Hope

I was reminded that yesterday was winter solstice.  It only gets lighter from here on out!  This marks our second year as a family of observing advent together.  As a person who loves imagery and symbol I have thoroughly enjoyed gathering my little family together and practicing this tradition.  I can think of few better ways to experience God than in the candlelit faces of those I hold nearest and dearest.

"Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up." ~ Anne Lamott

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us." ~ Matthew 1:23

 Wishing you the hope of light and love today!

From Possibility to Permission....

Recently I signed up to receive daily meditations sent via email from Richard Rohr.  There's something about the way Rohr puts things that resonates with me and where I am on my journey right now.  I feel so strongly that the practice and discovery of being who God intends us to be leads us more deeply and fully into experiencing His love and grace.  I particularly liked the following meditation and wanted to bookmark it here!

If you keep listening to the love, if you keep receiving the love,
trusting the love—even with all your limitations, unworthiness,
limited intellect, or whatever you feel holds you back—you start to
experience within yourself a sense of possibility. Whatever life is
inviting you into, you have this sense that it’s okay and, even
better, that you can do it! That is the joy of the saints. Now you
don’t have to do it by the world’s criteria of success or
performance. As Mother Teresa loved to say, “The only real success is
faithfulness.” To be faithful to this inner love is in itself the
greatest success. It is of itself the possibility. No outer successes
are necessary to be happy.

This is what makes the mystics sort of dangerous. It’s not just
possibility they experience—but permission. It’s permission to color
outside the lines and to be who you really are. It’s not just gay
people who have to come out of their closets. We’re all in our
closets. They’ve just given us a good metaphor for what we all have to
do. We’re all afraid to come out of our various closets. It’s not
the need to be outrageous or rebellious. It’s so much better than
that. It’s just permission to be that image and likeness of God that
you really are. You are unlike any other image or likeness. It is as if
God is saying, “I’m expecting you to return to me simply and totally
as you really are!”

All is Grace

I came across this video on author Brennan Manning and had to share.  This man and his message of God's unconditional love and grace have been pivotal and life changing for me.  If you've never read The Ragamuffin Gospel I would highly recommend it.  Several years ago I had the chance to see Brennan speak and his simple message was one of the most powerful I've ever experienced. 

From one ragamuffin to another - Thank you Brennan Manning.

Interior Castles and Eccentric Saints

If you happen to be a regular reader of my blog you may have noticed by now that I tend to be somewhat eclectic, eccentric, mystical (if you will) when it comes to ----well pretty much everything!  So when I heard about St. Teresa of Avilia a few years ago I was more than a little intrigued.  After all - I was the kid in grade school who chose to read through the book of Revelations for my free time after I'd finished all my regular school work.  I was drawn to and fascinated not by the theology but the visual images that strange text conjured up for me.  Weird?  In retrospect - yeah, a little....

Wikipedia has the following to say about St. Teresa:
Teresa is one of the foremost writers on mental prayer, and her position among writers on mystical theology is unique. In all her writings on this subject she deals with her personal experiences, which a deep insight and analytical gifts enabled her to explain clearly. Her definition was used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Contemplative prayer [oración mental] in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us."

This chick was kinda far out from what I've read.  It's reported she even levitated at times and had regular visions of Jesus.  It's all very fascinating to me. So when I heard that a discussion group I regularly meet with was going to be doing an exercise based on St. Teresa's writings "The Interior Castle" I was more than a little intrigued. 

What we did was basically use our imaginations through quiet and guided meditation to create an inner room of our choosing.  This room did not have to be inside or outside or even based on anything we've seen on a human level.  We were free to create a place that felt safe, comfortable, and perfect just for us.  A place we'd choose to hang out indefinately.  A place to be with God.

I thouroughly enjoyed the process of being guided through the choosing of what components would make a perfect room for me.  I got to choose colors, textures, lighting, smells, tastes and sounds.  In the end my room was not something you could ever find here on earth.  I let my imagination completely take over, and the result was techini-color flowers and water alongside a blanket of soft grass instead of sand going up to the ocean.  My God is more female than male, (but decidedly non-gender specific) and she doesn't look like aunt Jemima or Santa - more like the aliens in Avatar.

I plan to look into more of St. Teresa's writings because I have a feeling that were I a nun around the time she was I'd be coming up with some fairly interesting ideas just like she did.  And anyone willing to fly their freak flag (nun or not) is a friend of mine!