Being present

If you could meet and talk with anybody, who would it be?
That's a fun question.
But I would like just to be entirely present with whomever I meet - and, in doing so, to be with God in a new way.

(See Archive for June, 2013, and go to post dated December 4, 1994.)

December 8, 2013

“Don't worry about your reputation.  Just do your best and let your reputation take care of itself.”

That is the best, and certainly the most memorable, professional advice I ever received.

Like much other wisdom, upon reflection, that advice may be applied to much more than at first appears.

Today it comes again to me this way:

“Don't worry about your relationship with God.  Just do your best and let your relationship with God take care of itself.”

December 1, 2013

“We’ll leave the light on for you.”

As I think today about how our little Quaker Meeting can, corporately and individually, contribute to the vast and complex world around us, what comes to mind is that simple pledge from a motel ad.

As a Meeting, we can maintain this community of faithful seekers and leave the light of welcome on for anyone who is moved to join us, whether for minutes or years.

Individually, we can leave our inner light on for everyone we meet: we can share freely such light as we are given – the light of attention, love and acceptance – with the people we meet.

To fulfill this pledge, we must take care of the light – we must provide protection and fuel to our spiritual lives.  And we must leave the light on for each other.

Contribution

What higher non-physical need do we have than to experience contributing to - mattering to - at least one other person?

Most treasured moment?

Which is the more to be treasured: doing something for the first time or doing something for the last time?
Does it matter?
Aren't we always living this moment, breathing this breath, for the first time and for the last time?

Wanting the best for our loved ones

We want our friends and loved ones to be well, happy, and fulfilled - even it means being well, happy, and fulfilled somewhere else or with someone else.

A father's advice

If a person knows you think something is wrong, or even just unwelcome, yet asks you to do that "if you love me", that person doesn't love you.

A question about fear

Is my fear of failure, embarrassment, loss, grief or pain the inner counsel of conscience or of cowardice?

(I think fear can come from an instinct for wisdom, even survival.  But it can also come from avoiding the kind of discomfort that is essential to growth.  See October 6, 2013.)

Doing my best

For what moment, what circumstance, has my life not prepared me to do my best?

My mother's favorite saying

"We are always in just the right place to learn what we need to learn."

When in doubt

When in doubt,
breathe in,
breathe out.

Being a person of substance

Being a person of substance is a matter of choice, not of money.

November 3, 2013

What more profound expression of spirituality is there than the constant cultivation of gratitude?

What surer path to happiness is there than the constant cultivation of gratitude?

The equation of an ultimate expression of spirituality and a sure path to happiness is perfectly elegant.

Yet there is more.

In human affairs, when one is deeply grateful to another person, it is natural to ask, “What can I do for you?”  Or we might say, “Let me know if I can ever return the favor.” 

Let us do the same in matters of the spirit.  By asking the Power – however named – to which we are grateful, “What can I do for you?” we demonstrate our gratitude.  By listening for the answer to that question and acting accordingly, we serve that Power; we become agents of grace; and we enlarge and nourish the garden of gratitude.

October 6, 2013

When I value immediate comfort, I avoid discomfort.

When I value long-term comfort, I accept present discomfort as the price of future comfort.

When I value growth, I welcome discomfort for what it reveals about my beliefs and goals.

When I value service, I welcome discomfort as the price of a life of fulfillment.

When I value love, discomfort does not matter.

Perfect moments

Sometimes even saying a prayer is like saying, in a moment of profound intimacy, "Excuse me. I have to make a phone call."

Tipping point

Of what is now the tipping point? 

Of what tomorrow is what I choose to do today the tipping point?

Seeking the blessings

Do I feel blessed at this moment?   
Why or why not?

Finding the humor

What is funny about this situation?

Investing my time

Am I spending my time or investing it?

Enjoying my choices

How can I do what I need to do and enjoy doing it?

September 15, 2013

September 15, 2013

Representing God to the best of our ability. 
Is there any more profound form of worship?

July 14, 2013

Physicists say that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Energy is only transformed - constantly and in countless ways. Potential energy becomes kinetic energy, as when a stone is dropped from a high place. Kinetic energy becomes potential energy, as when one carries the stone to the high place. It is a law of nature.

What if that law applies to love; to the energy of love?  What if the potential for love can be released endlessly because it can also be restored endlessly, and even increased, by the love we show to each other and to all of life?

June 2, 2013

June 2, 2013

“The kingdom of heaven is spread over the earth and people do not see it.”  Saint Thomas tells us that Jesus said that.  How can it be that the kingdom of heaven is before us and we do not see it?  I believe that heaven is not a place, either on this earth or after this life.  I believe heaven is an experience – the experience that all is well exactly as it is.  How do we find that experience, however fleeting?  We seek it by grateful reflection, and we find it by love and grace – those powers which, to me, are God.

