Give me your hand

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, 

then walks with us silently out of the night.  

These are the words we dimly hear:  

"You, sent out beyond your recall, 

go to the limits of your longing.  

Embody me.  

Flare up like flame 

and make big shadows 

I can move in. 

Let everything happen to you; 

beauty and terror.  

Just keep going. 

No feeling is final.  

Don't let yourself lose Me.  

Nearby is the country they call life.   

You will know it by its seriousness.  

Give me your hand."  

Rainer Maria Rilke, 

The Book of Hours

Sometimes I feel like I'm carrying a 50 lb. bag of potatoes on my back. When I look around I can see other people seem the same.  Our eyes are dimmed by worry, bloodshot from too little sleep.  

Seriousness has creeped into our lives and taken up residence in our tender human hearts, a place better designed for laughter and joy, song and dance and lovemaking.  

Worry seems to be the word of the day.  Sometimes that worry slips into our words and we're short tempered or find ourselves losing our grace in our interactions with others.  I think maybe we've all become just too serious.  I remind myself that none of us are in charge of the universe. God still is.  Did we forget?  There is only one thing we HAVE to do and that is to remember to invite God into our daily lives.

Recently I was reminded of that simple little Prayer of Jabez which is so beautiful in its brevity. 


My paraphrase of it is simply, 


"Oh God, please bless me, please pour your blessings into my body, mind, heart and life and allow my entire world - all who I love and know and all that I do and dream to do - be blessed to increase, grow and prosper and please keep me away from the shadows of deception and control and allow your power and your presence to be with me, let your hand be upon me .... today, every moment of every hour of today, and everyday.  Please bless me, fill my life completely with your love and your blessings.,  I need you every moment of every day, especially in this moment and this day.  Thank you.  I love you.  Amen"

And, then I put on a smile, right after the lip gloss, and head off to work.  I think that's a good way of taking God's hand and remembering not to take all this too seriously.

Calling forth the dream maker

A dream is a big wish filled with enthusiasm, determination and faith.  You have dreams for yourself, your life, your family, your work.  We all do.  Sometimes in life, unbeknown to us, are some little dream sabateurs that sneak in and mess with our plans, trip us up on the way to the finish line.  Those little demons, for lack of a better word, are the gremlins, the bugs, in our inner programming.  

If our conscious minds are like a smooth running computer, then these "bugs" are like those little viruses that a computer picks up over time that slow it down or even cause it to malfunction altogether.  Well life is like that.  If we need to clean up our computer occasionally, then we would also need to clean up our minds, our subconscious, where in the dark and murky parts those little dream-eaters live.  I guess it's simple, really, to get rid of them.  Turn on the lights, seek out where they nest, and then sweep them out.  But, can we do that?

We only may know that we have a dream, a big dream, a very important dream, and as we reach for it all kinds of things happen over which we think we have no control, things that seem to block it.  Since those strange things seem to come out of nowhere, we can see - eventually - that we don't have any control over them.  But, there is One who does, who cares, who genuinely loves us and wants our dreams to come true for us.  S/He is always present, always aware - far more aware than we are - and waiting all the time for the invitation from us to help us with our mind debugging. 

A few weeks ago, I posted that beautiful Hawaiian prayer, the Ho'ponopono which - you may have discovered by now - really works.  I have found it to really work - to move traffic along, to heal a friend of a nasty rash on her arm, and other things.  So, that helps prove my point, that we have available to us unseen spiritual resources who are more than happy to help us succeed, gain empowerment, wake up, climb all the mountains and conquer the obstacles on our path to our dreams.

And, there's more.  We can ask God to look at, to see all those inner sabateurs - even if we can't see them - and in His powerful sight they are transformed by the light and transformative power of his looking, his seeing.  

I recently learned a beautiful prayer which is simply a heartfelt desire to let all that is holding us back, controlling us, blocking us, sabotaging us to "be seen by God."  When I first heard this prayer, it seemed odd.  I've always thought that we needed to know what we were asking for, but in this case, it is a complete surrender to God, a complete and total invitation to God to help us where we most need help, especially those dark corners, those blind spots in our heart and mind which we cannot see directly, but which we can see are somehow blocking our dreams from coming true.

Life is a partnership - us and God.  We cannot accomplish great things or live a masterful life without God, or whatever name you give the great Creator and Lover of your soul.  While we are surrendering to God by saying, "Thy will be done," we are also inviting God to illuminate the darkened corners of our subconscious minds where these dark negativities reside and transform them into "energizer bunnies" to help run the dream machine.

