Wisdom Tree

Beautiful 10 Minutes of Gratitude

Thanks to friends Tom McGrath and Paul Campbell, I've a glorious video for you. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ&feature=player_embedded

Daring to Desire

As a fundamentalist Christian, I learned quite early to fear my desires. They most certainly would lead to activity that God did not desire for me. We tended to interpret "desire" as anything having to do with sensuality, such as sex. Rarely did desire get linked--in sermons or in conversations--to unhealthy appetites for power or control, certainly not to any forms of corporate evil or injustice. Desire was personal and perilous.

I'm about two decades out of fundamentalism, and I have enjoyed freedom of the senses, sexual or otherwise, for many years. But in truth, I still fear my desires. I fear to know what I really need out of life. I fear to acknowledge what I long for. And although you would think that as we grow older we would get better at contentment, it seems that longing deepens and that the soul's interior cries grow more insistent.

Perhaps it becomes more difficult to admit unhappiness as we grow older and become more established in some aspects. We're engaged in long-term commitments; we're partnered up, and we've given years to a career. If we are indeed unhappy, what can we un-do without destroying a life we have built? Chances are, the unhappiness does not issue from some fleeting, insubstantial thing--out of sheer practice we have learned to tolerate inconvenience, pain, and rerouted plans. We've learned not to allow shallow and short-lived circumstances to influence our happiness. The discontent we now experience comes from matters more settled and over-arching. It's easier to avoid thinking about the discontent than it is to approach the magnitude of it.

But I believe that a person's deepest desires merit attention and respect. Usually our true desires mirror Divine desire, and when we neglect them we not only prevent personal healing but also spiritual progress.

This means that 2012 may be a rocky year. I need to understand what my soul needs, what my life wants, what the most honest me dreams of. Not a safe course at all. Not easy, not without its cost.

Gently into the New Year

I usually approach the New Year left-brain first. I list goals, then prioritize, then put them tentatively into a calendar. I create a daily schedule by which to do everything that seems important: exercise, meditation, prayer, writing, and so forth. I can spend hours doing this. I emerge from my cave (writing room with closed door, music, candles, and teapot) with my life sketched out in detail, at least for the month of January.

Wait for it . . . failure in the first or second week. This happens year after year. I do the exercise of organizing life mainly because it feels so satisfying, and we should pay attention to what elicits that feeling. I think it helps me think about my year, my life, my priorities and values. Time spent meditating on those things is not wasted, even if the plan crashes within days of its inception.

This year I did the prioritizing and some scheduling. But I resisted the neurotic urge to create a daily schedule. Time for a kinder, gentler me. Time to say yes to the exercise but no to the plan itself. I have decided to walk softly into the New Year.

Also, time for more gentleness with Vinita. It makes me wince to actually write that, but after so many friends, spiritual directors, and supervisors say the same thing, it seems wise that I listen and do as they ask.

I've been married twenty years. I've been me for almost fifty-four years. I've been an editor and writer for two decades. There's wear and tear involved in simply existing on this planet, even more if you dare to love people and the rest of creation, even more if you work hard and nurture creativity. All of that work and love and creativity walk around in one body, a body that never rests. It keeps breathing and circulating blood. It keeps healing itself. It keeps performing the same motions and functions, thousands of hours on end, with no break, ever.

So it's appropriate, don't you think, to treat the body more kindly and more intentionally? What about a massage once a month? What about lotion on dry skin? What about brisk walks and the liquid movements of Tai Chi, the therapeutic stretches of yoga? What about better food? What about laughing more and sleeping better? What about wearing clothes that feel right and look good?

If not now, when? Here's to 2012, the year of living gently. 

Before Annunciation

Just before snow covers,

it reveals. In the gloom and gray

appear the bright veins of stone

and rippled bark, the sharp character

of shingles, beams, street signs, forgotten

toys and paper bags. It’s as if the interior

of everything has grown outward,

adorning itself in fine lace.

 

I like to think that, before the great angel

pronounced and the Holy Spirit overwhelmed,

the girl Mary had a moment—or perhaps years—

of revelatory and incidental wonders,

and even that morning, taking her breakfast,

she said something startling, and her dreams glistened

upon the outlines of face, shoulders, hips and feet;

and something gusted through the room,

hinting of chill and snowflakes.

V.H.Wright Copyright 2008

After the first of the year, I will make certain this blog is connected to the blog I write for at Loyola Press. For now, take a look at today's post:

http://deepeningfriendship.loyolapress.com/2011/12/21/when-family-isnt-there/

The Greater Rhythm

A version of this appeared three years ago, but some of it's worth repeating . . .

As Christmas approaches, the church’s liturgical rhythm seems necessary to save us from ourselves. It’s not just that we have slid, with little resistance, into the larger culture’s gaudy mess that is now the “holiday.” Anyone, religious or not, can see how advertising and general greed have used our hunger against us, stealing right out of our hands our own sense of what is important. But I question that sense of ours. It needs the guidance of ancient ways, with or without a commercialized holiday. Even without a million shopping malls, we would skew Christmas into something that fit our busy self-importance. We need the liturgy, the tradition, the memory of our communion of saints.

The prayers shape our vocabulary, bending our thoughts Godward. The readings demand that we relinquish any stories we are stuck on at the moment. Whatever personal narrative we are chattering about today, it must defer to the Story. And there is a sequence. We must pull our thoughts around the Memories, recite the acts of God. We must listen and wait for our cue to jump in with a phrase or a silence. Yes, we must wait our turn in the processions and the songs and signs. Like any liturgy, the Christmas rituals remind us that we are part of something wonderful, wild, and beyond us. We are not in charge. We don’t have all the information. And everything isn’t up to us.

