Water at the Well

Meek and Gentle

2009-03-19T14:48:00.001-07:00

"Fortunate are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth."
--Q11

"The most famous passage in this Sermon on the Mount has always been translated as "the meek shall inherit the earth." Actually, the Greek word proates means "gentle but strong" and connotes strength that is under control and tinged with a spirit of caring."
--Marcus Borg

BEAUTY

2009-03-17T23:38:00.001-07:00

BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire
I AM as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.

Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.

Before my monumental attitudes,
That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,

For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

I Cannot Be Known

2009-03-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

I cannot be known
Better than you know me

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude

Are no longer what they thought themselves to be

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.

Paul Eluard

Dialogue in the Mountains

2009-03-14T21:51:00.001-07:00

You ask me why I lodge in these emerald hills;
I laugh, don’t answer—my heart is at peace.
Peach blossoms and flowing waters
go off to mysterious dark,
And there is another world,
not of mortal men.
--Li Po (701-762)

Blessings

2009-03-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

"You can become a blessing."
--Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen

Clement

2009-03-12T23:35:00.000-07:00

From 2 Clement:

The Lord himself being asked by someone, when his kingdom would come? said, "When the two shall be one, and that which is without as that within, and the male with the female, neither male nor female." (12:2)

When Being began back in the days of genesis

2009-03-09T23:36:00.001-07:00

When Being began back in the days of genesis,
it was Amun appeared first of all,
unknown his mode of inflowing;
There was no god come before him,
nor was other god with him there
when he uttered himself into visible form;
There was no mother to him, that she might have borne him his name,
there was no father to father the one
who first spoke the words, “I Am!”
Who fashioned the seed of him all on his own,
sacred first cause, whose birth lay in mystery,
who crafted and carved his own splendor--
He is God the Creator, self-created, the Holy;
all other gods come after;
with Himself he began the world.

Ancient Egyptian poem, ca. 1500-1200 BC

metanoia

2009-03-06T14:08:00.001-08:00

Anyone who has heard the expression "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!" is familiar with the Greek word metanoia. Here it is translated to signify a profound "change of heart" or "change of mind," a transformation in goals and life direction. But for centuries, the term has implied the Christian concepts of good and evil and has been translated as "repentance" or "conversion." --Marcus Borg

God is a master craftsman

2009-03-05T21:06:00.000-08:00

God is a master craftsman;
yet none can draw the lines of his Person.
Fair features first came into being
in the hushed dark where he mused alone;
He forged his own figure there,
hammered his likeness out of himself—
All powerful one (yet kindly,
whose heart would lie open to men).

He mingled his heavenly god-seed
with the inmost parts of his being.
Planting his image there
in the unknown depths of his mystery.
He cared, and the sacred form
took shape and contour, splendid at birth!
God, skilled in the intricate ways of the craftsman,
first fashioned Himself to perfection.

Ancient Egyptian Poem, ca. 1500-1200 BC

Lent

2009-03-04T00:55:00.001-08:00

This is what I'm doing for Lent.

Scraps of moon

2009-02-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

Scraps of moon
By Denise Levertov
(1923 - 1997)

Scraps of moon
bobbing discarded on broken water
but sky-moon
complete, transcending
all violation
Here she seems to be talking to herself about
the shape of a life:
Only Once

All which, because it was
flame and song and granted us
joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit,
turns out to have been what it was
that once, only; every invitation
did not begin
a series, a build-up: the marvelous
did not happen in our lives, our stories
are not drab with its absence: but don't
expect to return for more. Whatever more
there will be will be
unique as those were unique. Try
to acknowledge the next
song in its body-halo of flames as utterly
present, as now or never.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

2009-02-27T18:30:00.001-08:00

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
By Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
(1207 - 1273)
English version by Coleman Barks

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

ghandi

2009-02-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

“In my early studies of the Bible, one verse seized me immediately: “Make this world the Kingdom of God, and everything will be added unto you.” I tell you that if you will understand, appreciate, and act upon the spirit of this passage, you won’t ever need to know what place Jesus or any other teacher occupies in your heart.”
--Ghandi, from The Message of Jesus Christ, ed. Anand T. Hingorami

Psalm 147

2009-02-23T19:46:00.001-08:00

Psalm 147
How sweet to sing praises to you,
Unnamable God,
and to thank you for all your blessings.