Only God can see what we can't see.  There are times a wise friend or counselor can see what we can't see, but many of us aren't able to go see a counselor. But, God, the great physician of our souls, is always there, every minute of every hour, always waiting, always loving and always willing to help you.  

Our great beloved also waits for your invitation to allow him to "see" for you and in his seeing - the very act of divine sight - will transform the darkness into light, bring life where there was death, hope where there was despair, faith where there was doubt and in no time, rejuvenate your heart and mind, empower your dream and put you on the path to greater joy, hope and success.

I share this with you because I also have a big dream.  Tiger Lilies is part of it, but there is more to come - much more - and I invite you - and God - to be part of it.  In the next few weeks, I will begin sharing more about that dream with you, but first I invite you, to invite God, into your hearts, dreams and plans so your own dreams can begin to bloom.

Healing the wounds of 9/11 with forgiveness

(The following is from Thaddeus, who is a deacon at St. Joseph's University Parish, Buffalo, NY.  He has been in ministry and has taught high school and college.  His homily speaks to the hard truth of healing our country, and the world, from the terror, death and horror of Sept. 11, 2001.  

It's been 10 years and while the world is more aware of the pain of terrorism and hate, we are still globally grappling with healing from that terrible day and learning how to love and walk in forgiveness without condoning the evils.  Thaddeus says it best in the following homily he presented this morning to his parish when he calls us into forgiveness, as the first step toward healing.

Through forgiveness, we step out of the cycle of hate and make a determined choice to be who we are - people of unconditional love, living in light and hope.  If we fail to forgive, then the terrorists will have taken even more than the 3,000 lives they snuffed out that day, they will have taken our souls and filled us with a dark and hideous bitterness seasoned by and with their own hate.  

If we fail to forgive, they win.  If we can forgive, perhaps only with God's grace and help, we will have been enobled by this terrible and great tragedy.  It may be the hardest thing we can do - forgive, but it may also be the most important.   Thank you Thaddeus - dear precious servant of God, for sharing your light, wisdom and love with your beautiful and caring parish and our world through Tiger Lilies.)

September 11, 2011

It seems an uncanny coincidence that today’s gospel parable (Matthew 18:21-35*) about radical forgiveness, predetermined by the 3 year cycle of the lectionary, should be heard in churches around the world as we observe the tenth anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, 2001. When such powerful coincidences occur, spiritual teachers call it “Sacred Synchronicity” highlighting a powerful message from God in the event.

While the obvious message in today’s readings is about forgiveness, forgiving 70 times 7, there is also a challenging observation about human nature. That is found in the last words of the gospel that call us to forgive “from your heart”. In our day and age, this infers feelings and emotions, but to the original audience, the heart is the core of intelligence and free will.

Every person controls their own thoughts and ideas. We are the Masters of our Minds! Where do these thoughts and ideas come from? First of all, each person has their own long history of experiences that shape and influence what we think. Also, in our ever expanding world of social diversity, we constantly receive messages from a variety of sources in print, the media and social interaction. For the past few weeks we have all heard numerous stories about the losses, the grief, the heroes and the families of 9/11.

The question to each of us involves how we personally react when negative situations cause us pain and grief and remind us, all too vividly, that we do not live in a perfect world. That is why psychologists tell us that we need forgiveness, why Jesus talks so much about forgiveness and why we are told to pray daily, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Powerful encouragement, but yet, We are the Masters of our Minds!

One of the most difficult things for humans to do is to forgive. When I taught lessons about forgiveness during my 38 years as an educator, the students almost always objected with statements like:

“How could you ever forgive someone who kills someone you love or cheats on you?”

“I think it’s wrong to forgive people, they deserve to be punished for what they did!”

“I admire people who can forgive others, but I know I could never do it!”

What does this complex and often misunderstood spiritual act really mean? Authentic forgiveness does not promote willful ignorance or a Pollyanna type of wishing evil would simply go away. In point of fact, real forgiveness assumes a candid and realistic knowledge of wrongs committed and is accordingly accompanied by legitimate anger. Moses was angry, King David was angry, and Jesus was angry when confronting the hardness of heart of the Pharisees and when cleansing the Temple.

Ephesians 4 says, “You do well to be angry, but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.” Were we and can we still be legitimately angry about the tragedy of September 11th? Absolutely! Thomas Aquinas said that anger is the natural response to injustice, for it is the passion to make things right.

