, especially as I see reports about places where people are suffering from much more adverse weather conditions; however, winter can wear thin, can’t it?
This lovely poem from Marge Piercy picked me up. I hope it does the same for you today.
The butt of winter
The city lies grey and sopping like a dead rat
under the slow oily rain.
Between the lower east side tenements
the sky is a snotty handkerchief.
The garbage of poor living slimes the streets.
You lie on your bed and think soon it will be hot and violent,
then it will be cold and mean.
You say you feel as empty as a popbottle in the street.
You say you feel full of cold water standing like an old horse trough.
The clock ticks, somewhat wrong, the walls crack their dry knuckles.
Work is only other rooms where people cough,
only the typewriter clucking like a wrong clock.
Nobody will turn the soiled water into wine,
nobody will shout cold Lazarus alive but you.
You are your own magician.
Stretch out your hand, stretch out your hand and look:
each finger is a snake of energy, a gaggle of craning necks.
Each electric finger conducts the world.
Each finger is a bud’s eye opening.
Each finger is a vulnerable weapon.
The sun is floating in your belly like a fish.
Light creaks in your bones.
You are sleeping with your tail in your mouth.
Unclench your hands and look.
Nothing is given us but each other.
We have nothing to give but ourselves.
We have nothing to take but the time that drips,
drips anyhow leaving a brown stain.
Open your eyes and your belly.
Let the sun rise into your chest and burn your throat,
stretch out your hands and tear the gauzy rain
that your world can be born from you
screaming and red.
by Marge Piercy in Circles on the Water
Photo Source: https://www.pexels.com/u/pixabay/
The Homing Instinct
It is both frightening and painful for many Americans to witness the daily unraveling of the principles we hold sacred without relinquishing all hope. Today I am returning to the magic of Pat Conroy in his novel Beach Music. Let the vibration of hundreds of loggerhead turtles on their first march to the sea get deep into your soul’s bones as you take in Conroy’s description:
We must not forget our spiritual homing instinct, our restless urge to go beyond ourselves to the Other, however we define that for ourselves. Know your spiritual landscape. Fix your eyes on the vast ocean of the Other’s love, and let’s head out together. In this lies hope.
photo credit: Eddietherocker <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/28393978@N07/35807963985″>Tres Turtles</a> via <a href=”http://Aphotopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)</a>
New Year’s Revolution
I offer these goals, my daily struggles, in the hopes that they will be able to revolutionize our wounded world.
Peace to you in the New Year.
Thank You
I wish each of you abundant blessing in this new year. I very much appreciate the energy you bring with you when you come to this blog, and I am grateful for the energy you infuse into it. Together we experience God coming near.
GOD JUST CAME NEAR
No
One
In need of love
Can sit with my verse for
An hour
And then walk away without carrying
Golden tools,
And feeling that God
Just came
Near.
HAFIZ
Photo Credit: Daniel Tran Cathedral of Light Sydney’s festival, Vivid Sydney
Spirituality Without Borders: Reflections on Spiritual Practice 