Ordinary Time.

Good day good people,

On the heels of our intention to deepen what it means to "acknowledge, explore, and live out of our" second or imaginal body within our sacred creaturely body, today marks the start of a new season in the Christian lineage. We move from the 50 days of Easter and Ascension, ending yesterday with the celebration of Pentecost, and enter Ordinary Time. As we step into Ordinary Time the invitation is to bring our attention and focus to Yeshua's life and teachings which embody the way of the heart, through kenosis or non-clinging, abundance, and singleness or Wholeness according to Cynthia Bourgeault. The aim is to continue to orient our own ordinary lives to embody the way of the heart, as it greens (the liturgical color for this season) and manifests through our ordinary expressions.

This long period of Ordinary Time, from now until the start of Advent, can be seen as a season of growth, fruition, integration, and fertilization. Having focused on building our awareness and nourishment of our imaginal body, learning to live more and more in and from that place within, we can enjoy the new growth and greenness as we keep our gaze on Yeshua's life and teachings unfolding within our own. This new season springs forth from Pentecost with the beautiful reminder that we have everything we need to live out our purpose. We know and have within us the Holy Spirit, also known as the Wisdomkeeper by many of our indigenous spiritual elders and ancestors, who walks within and beside us as our spirit guide to help us remember all that Yeshua has told us through his life and teaching (John 14:15, 26 First Nations Version, Indigenous Translation of the New Testament). Let us keep up the good work of greening within this season of the ordinary.

With Love,

Heather   

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

Monday, May 13th with Faye

Reading: The words of announcement to Mary, paraphrased by Neil Douglas-Klotz

And a messenger of Alaha came to her and said

“Peace to you -

The peace of new beginnings,

The fullness of force before creation.

To you - who are fully ready and

Ripe, in tune with Alaha’s melody.

To you - who are prepared to follow

This sacred song to its last note -

Here’s the power of sacred Unity!

The One who shines and brightens the cosmos,

Is already with and within you.

To you, who are ready to kneel  to

Blessing, wherever, whenever you feel it:

The fruit of your purpose in life is growing within you right now.”

Wednesday, May 15th with Heather

Reading: Be helpless, dumbfounded, Unable to say yes or no. Then a stretcher will come from grace To gather us up. 

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty If we say we can, we’re lying. If we say No, we don’t see it, That No will behead us And shut tight our window onto spirit. 

So let us rather not be sure of anything, Besides ourselves, and only that, so Miraculous beings come running to help. Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute, We shall be saying finally, With tremendous eloquence, Lead us. When we have totally surrendered to that beauty, We shall be a mighty kindness. — Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, translation Coleman Barks

Chant: surrender to the beauty, become a mighty kindness (by Elizabeth Combs)

Thursday, May 16th with Tom

Reading: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

 Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. ​ Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Chant:  “The Earth is full, full of your kindness, the earth is full, full of You, Your kindness fills the whole earth”

Friday, May 17th with Heather

Reading: “Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. What's true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I've come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space. There are superstar virtues that come most readily to mind and can be the work of a day or a lifetime-love, compassion, forgiveness. And there are gentle shifts of mind and habit that make those possible, working patiently through the raw materials of our lives.” — Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into The Mystery and Art of Living

Saturday, May 18th with Heather

Reading: “What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is to allow the other person not to be God. Forgiveness says, "I know you love me, but you don't have to love me unconditionally, because no human being can do that."

We all have wounds. We all are in so much pain. It's precisely this feeling of loneliness that lurks behind all our successes, that feeling of uselessness that hides under all the praise, that feeling of meaninglessness even when people say we are fantastic-that is what makes us sometimes grab onto people and expect from them an affection and love they cannot give.

If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, "Love me!" and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one anoth-er-not once in a while, but every moment of life. Before you have had your breakfast, you have already had at least three opportunities to forgive people, because your mind is already wondering, What will they think about me? What will he or she do? How will they use me?

To forgive other people for being able to give you only a little love that's a hard discipline. To keep asking others for forgiveness because you can give only a little love-that's a hard discipline, too. It hurts to say to your children, to your wife or your husband, to your friends, that you cannot give them all that you would like to give. Still, that is where community starts to be created, when we come together in a forgiving and undemanding way.

This is where celebration, the second discipline of community, comes in. If you can forgive that another person cannot give you what only God can give, then you can celebrate that person's gift. Then you can see the love that person is giving you as a reflection of God's great unconditional love. "Love one another because I have loved you first." When we have known that first love, we can see the love that comes to us from people as the reflection of that. We can celebrate that and say, "Wow, that's beautiful!" — Henri Nouwen

Chant: And love says, I will, I will take care of you

Sunday, May 19th with Heather

Reading: "If you love me, you will walk in my ways. I will ask the Father to send one who will always walk beside you and guide you on the good road. He is the Spirit of Truth, the one this world is not able to accept because it does not see or know him. But you know him, for he is with you now and will soon be in you. . . there is one whom the Father is sending to represent me. He will walk beside you and be your spirit guide. He is the Holy Spirit, who will be your Wisdomkeeper and will help you to remember all that I have told you. — John 14:15 First Nations Version, Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

Chant: mercy, mercy, mercy, deep within and all around (by Henry Schoenfield)