Martin Luther King was angry at racial inequality in mid-twentieth century America.

Gandhi was angry at the injustices born of British imperialism.

Pope John Paul II was angry at the oppressive policies of communism.

They were all justified in their anger. This is why the Bible speaks of God’s anger. It doesn’t mean that God passes into an emotional snit; it means that God tries to straighten out a world that is led astray by misguided people. We are the Masters of our Minds!

Perhaps Alexander Pope described this tension most adequately when he wrote, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” What, then, is forgiveness?

Forgiveness is not condoning; we are never obliged to approve of offensive behavior that is harmful and destructive;

Forgiveness is not forgetting; some wounds are too deep to ever forget;

Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation; we may with great effort manage to forgive another but still not desire to be in their presence;

Forgiveness is not denial; we must look directly into the offense and let the horror and shame sink deep within us. For healing must be as deep as the wound.

Forgiveness is a great act of unconditional love. As Christ hung upon the cross, he cried out from the depths of his wounded body, “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing!”

Those words became a central theme for the New Testament writers who saw that the first generation Churches faced persecution from the outside as well as division internally. The survival of that early Church depended upon tolerance and forgiveness. 2000 years later we are challenged in a similar way to embrace this way of thinking to build a new world and to look optimistically to the future.

Ten years ago our hearts were broken by terrorism. But we can deny them victory by refusing to submit to a world created in their image. Terrorism inflicts not only death and destruction but also emotional oppression to further its aims. We must not allow this act to drive us away from being the people that God has called us to be.

We are a community that values tolerance, compassion, justice and the sacredness of human life as the heart of our religious traditions. This has been a test of our national and religious character. May we today recommit ourselves to praying, to acting & to uniting against the bitter fruits of division, hatred and violence. We are a community that values thinking and intelligence.

We are the Masters of our Minds! Let us rededicate ourselves to global peace, human dignity and the eradication of injustice that breeds rage and vengeance.

As believers today gather in houses of worship around the world, let us continue the process of healing and pray for an increase in wisdom, so that we may continually develop to think as God thinks and to love as God loves.

*Matthew 18: 21-35


Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]
 23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[b] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
 26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
 29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
 32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”


One last note - this blog post is being posted at the same time that the first plane, Flight 11, crashed at roughly 466 mph into the north face of the North Tower (1 WTC) of the the World Trade Center, between floors 93 and 99.

Hallelujah

Alexandra - Hallelujah X Factor Winner Song

There is no word more powerful in the cosmos than Hallelujah or alleluia ..... 'praise God.'  This word, sung consciously, spoken silently, whispered throughout your day like a mantra, will change your life.  It is the greatest blessing you can give yourself and the world.  It is pure power, pure light, pure love and pure LIFE. 

Thank you Thaddeus for sharing this beautiful performance by Alexandra Burke. 

A feast for lovers

As a sign to humanity, his own beloved, his own cherished and long awaited lover, the beautiful story of the Marriage at Cana is God's love song.  It takes us on a journey into the heart, into a deeper space within ourselves, a place where a profound and important marriage occurs.  


It is the ultimate love story, revealing the passion and bliss of ecstatic union with our true lover, one who will never betray, abandon or oppress us, one who waits for us to see, awaken, to the only real love and the only true marriage, one that we are shown through the lens of a lovely primal marriage image.


The scripture from the Gospel of John is often used at weddings, suggesting that the marriage of human to human is and was God's primary interest.  In the church, marriage is a sacrament because it symbolizes that sacred union of God and human being, the wedding of ourselves, our souls and spirits, which is then reflected out into the world, in the love between two human beings, radiating the light and power of love, changing everything forever.  


Jesus, at the request of His mother, who is, in my opinion the Blessed Mother of us all, the Goddess (if you will open your minds to that suggestion), and is the handmaiden to the Lord, the creator of all of us, changes six large jugs of water, ordinary water, into wine.  While scholars have played with this story, discussing why Cana, why six jars, etc. etc. some of those details are of value. 


The number six in Jewish gematria, for example,  symbolizes the human being, the imperfect, unfinished, half of the whole.  If there are 12 months, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples, then six would be half of that perfect number.  So, the six jugs in the story symbolize the human being, the archetypal human being.  And, wine is another word for the spirit.  Clearly, Jesus used wine as a symbol of the transformative power of the spirit to teach us something about that real marriage to the divine.  The spirit of God changes us, His spirit merges, or marries, with our ordinary everyday humanity to make us vessels of delight, of power and light, of joy and wonder, filled with a supernatural love that transcends the ordinary of human life, which does get dull and old and eventually dies. 


