Tag: Hope

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The Power of Deep Dive Reflection

I usually see my path as it advances, eyes forward, looking to see what insights might be waiting up ahead. Every so often, it is helpful to look back and see the distance traveled. I recently did a deep dive reflection that included this question:

“Has there been a time when something you believed about God, the Divine, spirituality, or the meaning of life changed profoundly? What happened, and what emerged from that experience?”

Memories come flooding back.

I see the small-town church where I was raised. It was a loving place. There was no fire and brimstone, only the Gospel preached by a mysterious rabbi who wandered the plains of Palestine, imploring people to be more forgiving than resentful, to care for the stranger, to love their neighbor. I marveled at his courage and wisdom, and tried to follow the path he laid out. I believed; I was confirmed; I was active in youth ministry; I felt held and loved. This was where my spiritual yearnings were first awakened.

That life was my foundation, and so when the belief scaffold began to crumble under the weight of reason, it was a hard fall. I could not reconcile the inner presence I felt with Christian tenets that said salvation required specific beliefs. Jesus told me to forgive transgressions continually, not seven times, but seventy times seven. How could such boundless forgiveness be a commandment if God could not abide a person’s honest convictions? The contradictions mounted. I asked questions, but the theological answers I was given were dry, detached from the experience of love I had thought was the heart of Christianity.

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Prayer for 2026

I am pulled in two directions when I see someone suffering. My empathy wants to rush in and render aid. My fear wants to close its eyes and back away; the pain of another might jostle my own piercing grief, held so carefully in check. I usually manage my grief in spoonfuls until something cracks the cup and my weeping tumbles out. The footage I see of a flooded city, or a bombed-out building, or the bodies of children, remind me there is no safe refuge from loss.

Like it or not, the world’s pain is my pain. We all participate in grief, and we are all deathly afraid of it. We think we can walk around it, sizing it up until we are ready, and yet, when we are honest, we know there is no alternative but to walk straight through and feel the heat of it. To refuse to feel withers our humanity, which is far worse. So I take it in, by the spoon or by the bucket, opening as best I can. My wisdom knows that grief and pain can move through me if I let it, more like a river than a cup. To hold it does no good. And though some wounds never close completely, the taking in and moving through allow healing to begin.

Something else happens, too, when I open – in my communion with all who suffer (which is everyone), I remember we also participate in gladness. I have my health, a mind that still serves me well, friends and family who care about me, a dear beloved who meets the vagaries of each day at my side. I am grateful for this life, with all its griefs and gifts.

Why a prayer, then? Do I need to pray in order to meet life as it is, to leave my cup and enter the river? For me, prayer is my reflection on our common mission, this bizarre experiment of consciousness in human form, testing whether we can mature through our mistakes and replace petty self-interest with mutual care and concern, and so find our way home. Søren Kierkegaard said, “Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.” That fits. In the praying, I voice my longings and my questions; in the listening, I hear something in my voice that changes how I answer.

Prayer for 2026

Spirit, I invite you here. Be with me now.
Let me open to you and feel the power of your presence.

I see a world on fire and it frightens me. I want to set it right,
but my efforts seem so small, the momentum against us so great.
Remind me that these times cannot last because nothing does,
that life is always nudging to the good.

Let this year be one of new beginnings, a return to things that matter, to what is essential. Help me know that if changes are to come, I must be the process and the instrument of change. 

Let this be a year of clearing away. Reveal the obstacles in me that no longer serve; let me drop the stories I have recited to myself about myself, the old patterns that were molded long ago and now constrain me. Help me realize that I can live from my essence and know this is enough. 

Let this be a year of planting seeds. Help me understand how the birth of change starts underground, unseen, blooming in its own time. Give me the patience to keep walking, even when things look barren at the surface. 

Let this be a year of finding and uniting. Help me see that I am not alone, that although my candle is small, its light will gather others who are also clearing, planting, changing, growing.

Help me remember that hope does not require knowing;
that when I am still, I can feel the currents working underneath,
and sensing their direction, move with what is wanting to emerge.

And most of all, help me keep faith. Not a faith that evil will end – for evil is the forgetting of love, and there will always be forgetting – but faith that we can allow the old to die, in me and in the world, so both can start anew.

In service to our common good,
In surrender to what comes,
By the grace of all that is,

Amen

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash

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The World as We Know It Is Passing Away

I am troubled by the dark mood of our times. War, genocide, political upheaval, chaos, instability, and cruelty are all on the rise. Power is being amassed and abused with malignancy; institutions created to protect us from abuse of power are being weakened; norms of respect, decency, and honesty are being shredded; society is fragmenting.

