Happy Easter!
Happy almost Easter
Before his crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27.)
Today, as we prepare to celebrate Easter, remember his words and his sacrifice. For a lovely story and song in the Easter spirit, go here:
Grace is upon us
Open your heart
It is doneGrace is upon us
Open your heart
This is love,The Lord is here
This is loveCome to the highest point of the mountain
At the earliest possible moment
With appreciation to MovedByLove.com, consider this beautiful parable of a saint:
The story of the Holy Shadow
Osho
There once lived a saint so good that the angels came from heaven to see how a man could be so godly. This saint went about his daily life diffusing virtue as the stars diffuse light and the flowers scent, without being aware of it. His day could be summed up by two words — he gave, he forgave — yet these words never passed his lips. They were expressed in his ready smile, his kindness, forbearance, and charity.
The angels said to God, “Lord, grant him the gift of miracles.”
God replied, “Ask what it is that he wishes.”
They said to the saint, “Would you like the touch of your hands to heal the sick?”
“No,” answered the saint. “I would rather God do that.”
“Would you like to convert guilty souls and bring back wandering hearts to the right path?”
“No, that is the angels’ mission. It is not for me to convert.”
“Would you like to become a model of patience, attracting men by the luster of your virtues, and thus glorifying God?”
“No,” replied the saint. “If men should be attracted to me, they would become estranged from God.” “What is it that you desire, then?” asked the angels.
“What can I wish for?” asked the saint smiling. “That God gives me his grace; with that would I not have everything?”
The angels said, “You must ask for a miracle, or one will be forced upon you.”
“Very well,” said the saint. “That I may do a great deal of good without ever knowing it.”
The angels were perplexed. They took counsel and resolved upon the following plan: every time the saint’s shadow fell behind him or to either side, so that he could not see it, it would have the power to cure disease, soothe pain, and comfort sorrow.
When the saint walked along, his shadow, thrown on the ground on either side or behind him, made arid paths green, caused withered plants to bloom, gave clear water to dried-up brooks, fresh color to pale children, and joy to unhappy men and women.
The saint simply went about his daily life diffusing virtue as the stars diffuse light and the flowers scent, without being aware of it. The people, respecting his humility, followed him silently, never speaking to him about his miracles. Soon they even forgot his name, and called him “The Holy Shadow.”
This is the ultimate: one has to become the holy shadow, just a shadow of God. This is the greatest revolution that can happen to a human being: the transfer of the center. You are no longer your own center; God becomes your center. You live like his shadow. You are not powerful, because you don’t have any center to be powerful. You are not virtuous; you don’t have any center to be virtuous. You are not even religious; you don’t have any center to be religious. You are simply not, a tremendous emptiness, with no barriers and blocks, so the divine can flow through you unhindered, uninterpreted, untouched — so the divine can flow through you as he is, not as you would like him to be. He does not pass through your center — there is none. The center is lost.
This is the meaning of this sutra: that finally you have to sacrifice your center so you cannot think in terms of the ego again, you cannot utter “I,” to annihilate yourself utterly, to erase yourself utterly. Nothing belongs to you; on the contrary, you belong to God. You become a holy shadow.
Happy Easter!
We are all buds.
We are all masterpieces, really. Works of art of exquisite complexity and beauty. Marvels. But we forget and get sidetracked by external things—success, age, worldliness. But it’s worth remembering.
Consider this poem:
Ring your bell.
Maybe you’re older, or weaker, or not quite as sharp as you used to be. Maybe your energy is fading, or you’ve gotten depressed and overwhelmed. Maybe all your ducks aren’t in a row, and all your bells don’t ring. Maybe you don’t think you can make a difference.
It is in just such times that you must press on. Your gifts are needed. The world doesn’t need you to be perfect; it needs you to show up.
Ring your bell.
All the concentric circles of who we are.
We are complicated and carry with us all the ages we have been and life experiences we have had. As Sandra Cisneros put it:
What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t.
So at 63, we can still long for a parent’s unconditional love rather than constant harsh judgment or expectation, or quiver in excitement over an upcoming holiday, or find ourselves sleepless over a stupid thing we said yet again. There is no ta-da moment where we wake up and suddenly make only good decisions and wise pronouncements.
It is all a becoming.
And hopefully those experiences we have had at all those prior ages help increase our empathy and understanding of others bumbling along, also becoming. Because what it really is, this thing called life, is putting one foot in front of the other and keeping on, striving.
Feeling sonder?
Sonder. A made-up word for a very real emotion. In his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig defines it: “sonder, n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.”
It’s a remarkable realization. We are all the stars of our own lives. We have our supporting casts filled with friends and families, maybe a foe or two, and then a whole world of incidental extras to our story. People behind the lit windows or sitting quiet on a shared bus or in some far off country. When we pause, we realize that they, too, have rich and complex stories filled with their own casts of characters. Their sorrows and joys are as real to them as ours to us.
Koenig has created a remarkable video to illustrate this notion of sonder. And his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is well worth your time. It is filled with profound insight and wonder.
But what to do with this realization, this feeling of sonder? It creates more than a passing fancy in us, doesn’t it? It leads to looking others in the eyes with respect rather than dismissing them as somehow lesser. It leads us to want to help ease their pain, as we realize that pain is as deep and biting as any we ourselves have felt, maybe even worse. It leads us to reevaluate our own centrality. Yes, we are central to our own stories, by virtue of our limited perspectives. But we don’t need to be bound in the fetters of our own subjectivity. We are central to our own stories, but not to the whole story, the world’s story, humanity’s story. There we are part of a vast cast of players, each at once both the star of their own story, and an extra in someone else’s.
What lasts, anyway?
is so easy to work, work, work, building up our resumés. Noses to the grindstone. Shouldering on. Or for those who aren’t in jobs any longer, filling our days with tasks, scrolling the news. But, when it all comes to a stop, when we are done on this Earth, have we built up what really matters?
Will we leave behind people who loved us, who we loved with everything we had to give while we had the chance to give it? Have we showed our people how much they mean to us? Have we dared to truly love?
Or will we leave too much left unsaid, unfelt, unloved?
We still have time to choose.
This is today.
Do not lose heart. The challenges you see today are the ones you must face. You are strong enough to do your part, and you will find allies everywhere you look.
Do not be afraid.
You may feel you are riding on stormy seas, but look around you. In the words of Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.
You do not need to do everything. Do what you can, where you can, with what you can. Your actions combined with actions from millions of like-minded individuals will make a difference for good.
Do not lose heart.
Hope in dark times.
Sunrise defeats night. The darkness will be driven away. When in the midst of the darkness, it may feel unending, but as day follows night, this, too, shall pass. The beauty of a sunrise is a lovely image to keep in mind when going through a problem. As sunrise defeats night, so hope conquers a problem. In times of great difficulty, we must hold on to hope that things will improve and that we can help.
Jane Goodall speaks to her hope for our future and, specifically, her hope in our youth in this moving speech.
She is right: if we don’t have hope, we give up, we do nothing. She says, “In this world of violence and fear, we must have hope for a better future.” That hope will sustain us and give us strength to solve the problems we face, as surely as day will follow night if we hold on.
We pray.
In a grieving, struggling world, we pray. Full of humility, we fall to our knees. Gobsmacked by the fragility of life and the interconnectedness of all creation, we lift our eyes to the Lord and join voices around the world to offer thanks, plead for mercy, and reach for hope.
Never before has it been more obvious that we belong to each other and are all in this together.
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