The light in August
shoots linear lines
of spun gold
into the gardens of our souls
producing unique, varied fruit
a joy to behold.
I love this time of year in Western Washington. I wake up to autumn mornings, followed by summer afternoons, culminating in still-long, warm evenings bathed in shafts of nuanced August light.
May gratitude become my daily practice, it’s shafts of nuanced light become the grace I need to believe that all is well. Regardless.
Photo Credit: pexels.com
Yesterday a friend and I chose to eat lunch at the mall…
Friday.
Almost Christmas.
I am still recovering.
“Their Eyes Were Watching God”
Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion. In stark contrast to this trust in our inherent worth, our culture’s guiding myth is the story of Adam and Eve’s exile from the Garden of Eden. We may forget its power because it seems so worn and familiar, but this story shapes and reflects the deep psyche of the West. The message of “original sin” is unequivocal: Because of our basically flawed nature, we do not deserve to be happy, loved by others, at ease with life. We are outcasts, and if we are to reenter the garden, we must redeem our sinful selves. We must overcome our flaws by controlling our bodies, controlling our emotions, controlling our natural surroundings, controlling other people. And we must strive tirelessly—working, acquiring, consuming, achieving, e-mailing, overcommitting and rushing—in a never-ending quest to prove ourselves once and for all…. Feeling that something is wrong with me is the invisible and toxic gas I am always breathing.
-Tara Brach, PhD Radical Acceptance
Photo Credit: Goblin State Park Hoodoos
http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/goblin_valley/goblins4_l.html
“You just keep living until you are alive again,” said a character in a BBC episode of “Call the Midwife.” The words stir me to write on this Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Survivors, their families, indeed, the whole Jewish community endure, and even thrive, with a resilience I can hardly even dream of mustering. I repent and grieve for the evil perpetrated against Jews, gays, and those physically and mentally challenged.l I celebrate their resilience, born from a deep well of faith.
Inaugurated in Israel in 1953, Holocaust Remembrance Day is ritualized differently throughout the world. Common threads are the lighting of six memorial candles to represent the approximately six million victims. The Mourners’ Kaddish is often recited to show that despite their loss, Jews still praise G-d. At the memorial ritual in Auschwitz, school children participate in “The March of the Living,” which is a profound defiance of the Death Marches to the crematoriums. I am reminded of the work of theologian Walter Brueggemann, who calls for a “prophetic imagination” which re-appropriates acts of injustice as positive acts of life- a way of living until we are alive again.
One Sunday I came to Hebrew class at Temple Beth El- always the only Christian student- this day, the only student. My teacher, whose relatives did not survive the holocaust, took the opportunity to teach me some of the more obscure facts about anti-Semitism. She said with searing pain, that in the Spanish Inquisition Jews were denied the right to recite Kaddish. The refrain that G-d will “uproot foreign worship from the earth,” threatened the power of Christianity.
As I imagine the youth reciting Kaddish on their March of Life today at Auschwitz, I rejoice in the hope their action evokes. In them, their ancestors live on. Paul Celan’s poem, “Death Fugue,” draws us inside life in a death camp. The images are shattering, but we must look. We must remember. After embracing the horrifying reality, I return to celebration of the resilience of a people who still chooses life. L’Chaim!
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
we drink it and drink it
we dig a grave in the breezes there one lies unconfined
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden
hair Margarete
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are
flashing he whistles his pack out
he whistles his Jews out in earth has them dig for a
grave
he commands us strike up for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you in the morning at noon we drink you at
sundown
we drink and we drink you
A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents
he writes
he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden hair
Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith we dig a grave in the breezes
there one lies unconfined
He calls out jab deeper into the earth you lot you
others sing now and play
he grabs at the iron in his belt he waves it his
eyes are blue
jab deeper you lot with your spades you others play
on for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at at noon in the morning we drink you
at sundown
we drink and we drink you
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with the serpents
He calls out more sweetly play death death is a master
from Germany
he calls out more darkly now stroke your strings then
as smoke you will rise into air
then a grave you will have in the clouds there one
lies unconfined
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany
we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink
and we drink you
death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue
he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in
the air
He plays with the serpents and daydreams death is
a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith
Translated by Michael Hamburger
“The United States of America will always seek peace but under President Trump, the shield stands guard and the sword stands ready,” Vice-President Mike Pence
Spirituality Without Borders: Reflections on Spiritual Practice 