The disruption feels weighty, more substantial than the usual ebb and flow of political tides. I believe the world as we know it is passing away.

That’s a hard statement to consider. It’s natural to want the disruption to stop, but hoping that the world will come to its senses and return and to “normal” is misplaced. We have passed the tipping point; there is no going back to the way things were. Realizing this allows me to face the future with pragmatism. I am not mired in angst; I have my fears and grieving, but they do not paralyze me.

There are reasons why the coming changes are irreversible. Many of the current financial, economic, and political systems that govern our lives are overripe for change. These systems worked well for a long time, but they’ve been distorted and no longer adequately serve the common good. They funnel an obese abundance to a small group while a growing portion of society scrapes to get by. This is unsustainable. And because there are vested players in these systems who don’t want to give up power, the coming changes are likely to be disruptive and even violent.

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Being a Romantic Helps Me See the World More Clearly

I am a romantic. That is, someone who believes human nature holds more beauty and goodness than not. This is not a pithy sentiment, it is a view hard-won. Romantics do not ignore greed, dishonesty, war, nuclear weapons, torture, hatred or any of the other ills we are capable of. We acknowledge the full continuum of being human, from ecstasy to evil, all manifest in the world and demanding our attention.  All of this is true.

But to be a romantic is to see this truth in light of another truth – that even given our immense capacity for malice, our potential for virtue is greater.  The ledger tilts to the side of goodness. 

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Wise Words – The Simple Road of Kindness

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”

George Eliot

It may be as simple as this. We’ve made it harder than it has to be.

We’ve spent the span of human existence tussling with the basic dilemma of humanity: how do we stand in relationship with the wonderment of this living cosmos and our fellow beings in a world where we also feel threat and danger? In the past, we sought guidance in misguided corners with a checkered history of success. We fostered argument and violence, forgetting the underlying reason we are here.

Maybe there is a day in the future when we will arrive at the crux of the matter:

when all the philosophies, doctrines, and treatises have been cataloged and shelved;

when the hierarchies and reformations have made all their arguments and counterpoints;

when the zealous believers of every stripe have finished shouting their convictions at each other and exhausted their passion for certitude;

maybe then, after all the building up and tearing down, our common wisdom will distill into a note so clear it rings the inner chambers of our hearts, a light so pure we cannot help but turn our heads and stare.

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Faith Is the Bird That Feels the Light

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

Rabindranath Tagore

I feel the light, too. And I am sometimes confused by it.

The light I feel is good. It is goodness itself. I want to be immersed in this light, drenched, consumed. I want to open my chest and let it enter me, to unfold myself in its brilliance and fly or sink to wherever it is going.

I trust the light without knowing why. Without good reason, without proof, even though it makes no logical sense, even though I can’t be certain. But my trust is stronger than knowledge or reason or proof or logic or, most brittle of them all, certainty.

Living in the modern world, I have been taught to believe in the power of knowledge, reason, and logic, and to strive to make things certain. I acknowledge the value of these human capacities and I express abundant gratitude for the many benefits they bring to modern life:  electricity, indoor plumbing, antibiotics, chemotherapy, communication satellites, bridges that don’t fall down. And because my trust in the light is more intuitive than logical, more felt sense than geometric proof, I am sometimes confused that my trust is so strong.

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Prayer for 2024

Although prayer is often thought of as the making of a request, it’s much more than that. A deeper practice enters prayer as a conversation, a way of being in relationship.

Prayer deepens our relationship with our inner world. It allows us to assemble our vague, unstated gratitudes and longings into a coherent expression, revealing hidden meaning about what is important or troubling to us.

Prayer deepens our relationship with our outer world. It brings focus to the state of our relations with people and events, showing where and how we are connected or disconnected.

And prayer deepens our relationship with the field of consciousness that houses our individual awareness. It reminds us we are more than separate beings trying to live and thrive among other separate beings; we are the tips of the waves of an ocean, small eddies of individuality swimming in a giant sea.

Each of our prayers is vitally important because it is a unique expression of universal themes. No other voice has our singular nature, quirks, insights, life history, or personal slant on the cosmos. Stating our prayers out loud collects our separate identities and joins them into a greater body.

And so here is mine, a prayer for 2024, in hopes that my voice will join with yours and a sea of others in the grand fellowship to which we all belong.

Prayer for 2024

Spirit, I invite you to me.
Let me open to you and feel the power of your presence. 

Ground me in my body, here and now,
In this space and time, fully available in this moment.
Fill me with your energy and potential.

Expand my senses, uplift my heart, reveal my higher self to me.
Let me sense the community of souls who share my longings,
Who strengthen me, who connect me to the whole.