Water, the most sacred substance on our planet, the substance in which all of life, grows and over which the power of God hovered in the beginning of creation, is the medium for our own transformation.  As babies are cradled in their mother's womb in a gently swaying inner lake, growing until they are ready to come out as newborns, another birth occurs symbolized by the changing of the water for birth into wine, into spirit, in and through which that new birth occurs. It is the means and substance for a life immersed in God's love, a larger love, a larger life, one that transcends time and space and dimension. 


Wine also becomes a symbol of the spirit of Goddess since it was His mother's insistence that he perform this miracle, suggesting that it is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Sophia, the spirit of the Divine Mother, who changes us, gives us new birth as divinized human beings, changing from being half of a whole into being part of THE whole, which is what marriage does. Two people come together in love, merge their lives based on that love and become another being, a whole being.  Through that spirit, we, who are only half of the whole, that "6", now become whole as we are merged with the source of our creation.  


And, as wine will remove the dullness of our lives, the Holy Spirit of God(dess) will lift us to a place of so much joy, a feast, a wedding party, a celebration that extends for ever, and ever.


Perhaps, in the magic of that moment in a wedding, when two people joyously embrace and share the beauty and hope of their love, we are closest to heaven on Earth.  Certainly without being in love, without being with the one you love, whether that person has turned away or is incapable of receiving and returning an other's love, only shows us the darkness of a life without love.  In that powerful image, we realize how much we need each other and in that union of two lovers, a spiritual alchemy occurs which changes us, making us more beautiful, more peaceful, more than who we are alone.


While mystics love the Gnostic imagery in the Wedding at Cana, lovers love it more as they understand in their hearts in a "physical meets spiritual" way the real meaning of love, its transformative power which stirs the inner harbors of our souls, changing us forever.  It is in that wine, in that spirit of love, that our human nature is changed, uniting the human with the divine, making us whole and in love, joyous and more than we could ever be alone. We are all meant to be joined with another, held and loved and seated at the banquet of life, together with our lover, each other and our creator.

Prayers for peace in our hearts

Thaddeus sent the following prayers from St. Francis de Sales to uplift, inspire and remind us of the peace of God, in whom we "live and move and have our being." I am grateful for his love and wisdom. 


Thank you, Thaddeus!

The Prayer of St. Francis de Sales

Be at Peace
Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;
rather look to them with full hope as they arise.
God, whose very own you are,
will deliver you from out of them.
He has kept you hitherto,
and He will lead you safely through all things;
and when you cannot stand it,
God will bury you in his arms.

Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
the same everlasting Father who cares for you today
will take care of you then and everyday.
He will either shield you from suffering,
or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace,
and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.

and another prayer from this great man:

I am yours,
and I must belong to no one but you.
My soul is yours,
and must live only by you.
My will is yours,
and must love only for you.
I must love you as my first cause,
since I am from you.
I must love you as my end and rest,
since I am for you.
I must love you more than my own being,
since my being subsists by you.
I must love you more than myself,since I am all yours and all in you.


St. Francis de Sales 1567-1622


About the above photo:

Cross Appears During Lent as a Sign of God's Love

Since 2005 a cross with an outline of a shield has appeared annually on my property in Mine Hill, NJ. Sunrays are shining on the fence and creating the image of a cross. This image has been showing up every morning since last week. The image appears at the top of the fence and slowly descends until it touches the ground. It then changes into a cricle and disappears. The cross can be seen for about 30 minutes.

In John 3:21, it says: "But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

I'll be posting more photographs on my website and blog at the following links:

www.christian-miracles.com and lenarpoetry.blogspot.com/

In Psalm 84:11, it says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”

Interestingly, this is the Lenten season, a time of spiritual renewal for Catholics and many Christians as we prepare for Easter.

Jesus said in John 12:46, "I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness."

My wife had her cousin Diane visit our home with her family on Saturday, March 26th. Her cousin's daughter, Brooke stayed overnight. The cross appeared Sunday morning and she is standing next to the image in awe. Brooke said, "It looks like Jesus."

I believe that God has opened the windows of heaven and is pouring out the Holy Spirit on our world. Joel 2:28 says, "...I will pour out my Spirit on all people..."

Copyright 2011 Loci B. Lenar
www.christian-miracles.com