April 14, 2013

April 14, 2013

To those of us who believe that God is more than just a construct of homo sapiens, God had to exist before our species existed - and God will exist after our species is gone from this earth. Even if God – other than through ourselves as God's representatives - can be pleased or displeased; even if God notices and cares about how we think about God, whether and how we pray to God, or how we treat each other, our fellow creatures, and this planet; how can we think that God was less pleased before our species existed, and will be less pleased after our species is gone, when the other species just take from the earth and each other what they need?

April 7, 2013

April 7, 2013

Friday night I went to see Paula Poundstone at The Garde Arts Center.  She did a riff on being an atheist. "You don't have to worry about me showing up on your doorstep some Saturday morning saying, 'There is no word again today!' ... I'm not going to be handing you any booklet - with blank pages!"  It was wonderful.

If God is only love, the power of love, that is plenty for me.

January 20, 2013

January 20, 2013

One of my favorite books is The Holy Man.*  In that book, the protagonist says, "If you treat everyone you meet as a holy person, you will be happy."  That is easy to do when one sees God in every person - and realizes that each person is her or his own preeminent theologian.





* By Susan Trott, Riverhead Books, 1995.

December 9, 2012

December 9, 2012

Sometimes God seems inaccessible.  Perhaps sometimes God’s voice is so soft it is hard to hear over the noises around us.  For those times, I believe God has appointed for every person a steward, a guide.  God has given each of us a guardian – a “Clarence, the probationary angel”, one might say.  That steward is each of us, ourselves.  That guardian is the part of us which asks, “What of love can I bring to this moment?” – and which answers that question.

November 18, 2012

November 18, 2012

Does God withhold?

Does God guard the stores of grace?

I think not.

I do not believe God is constantly deciding whether to withhold or bestow grace based upon our condition, conduct or beliefs.

I believe God is constantly bestowing on us all grace consistent with the gift of Life, including the laws of nature and our capacity to learn, to choose, and to act.

I believe grace is ours – today and always; ours to discover, to appreciate, and to reflect as best we can.

October 21, 2012

October 21, 2012

I believe that there is that of God in every person.  God is always present, patient and accessible.  The door to God’s space, so to speak, is always open, no matter how many distractions we allow to keep us away.  Whenever we ask, “what of God can I bring to this moment?”, we will always get a useful, loving answer.

October 7, 2012

October 7, 2012

Today I ask God, "Who are you?" "WHAT are you?"

The answer I get is that God is Life and all its laws and breaths. And each of us has a role in how other people experience God.

January 29, 2012

January 29, 2012

What of God can I bring to this moment?

That is the most useful question I know.

What of God can I bring to this moment?

Once yesterday, when I asked that question, the answer I got right away was, “Not much!”  Today I see that that was just my answer, my judgment. 

The answer to that question rarely comes in words, or even images.  Often the answer is simply, “Go about your life and keep asking that question.”

January 8, 2012

January 8, 2012

Logic and faith seem sometimes to conflict; to compete for our attention and acceptance.  A recent experience brought them together for me, at least briefly.  With my daughter Hannah, at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, I saw an Imax movie about the Hubble Space Telescope and its contributions to our understanding of our universe.  The telescope's images of space were dazzling.  The facts, in the narrative, were mind-boggling.  As the telescopic image zoomed out past the edge of our galaxy (oh, a billion stars), and past our cluster of 36 galaxies, there appeared an amazing array of stars -- what you'd see on a crystal clear Vermont summer night.  Then it was explained that those were not stars.  They were galaxies!  Scientists have estimated* that there are ten stars for every grain of sand on this planet!

If there is a God, a Creator, a Power, infusing, and with dominion over, such a vast universe, how could it possibly be that that God, that Creator, that Power, is not in every person?



* See http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/07/22/stars.survey/   See also http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky
For a skeptical view (roughly the same number - limiting sand comparison to beaches, i.e., excluding ocean floor and deserts), see http://cosmologyscience.com/cosblog/comparing-total-number-of-stars-with-grains-of-beach-sand/ 

December 25, 2011

December 25, 2011

It is a wonderful, wonderful thing that Jesus Christ was born.  We joyfully celebrate His birth today.  However, I imagine He would rather be honored by our doing our best to spread his message of love and of people's capacity to have their own direct relationships with The Creator Of All Things.

November 13, 2011

November 13, 2011

What do we need to experience the peace of God that passeth all understanding?

Is it for the world to change?

Is it for us to change?

Or is it just the recognition and acceptance of that peace?

October 16, 2011

October 16, 2011

Christ has died.

Christ has risen.

Christ will come again.

This liturgy concerning the essence of God in human form is spoken often and in many places.

I believe that Jesus Christ has been reborn, has come again - and does so every time a baby is born.  I believe that Christ has come again in every one of us.  When we hold hands at the end of Meeting, it moves me to feel that I am holding Jesus’s hands.

Christ is in every grocery store clerk, every mechanic, and every person without a job.  Christ is in everyone participating in the demonstrations on Wall Street and in every CEO many stories above them.  Christ is in every prisoner and in every prison guard.

This belief, truly held, creates much responsibility.  But it also provides the love and strength to bear that responsibility.