You rebuilt what has been ruined
and recreate what has been lost.

You heal the brokenhearted;
you are the medicine for their wounds.

You lift up the afflicted
and give them courage to endure.

You count the myriad stars
and call each one by its name.

Infinite is your power,
incalculable your wisdom.

You scatter snow like wool
and sprinkle the frost like ashes.

Your strew ice crystals like breadcrumbs;
the earth becomes bitter cold.

You breathe warm winds and the ice melts;
you blow and the waters flash.

You cover the sky with clouds;
you send down your rain to the earth,
making grass grow on the hills
and plants to nourish all men.

You give the wild animals their prey;
you feed the young ravens when they cry.

You delight in the power of the horse
and take pleasure in the legs of an athlete.

But most, you rejoice in a pure heart
and in those who let you shine through them.

You give them joy in your joy,
and you bless their love with your love.

You bring peace to their families
and grant them your infinite wealth.

You send your wisdom to their minds;
your light runs faster than a thought.

Above all others they are blessed,
because they hear you speak
(though your love speaks in all people,
in the silence of every heart).
--trans. Stephen Mitchell

john 9

2009-02-19T18:07:00.000-08:00

Hillel, a 1st century Rabbi whom Paul of Tarsus studied under, was once approached by a man who told him: “If you can teach me the whole of the Torah while I stand on one foot, you can make me a Jew.”

Hillel responded: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study.”

Think on that… “the rest is commentary. Go and study.”

One of the continuing themes in the Bible is Jesus’ healing on Sabbath days. In all of the gospels, the Pharisees are irritated with Jesus for breaking Sabbath law. If we look in the story of John 9, where Jesus heals the blind man, we see that not only does Jesus give this man the ability to see, he does it in a funny way. Jesus spits, gathers up dirt, rubs it in his hand to make mud, smears it on the man’s eyes, and tells the man to go wash his face.

Why didn’t Jesus just say “abra cadabra” and heal the man?

At this point in the history of Jewish legalism, Sabbath law had become so particular that simple things like molding mud and spitting were considered breaking the law. It had become THAT particular. So why did Jesus spit, gather up dirt, rub it in his hands to make mud, smear it on the man’s eyes, and tell him to go wash his face? Because each of those steps was breaking Sabbath law. Because Jesus was pointing out NOT ONLY how Sabbath law was preventing good works, but also the ridiculousness of how unnecessarily picky Sabbath law had become. He performed the healing in such a way as to rub it in the face of the Pharisees.

Jesus is rubbing his “disobedience” of Sabbath law in the faces of these religious authorities.

If you were standing there that day, wouldn’t you just say, “Oh snap”?

What conclusion do we draw from this story? The easy conclusion to draw from this story is that the law of compassion trumps all other Biblical law. It’s a good conclusion.

I like to think about this in a different way. I like to see this as a way we should approach religion in general. Stay with me.

“Because God says so” is bad reasoning. I mean, Sabbath law was all about “because God says so.” For a fearful populace that thinks of God like we are ants and God is a human cleaning her kitchen, maybe that makes sense. Maybe we should just do what God says so she doesn’t smoosh us. What’s wrong with thinking like that? It’s playing it safe. Jesus was all about playing it safe, right?

For one thing, within ANY religious tradition, you can say, “it says in scripture that this is the right action,” and there is ALWAYS another passage you can draw from that contradicts that position. ALWAYS. So we can say that the contradictory nature of religious scripture should make clear to us the problem of Biblical literalism.

Well, that’s dispassionate, isn’t it? “Don’t claim God as your reasoning because someone can use your same God to contradict your reasoning.” There’s my dispassionate position.

My passionate reasoning goes more like this: To be compassionate because God says so is cheap. It’s no longer compassion, it’s again adherence to law, and the problem with law is that it imposes boundaries. We should never put boundaries on compassion.

One night, I was driving home… from IHN, actually… with my then-boyfriend. As we were heading down Ellsworth, he exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, I think that guy was hurting that girl.”
“What? Where?” I asked.
“Back there,” he said and motioned. “He had her pinned against that wall.”
I turned the car around.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I said, “I’m going back.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
At this point, we see that the couple was merely making out. I didn’t have to figure out what I was going to do. What was I going to do? I don’t know. Call the police? At least shine my headlights and get him to take his hands off her? Invite her into my car? What was I going to do? I don’t know. Not the point.

