Let Beauty Become Your Mantra ...

A member of the congregation I serve just came into the office and shared with me this passage from In Love With The Mystery by Ann Mortifee:

Let everything we do be done
for Beauty: how we keep our rooms,
tend our garden, or prepare our food.
They say the Spirits love Beauty.
Let Beauty become your mantra
and your devotion.  Your inner life
will bloom.  Synchronicity will
frequent your door.  Wild creatures
will come to call.  And your own
heart will grow bright and full
with the same Beauty that you adore.

"Let Beauty become your mantra ..."

I find that a tremendously lovely thought.

What do you think?  Does this idea of beauty as a "mantra" and a "devotion" speak to you?  If it does, what do you think it calls you to? 

• Remaining (or becoming) aware of the beauty around you?  
• Becoming (or remaining) aware of the beauty within you?
• Seeking beauty even in what appears anything but?
• Striving to create beauty as you move through the world?

Even more fundamentally,

• What do you think of when you hear the word "beauty?"  
• What makes something "beautiful?"  
• Where do you find beauty most often?
• Conversely, where have you never, or rarely, found it?

If you journal, these could be excellent prompts for your exploration.  If you meet regularly with a Spiritual Director, they could provide a partner to play with these questions.  (And if you don't dance with a Spiritual Director, why not?!?!?)

Pax tecum,

RevWik

"Buddha with Flowers"  by Walker

Resurrection

On the Sunday when most Christian's celebrate Easter, the Unitarian Universalist congregations I've served have always held a special service called, "A Rite of Spring:  An Eastertide Celebration in Two Acts."  (If you're interested, here's a link to the full text.)

After looking at how the story of Jesus' crucifixion and, more specifically, the time in the tomb before the resurrection echoes the lessons taught by the natural world through the cold, hard reality of winter, and how both point to a reality we all know of such "tomb time," the service then celebrates the undeniably good news of the resurrection stories, the inescapable fact of renewal in springtime, and the promise that neither will the wintry "tombs" in our lives have the last word.

To my mind, one of the most important lines in the service comes near  the end:

The question is not whether we believe in resurrection but whether we have known it —known it in our own lived experience, seen it in the lives of others, felt it in the world around us.

My question for you, then, is when have you experienced "resurrection" in your life?  What have been the times you have felt most "dead," "entombed," and what did it feel like when you burst forth like a crocus through the last dusting of snow?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Which Way?

It is often said that there are, generally speaking, two paths -- the apophatic way and the kataphatic (or cataphatic) way.

Apophatic comes from the ancient Gree -- ἀπόφασις -- and means, "to deny."

Kataphatic also comes from the ancient Greek -- κατάφασις -- and means "to affirm."

Most people are most familiar with the kataphatic path, also called via positiva.  In theology this is the approach of focusing on what God is -- God is good; God is loving; God is merciful; God is like a playful puppy.  (That last one's mine, and I think it's a pretty good description of God -- always there, always glad to see you, always showering you with love ...)  The Universalist side of the Unitarian Universalist tradition I serve has sometimes been described as having a theology that can be summed up in just three words:  God Is Love.  That's unquestionably an example of kataphatic theology.

In theological terms, the apophatic path, the via negativa, focuses on what God is not -- God is not evil, God is not petty, God is not a Buff Santa in a Toga.  The Catholic theologian Augustine of Hippo famously said, si comprehendis non est Deus.  (I wrote it in the original Latin because this is one of the few Latin phrases I actually know by heart!)  "If you understand it, it's not God."  This is about as apophatic as you can get -- God is so transcendent, so unknowable, so mysterious that if you think you know something about God, you're wrong.

The theologian Matthew Fox teaches that in Creation Spirituality (not to be confused with Creationism!), there are actually four spiritual paths, which are seen as stages of a journey:

• First, we travel the Via Positiva, in which we experience "awe, delight, amazement."  
• Next we find ourselves on the Via Negativa, on which we find "uncertainty, darkness, suffering, letting go."  
• This leads us to the Via Creativa, the path of "birthing, creativity, passion."  
• Finally we travel the Via Transformativa, were our focus is on "justice, healing, celebration."

Of course, it's not as though this is a one-way trip; there is no straight thru-line.  We go in circles, encounter switch backs, find ourselves in the same place but at a greater or lesser altitude, and sometimes just set up camp for a while.

Where do you find your spirit these days?  Which of these paths do you think you're on?  Do you think you've changed paths over the years?  Remember that other terms for "Spiritual Director" are "Spiritual Guide," and "Spiritual Companion."  We are all on spiritual journeys, and it can be good to travel with someone who knows something of the terrain.  No one can walk anyone else's path(s), yet it can be nice to have a companion with us as we go.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The Sound of Silence

What is silence?

It's "golden," of course, whatever it is.  

A lot of people would answer my question by saying that "silence" is the absence of "sound" or "noise."  

I find myself thinking about what the 17th century Jewish-Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza said of "peace:"

"peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that spring from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."

This sentiment has been repeated in many ways, by many people, in many times and places.

Is "silence" like this?  Is it also not merely the absence of something, but a think on its own?  Is it not just an absence but, instead, a presence?  Many contemplative/meditative traditions talk about entering, sinking into, or resting in silence.  This suggests to me that these traditions understand it to be something.

Have you ever thought of silence like this?  If so, how has that effected your understanding of the life of the spirit?  If not, how do you think it might do so?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Whatever the Weather

To a greater or lesser extent, depending on where you are, spring has begun!

Hallelujah!

It's long been recognized that many people have a strong emotional interconnectedness with the weather.  Seasonal affective disorder (with the incredibly apt acronym SAD) is a real phenomenon, affecting 6% of the population each year (with another 20% or so exhibiting at least mild symptoms).  It's serious, too. No less a body than the Mayo Clinic encourages people not to "brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the 'winter blues' or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own."  As someone who's had a life-long relationship with depression, I would echo that advice.

Is there an analogous interconnectedness between weather and our spirituality?  It might be hard to tease this apart from the effect weather has on our emotions, yet I do believe that our spiritual lives and our emotional lives are not mere clones of one another.  They are connected, to be sure.  What in life isn't connected to everything else?  This is one of the fundamental truths of Buddhism, sometimes called "dependent co-origination," and sometimes more simply, "this is, because that is."  Nothing exists unless everything else exists, because nothing exists entirely independently.  How can we think, then, that body-mind-spirit-emotion aren't inextricably linked?  

Nonetheless, just because things are linked does't mean that they are identical, so I return to my wondering:  is there a link between our spirits and the seasons analogous to that between the weather and our emotions?

I'd love to hear your thoughts ...

Pax tecum,

RevWik