September 4, 2011

September 4, 2011 

The Bible tells us that Jesus worked many miracles here on Earth.  He turned a few loaves and fishes into a meal for thousands. He healed the sick.  He made the blind see and the crippled walk.  He even brought the dead back to life.  But I think the Bible also tells us that Jesus's mission was not to fix the world.  If he had spent his days doing that, the Bible would be quite different.

Instead, Jesus talked to people. His mission was to teach people that we can fix the world.  Indeed, according to the Bible, He said “Everything I do, each of you can do.”  [John 14:12]  He told us how to fix the world when He gave us the two most important commandments.  He gave us the wisdom and the will in the first, when He said, "Thou shalt love thy God in the first heart, mind and strength."  And he gave us the way in the second, "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

June 5, 2011

June 5, 2011 

Gracious God, we thank you for the capacity to experience that everything is all right just the way it is, and that we are contributing to goodness and peace in this world.  It is often difficult to discover – and rediscover – and develop the capacity to experience life being all right just the way it is.  Anger, grief, loss, fear, greed, and many other things get in the way.  But that experience is transcendent.  And contributing to others’ discovery of that experience, of that peace, helps us find it, too.

April 17, 2011

April 17, 2011 

Dear God, how can I make the best use of Your gift of life this week?

Today the answer I get to that question is to live fully and passionately, guided always by love.  Do not fear temptation, for it reveals my true values.  Do not be daunted by discomfort, without which there is little growth.  Pay attention to attachments, culling those which get in the way of the full experience of the gift of life.

January 2, 2011

January 2, 2011 

“What of God can I bring to this moment?”

There is always an answer to that question, even if it is simply, “Keep asking that question.”  I suppose a longer version of that answer is, “Be yourself.  Keep asking that question.  And behold what happens.”

December 19, 2010

December 19, 2010 

As I try to "center down", as I try to connect with God, the process could be something out of a movie.  It might be a movie where I am digging furiously, desperately, to reach God as if God were a miner trapped by a cave-in. Or maybe it's a movie in which I'm frantically searching for God as if God were a child lost in a forest at night, flashlight beams going every which way.  It could be that I'm being chased by wolves and I'm running for my life in search of help.  Then I hear a voice, calm and clear and right next to me, say, "I am here."

November 21, 2010

November 21, 2010 

Dear God, we pray, "Lead us not into temptation."  Lead us not into temptation of only the physical, economic or behavioral sort.  Lead us not into temptation of a spiritual sort inconsistent with Your service or with sound stewardship of Your gift of life.  Lead us not into temptation toward self-pity, resentment, self-righteousness, bitterness, envy or extravagant anger.

July 11, 2010

It is often said that we only get one chance to make a first impression.

We also only get one chance to make a last impression.  We just do not know when that moment will be.

From this, it could be said that we only get one chance to make a last living impression with God.

Today I ask God's help living in such a way that, whenever that moment comes for me, God and I may be at peace with it.

July 4, 2010

July 4, 2010

Our yearnings

may be invitations

to imagine

God's yearning for oneness with us.

February 21, 2010

February 21, 2010 

A few weeks ago, as I was driving southbound on Interstate Route 95, a northbound SUV flew over the median barrier toward me, rolled several times, first stern over bow and then side over side, and came to rest on its roof about twenty feet in front of my car.

No one was hurt.  To my amazement, the driver of the SUV crawled out the passenger window and walked away.

There is grace and it is a miracle.

Just as miraculous is the fact that every person - each of us - can choose to be an agent of grace in our daily lives.

December 6, 2009

My mother-in-law died last weekend.  Wynne Cole lived a wonderful life, radiating love and cheer, and faithfully keeping the glorification and service of Jesus Christ her mission.  Hers being the fourth death in my immediate family in the last thirteen months, I have had extraordinary occasion to reflect on death and life.  I believe that the loss of a beloved's life is not the loss of a soul, let alone of our memories or of the loved one's blessings or inspiration.  Though we mourn, we the living still have the opportunity and, I think, the responsibility to live up to the best in those who have passed away; to increase love, peace, justice and joy in the world; and to be the best possible stewards of Grace itself.

September 27, 2009

September 27, 2009

    Two brothers lived in a farming village.  One day, while they were out working in the open fields, there was an earthquake.  When the tremors stopped, the brothers ran to the village.  They found many buildings had fallen down and many people had been killed, including both their parents and both their wives.  After the burial ceremonies, one brother stayed by the graves, weeping day and night.  The other brother went back to the village and spent his days and nights helping the injured, helping clear away the damage, helping rebuild the city, and preserving the crops.  He wept often, too, but few people saw that because he was working.

    After a while, that brother went to the cemetery to visit his brother and the graves.  His brother was still there, grieving, bereft and depressed, and said, "It seems to me you didn't love our parents and your wife as much as I loved our parents and my wife."

    The other brother was quiet for a long time.  Then, in the gentlest of voices, he said, "So it seems.  So it seems.  I love you, my brother."