Learn from the past -
don't wear it like a yoke around your neck.
-Cogitor Reticulus

When i think about what it takes to keep my past hurts and pain balanced like those pails on this woman's shoulders i realize what hard work it is to hold on to my woundedness - it's a wonder i can even walk w/o falling over from the weight of it all!......

Out and Back Again....

Every walk is a story, a narrative line leading out from home to a point of crisis, change or insight, and then back to the known and a time of reflection.
- john leax

Listening as Spiritual Hospitality

I just finished watching "The View" which I tivo every weekday for the "HotTopics" segment that opens the show. Where else on TV can I watch 4 (or 5 when Barbara Walters is there) women with diverse worldviews discuss politics, religion, and the surrounding culture? The following quote is from my Henri Nouwen "tear-off-a-page-a-day" desk calendar. I don't think there is much listening happening on "The View" and if there was would they be able to keep up their ratings??? I do appreciate what H.N. suggests as listening being a form of "spiritual hospitality"......may we all practice some of that today!

"To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presecence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even dare to be silent with you." -Henri Nouwen

Seeds of Compassion

I just received an email yesterday stating that my friend Teresa G. and I received 2 tickets for the Dalai Lama's visit in Seattle this April! I am so excited! As I perused the Seeds of Compassion website (http://seedsofcompassion.org/why/) I came across an article on the benefits of practicing compassion....so the next time someone cuts you off in traffic, or your friend tells you that only his/her 2008 presidential candidate will save the world from imploding or your husband reminds you for the 3rd time that you need to get all the medical receipts together for your upcoming tax-filing appointment (wow...wonder where that one came from?), you might consider trying the following exercise which I've copied from the above website.

3. Commonalities practice. Instead of recognizing the differences between yourself and others, try to recognize what you have in common. At the root of it all, we are all human beings. We need food, and shelter, and love. We crave attention, and recognition, and affection, and above all, happiness. Reflect on these commonalities you have with every other human being, and ignore the differences. One of the best exercises comes from a great article from Ode Magazine — it’s a five-step exercise to try when you meet friends and strangers. Do it discreetly and try to do all the steps with the same person. With your attention geared to the other person, tell yourself:
— Step 1: “Just like me, this person is seeking happiness in his/her life.”
— Step 2: “Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life.”
— Step 3: “Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair.”
— Step 4: “Just like me, this person is seeking to fill his/her needs.”
— Step 5: “Just like me, this person is learning about life.”

International Women's Day

"The suppression of women is a sin, not because it is a sin against women, but because it is a sin against creation itself. To suppress half of God's creation in the name of God is a sin against the Holy Spirit for which we have no name."
- J. Chittister, "40 Day Journey", p. 56

I Remembered!

the "weeping" quote is from Joan Chittister's "40 Day Journey with Joan Chittister", 2007, p. 52.

Weeping

this is the quote i sent out today. 2 people emailed me to ask the author......i'm still trying to figure that out!


"WEEPING, IN FACT, MAY BE the best indicator we have of what life is really all about for us. It may be only when we weep that we can come to know best either ourselves or our worlds. What we weep for measures what we are. What we weep over dictates what others may expect of us in life. It was when Jesus wept over Jerusalem that the die was cast, not for crucifixion, but for the blaze of energy and the boldness of stature that spent everything in him to change what, in the end, though it could not be changed, could not be ignored either. Tears, you see, are more than sadness…
Of all the expressions of human emotion in the lexicon of life, weeping may be the most functional, the most deeply versatile. The tears we weep show us our deepest, neediest, most private selves. Our tears expose us. They lay us bare both to others and to ourselves. What we cry about is what we care about. What we have no tears for hardens our hearts."