I am grateful for the blessings in my life, for the material comforts
I enjoy in a world where so many go without, for the kindnesses
I receive, for the ability to feel joy, and for the boundless capacity
To give and receive love.

I acknowledge that the world can feel chaotic and dangerous.
I am troubled by the current of the times, with war, destruction,
Discord, fragmentation, and the senseless suffering of innocents. 
I am often left confused, searching for clarity and relief.

Strengthen me. Help me know that I am capable of meeting
Life as it unfolds. Be with me when I am fearful, when my desire for
Certainty makes me forget that the future is unknowable.

Show me where I have a part to play. Let me be moved to act in
Ways that nudge the coming changes to the good. Not action
Formed in anger, for there is already too much anger and poison
In the world, but action that is antidote.

Guide me to the stillpoint, the calm amidst the motion, the quiet
Peace where I can find my breath and see more clearly the
Trajectory of my decisions. Center me in silence where a
Softer and more generous wisdom will inform my better actions.

And give me hope.
Open me to trust that the roadway of this human project,
Though strewn with the devastating litter of our mistakes,
Is advancing toward something worthy of our efforts. 

In service to our common good,
In surrender to what comes,
By the grace of all that is,

Amen

What gratitudes and longings do you have? What prayer would you voice for the coming year? The roadway continues, a patchwork of stones laid out before you, ready to be walked upon. 

I invite you to offer your voice in the comments below. Our thoughts are more potent when declared and shared.

Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

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Why Spirituality?

Why do we pursue a spiritual path? What is the spiritual impulse that fuels our seeking? What are we trying to achieve?

Spirituality is personal. It touches everyone differently according to their understanding, nature and season, so we each engage these questions in our own way. Let me offer my response with the following possibilities.

I want guidance in walking this impossible human life, a paradox both extravagantly abundant, delicious and fulfilling, and supremely challenging, grievous and painful.

I want to grow. I know there is a vast potential beyond my current boundaries that wants to emerge. I want to discover and express the core of who I am.

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Wise Words – A World in Chaos, or the Birth of a New Consciousness?

Just before [an airplane] cracks the sonic barrier, there’s increased vibration and greater resistance . . . In our present state of evolutionary development, you might say we are flying just beneath the sound barrier of consciousness . . . On the other side of the sonic boom, we discover heightened connection, transparency, integration and resonance – more unity. 

People all over the world are experiencing decidedly tumultuous times.  Perhaps this is a sign that we’re moving closer to the “speed of sound” – closer to new consciousness. Of course, the faster we travel, the more volatility we meet – until we have breached the membrane and exceeded previous evolutionary limitations. What a beautiful boom that will make.

Thomas Hübl, from his book, Attuned

We live our lives in the day-to-day, so it’s easy to miss the longer view. In the day-to-day, we attend to the details of living life. The coffee pot, the kid’s breakfast, the list of appointments, errands, deadlines, and obligations, these all have their rightful place and deserve our attention.

We usually view the news while in the day-to-day mode of attention. Each item appears on the screen as a separate event and taken together, they sometimes paint a distressing picture. Extreme weather events, shootings, scenes of war, political gridlock, social unrest, hateful displays – we absorb the parade of disturbing headlines and react to each, feeling our emotions and grappling to make sense of it. 

And it seems to be getting worse, each day more extreme, the suffering amplified, our bodies more fatigued, and our emotions more numb. The speed of it is disorienting. We want it to slow down, for the madness to stop, for things to go back to normal.

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What Is the Spiritual Response to Gaza?

The war that ignited last week in the Middle East has left me deeply distressed and confused. Distressed that heinous acts and the rageful reactions they provoke are feeding a murderous cycle; confused as I struggle to find a meaningful spiritual response.

I see the wheel of violence and revenge rolling forward, ages old, and I desperately want something to change, to make this time different, to free us from the macabre theater that will play itself out over months or years until our capacity for carnage is exhausted.

I am confronted with the bloodshed and atrocities of war and the prospects for a widening conflict destabilizing the region.

I am staggered by the devastation of cities and homes, the sickening loss of life, the oceans of grief, and the trauma that will last for generations.

I am paralyzed by the cultural and geopolitical complexities that fog our collective vision as we seek a path out of the bramble bush.

I am consumed with a desire to distinguish right from wrong, to understand what drives people to commit slaughter and to fathom a reply that does not match its depravity. I long for a clean line that separates good from evil, that labels which acts of violence are justified, even as I realize that the maelstrom of war eventually blurs and breaks those lines.

And I yearn for guidance. I cry out for answers in a landscape where answers don’t make sense.

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