As we drove away, he asked, “Why do you always do that?”

Of course, he wasn’t referring to some tendency I have to interfere in instances of domestic violence. Thankfully, I don’t often encounter domestic violence. He was referring to the times I’d step in between his friends in bar fights. To the times I’d help out a random girl in a club. To the time I chased down a dog with a collar to try and return it to its owner. To the times I would drive 45 minutes to visit a friend who had a bad day for only half an hour.

What he meant was, “Why do you always get involved in other people’s business?” It really bothered him. He saw my actions as butting into other people’s lives. If his friends were going to get hit in a bar fight, they deserved it for being stupid. I’m a 110-pound female. How am I going to help?

Well, I like to think that because I am a 110-pound female, a man is unlikely to hit me. It’s maybe a risky bet, but it’s one that I’m willing to make.

But my boyfriend’s question goes unanswered. Why? Why do I do that? Do I do it because it’s what God wants? Because it’s what Jesus taught? I say I do it because it’s the way my momma raised me. And my mommy didn’t raise me talking about God or Jesus… or Buddha or the Pope or the Dali Lama…

My mother raised me to take other people’s experiences into my own. She told me not to hurt other people in my words or actions. People don’t like to hurt. “Would you like someone to do that to you?” she would always ask. I avoid hurting people for the same reason I try to help people… because we should be acting with a mentality of human community. Of course, my mother never said this. Before now, I never have, either.

Why do we try to help people? We just do it. It comes from inside, not from outside. If God told me to help people, he did it from the inside, not from the outside. Not through scripture, through Humanity.

God gave us free will and these beautiful minds that are capable of some extremely complex thought. Why would God do that if God just wanted us to simply surrender our own judgment to authority? It doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why give us these beautiful analytic minds and then say, “everything you need to know should be in Leviticus”? It doesn’t make sense.

God gave us a mind and a heart and a moral compass. God gave us these tools with which to learn from scripture, to learn from Life. I think that God’s main guiding tools for us are internal. After all, scripture only has meaning to us BECAUSE of those tools, because of that Spirit of God in all of us.

If God is in me, God is in you, and if God is in MY motivation, God is in yours as well. I should take EVERYONE’S wellbeing into my decision-making. God probably does.

My willingness to stand in between 2 people on the verge of violence is because my mom taught me not only to anticipate MY possible outcomes, but others’ as well.

One of my professors referred once to a book called, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie. The subtitle of this book says it is “The story of the village of Le Chambon and how goodness happened there.” What a funny way to phrase things. The book is about a small village whose center was a small protestant church. The pastor, Andre Trocme, started housing Jews during the Holocaust. As time went on, his home and church became full of Jews and his hiding them seriously endangered his own life, the lives of his family members and the lives of everyone in their village. But this whole village came together and helped hide these Jews from the military. They all risked their lives for the well-being of complete strangers.

Compassion does not know the boundaries of law or religion or any other boundaries.

Andre Trocme believed that beyond the moral strengths and weaknesses of human beings, there is something much more valuable. In Trocme’s eyes, God showed how valuable each and every human life was when he sent Jesus to help us. Trocme believed that every human life had a “spiritual diamond” that God cherished.

At the time that Hallie wrote his book, Andre Trocme had passed away, but his wife was alive and available to interview. I’d like to share a passage from the book.

“When I asked her why she found it necessary to let those refugees into her house, dragging after them all those dangers and problems, including the necessity of lying to the authorities, she could never fully understand what I was getting at. Her big, round eyes stopped sparkling in that happy face, and she said, “Look. Look. Who else would have taken care of them if we didn’t? They needed our help, and they needed it then.” For her, and for me under the joyous spell she casts over anybody she smiles upon, the spade was turned by hitting against a deep rock: there are no deeper issues than the issue of people needing help then.”

“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.”

How could the people of that small French village let the Jews stay in harm’s way? They recognized the community of humanity and saw that those lives mattered as much as their own. They took on the struggle of strangers… because those strangers needed help then.