This season of the year takes us back to the stance of attention, as Advent ushers our wants and wishes through a series of stories about longing and promise and the raw gaps between them. We know that Christmas is coming, that a baby will be born and we will sing our favorite songs again and take special pleasure in the presence of children and the exchange of gifts. But it’s not as simple as that. Between now and the great event, there is waiting, and this waiting is supposed to mean something. It is supposed to accomplish something in us.

I’m thankful for this set number of days that give us space for remembering and time to align our spirits once again with the greater, wider story—of healing, restoration, justice, hope, divine encounter. It is too immense to take in quickly, or in a single holiday. We need the march of the weeks and months, the long breaths between Sundays, to gather to our minds and hearts the story in its entirety. When we live in the rhythm of that story, we have nothing to fear from the garish shopping mall or noisy airwaves. In the great rhythm of the Story, we are folded into God’s arms, one day, one season, at a time.

Copyright © 2008 Vinita Hampton Wright, revision © 2011

Almost Christmas Again

I'm glad that Christmas is coming. Although, I must say, its timing sucks.

I have neglected this blog (and website) for so long, that I hesitated to post anything at all. I always grow a bit lazy during the summer, and I enjoy being outdoors, so I'm not a faithful writer then. During July, in additiona to that benign lethargy, I experienced a more serious form of inaction once I learned that I was not approved to become a priest in the Episcopal Church. This was a surprise, and it set me back for awhile. What really happened was that I decided to relax and enjoy the summer. That's what I did. Then I went on a personal retreat at the end of August, just to air out my brain and consider priorities for the coming year, including writing priorities, including plans for this blog.

Then, during the first week of September, a close family member was diangosed with lymphoma. The many of you who have dealt with serious medical diagnoses understand how life can quickly get upended. And I'm in my fifties now, and not as energetic as I was even a few years ago. Actually, sometimes it's not a matter of energy but of interest. There are simply more things for which I am unwilling to expend my energy. So I have allowed schedules and plans to slip every which way. Life has consisted of my full-time editing job at Loyola Press--for which I am enormously grateful--and helping this loved on get better.

"Better" is a ways into our future. I write this in the chair next to a hospital bed--now we're dealing with an infection, which is not uncommon in chemo patients. Also, it looks like some trouble with the pancreas, and some fluid in the lungs, both problems stemming from the chemo and/or lying in bed for long periods of time. We don't yet know if we'll spend Christmas in the hospital. But we did not plan holiday travel or anything big. Actually, that relieved me of some of the normal holiday-time pressure, and although I'm stressed about the illness, I'm pretty calm otherwise.

It's almost Christmas again, which is horrible timing but a very good thing. If we didn't have holy days on a recurring schedule, think of how often we would postpone them or skip them altogether. An illness in the family, or loss of job, or broken relationship, or death in the family, or general depression and stress--these disruptions would constantly nudge the holy days out of the way so that we could give all our energy to dealing with trouble.

But there's always trouble of some sort. And I don't think trouble deserves all my energy, just some of it. There will always be an excuse to put off rejoicing and hope. Always a reason to skip the party and forget to be grateful. Trouble wants to distract us from the core of things, to our basic participation in life and love. Thanks to the Christian (or Jewish, or other) calendar, the holy days arrive anyway. They insist that we remember the story that's bigger than the illness or loneliness or tribulation.

The Christmas tree is up--although it took us a few days to get the decorations on it. We chose to send fewer gifts this year. My over-the-top holiday baking was taken down a notch by necessity. But Jim is at church today, while I stay at the bedside. Later we'll drop in for awhile at the party of some good friends. We've made reservations at a restaurant on Christmas Day because we won't be in Atlanta or Portland or Joplin or Cherokee this time around.

I unpacked my growing collections of Christmas music and movies and books. Maybe I'll get through all of them this year, and maybe not. That's not important. What is important is the intent of my heart, the intent to pause and celebrate as best I can. If I can't rejoice and be grateful and hopeful now, when will I?

This reminds me of a favorite Christmas verse, by the late and wonderful Madeleine L'Engle:

This is the irrational season

when love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

there'd have been no room for the child. 

 

Peace and wonder to you this Christmas!

Catastrophe and Growth

Last weekend Jim and I drove to Joplin, MO, where my sister and brother-in-law live. The tornadoes that ripped through a month ago did not touch their neighborhood, but they took us on the tornado tour, and, honestly, entire areas look like war zones and worse. Death count 150-something (a few people have died in the hospital of their injuries even recently). The miracle is that every human being has been accounted for--dead or still around. I was sure some would simply be missing until farmers came upon decayed body parts out in the fields months from now.

At such times, we are tempted to ask "why God would allow this to happen." But a friend of mine, author and spiritual director Margaret Silf, points out that the earth itself is a living organism, and without earthquakes, tsunamis, and other "natural disasters" this globe would be inert and not alive. Each catastrophe leads ultimately to the next thing, proceeding from life to life.

When we consider that most of our personal growth happens mainly in difficult times, then perhaps we should try to see the larger trials as the chaos moving us forward. Of course this is easy for me to say--I still have my loved ones and my house. But perhaps, as St. Ignatius would put it, the times of consolation are the best times to practice internally for desolation.

 

 

 

Peace to you all. I shall try to post more often this summer.

Lent #8: cluster bombs

It seems that I get particularly nasty sinus infections around major holidays. One wiped me out the entire week leading up to Christmas, and now I'm struggling through Holy Week. So my energy level is low and I'm not feeling too creative. However, other good writers keep the world spinning, and I'm linking you to one today. Please click on this link for Tobias Winright's article about cluster bombs. Thank you, Tobias, for grappling with this discomforting subject. Thank you, Commonweal Magazine, for offering this article for free online.

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/predictably-horrific

 

All about Passion

 Here's a video of good friend and author Jo Kadlecek, talking about passion.