The gospel stories are inspirational and illustrate time and again how compassionate service matters. When Jesus heals the man in front of the Pharisees, he doesn’t say “God told me to.” He just does it. He does it by rolling up his sleeves and getting dirty… quite literally. He doesn’t justify himself in any way and in fact does it in direct contradiction of those rules which are supposed to be moral guidelines. Jesus doesn’t refer to some section of the Torah or wisdom literature to substantiate his reasoning for acting this way. He just does it.

Why do you behave the way you do? Why do I behave the way I do? I try to think about my whys and what I want my whys to be. When someone asks us, “Why do you do that?” hopefully we can say: “they needed our help, and they needed it then.”

The gold that was my hair has turned

2009-02-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

The gold that was my hair has turned
By Marina Tsvetaeva
(1892 - 1941)
English version by Paul Graves

The gold that was my hair has turned
silently to gray. Don’t pity me!
Everything’s been realized,
in my breast all’s blended and attuned.

-- Attuned, as all of distance blends
In the smokestack moaning on the outskirts.
And Lord! A soul’s been realized:
The most deeply secret of your ends.

Thou hast made me endless (from Gitanjali)

2009-02-14T01:02:00.000-08:00

Thou hast made me endless (from Gitanjali)
By Rabindranath Tagore
(1861 - 1941)
English version by Rabindranath Tagore

Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.

This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.

At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.

Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.

camas lilies

2009-02-11T21:40:00.001-08:00

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas
opening into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers' hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you - what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down -
papers, plans, appointments, everything -
leaving only a note: "Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I'm through with blooming."
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
---Lynn Ungar

the name

2009-02-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

“Man has access to this name, although it is also transcendent. It shines in the beauty and order of the world, and it shines in the interior light of the human soul. This name is holiness itself; there is no holiness outside it; it does not therefore have to be hallowed. In asking for its hallowing we are asking for something that exists eternally, with full and complete reality, so that we can neither increase nor diminish it, even by an infinitesimal fraction. To ask for that which exists, that which exists really, infallibly, eternally, quite independently of our prayer—that is the perfect petition. We cannot prevent ourselves from desiring; we are made of desire; but the desire that nails us down to what is imaginary, temporal, selfish, can, if we make it pass wholly into this petition, become a lever to tear us from the imaginary into the real and from time into eternity, to lift us right out of the prison of the self.”
--Simone Weil, from Waiting for God, trans. Emma Caufurd

Who made the world?

2009-02-10T00:07:00.001-08:00

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
--Mary Oliver

“The Language of Sin”

2009-02-08T19:53:00.001-08:00

“The Language of Sin”

I burn my inheritance, I say:
“My land is virgin, and no graves in my youth.”
I transcend both God and Satan
(my path goes beyond the paths of God and Satan)
I go across in my book,
in the procession of the luminous thunderbolt,
the procession of the green thunderbolt,
shouting:
“After me there’s no Paradise, no Fall,”
and abolishing the language of sin.
--Mihyar Adonis, trans. Kamala Bu-Deeb

calling

2009-02-05T02:08:00.001-08:00

“I stand between the years. The light of my presence is flung across the year to come.... Backward, over the past, is my shadow thrown, hiding trouble and sorrow and disappointment. Dwell not on the past. Only use it as the trees use my sunlight ... to make from it in after days the warming fire-rays."

--from "God Calling"

One Day

2009-02-04T02:12:00.001-08:00

One Day
Youngsters will learn words they will not understand.
Children from India will ask;
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask;
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?
You will answer them.
You will tell them:
These words are not used any more,
Like stagecoaches, galleys or slavery,
Words no longer meaningful
That is why they have been removed from dictionaries.
Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)

philo

2009-02-02T06:13:00.001-08:00

“God loves to give, and freely bestows good things on all people, even the imperfect, inviting them to participate in virtue and to love it, and at the same time manifesting his superabundant wealth, which is more than enough for as many as wish to profit from it. He shows this in nature as well. For when he sends rain on the ocean, and causes springs to gush in the most desolate wastelands, and makes sterile soil blossom with grass and flowers, what is he showing but the extravagance of his wealth and goodness? That is why every soul he created has the seed of goodness within it.”
--Philo

The Inner History of a Day

2009-02-01T22:07:00.001-08:00

The Inner History of a Day
By John O'Donohue
(1954 - 2008)

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.

C) John O'Donohue