Over these past three days (All Hallows Eve, All Saints, and All Souls days) I have been reflecting on both the sacred nature of time and the call to embrace each moment as a sacred gift. While I don’t have the option to enter the contemplative life as my friend and spiritual mentor Thomas Merton did, I am able to embrace those sacred moments when I close my mouth and open my heart and my ears. Merton’s thoughts below on time resonate with me, especially the concept of compassionate time.
The contemplative life must provide an area, a space of liberty, of silence, in which possibilities are allowed to surface and new choices—beyond routine choice—become manifest. It should create a new experience of time, not as stopgap, stillness, but as temps vierge—virginal time—not a blank to be filled or an untouched space to be conquered and violated, but a space which can enjoy its own potentiality and hopes—and its own presence to itself. One’s own time. But not dominated by one’s own ego and its demands. Hence, open to others—compassionate time, rooted in the sense of common illusion and in criticism of it. November 7, 1968 (The Other Side of the Mountain: The Journals of Thomas Merton, volume seven)
My prayer for myself and for you, dear reader, is that we can embrace the sacred pauses, be still, and learn from the Spirit.
“Turn your life toward what you love. . . . Become like a tree that shelters other lovers, roots finding secrets beneath, crown top waving in the sunlight no one sees. Be true to that love, not to ownership. Be like wind pouring through forests and clearings, circling mountains, running along rivers. Turn your life to that big love you have always suspected is the country you come from, sing the way they sing there, be that light-hearted and warm-hearted and easy-going even into your death, your sails full of love’s assurance.”—Elias Amidon
Verse of the day
Put away violence and oppression, and do what is just and right. Cease your evictions of my people, says the Lord God.
– Ezekiel 45:9
Voice of the day
If a house is burning, and a bucket of water is thrown on the blaze and doesn’t extinguish the fire, this doesn’t mean that water won’t put out fire. It means we need more water. And so with nonviolence.
– Dorothy Cotton
Prayer of the day May my hands never harm a living being. May my steps stay on the journey of justice.
– Sister Mary Lou Kownacki
“[The] monks understood that the soul’s ripening is never to be rushed and that it takes a lifetime of work. The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
How might you honor the grace of your soul’s slow ripening?
Verse of the day
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
– Ephesians 5:11
Voice of the day
When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.
– Oscar Romero, translated by Michael J. Walsh, Voice of the Voiceless (1985)
Prayer of the day Grant us discomfort at oppression that we may stand up against anything that harms your creation.
“It [the collective unconscious] is the place where archetypes emerge – those symbols and experiences that appear across time and cultures. The stories of our ancestors are woven into the fabric of our very being.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD,Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year – A Self-Study Online Retreat
How does your ancestral heritage wave its wisdom through your being? How might you open your inner ears to hear whisperings from the past in the present?
Yesterday I took part in a moving retreat Writing with the Ancestors through Abbey of the Arts. Parts of it were difficult as Denise and I continue to process the deaths of our mothers (Shirley and Jeanne) and the death of her dad (Roland) and our dear friend and Denise’s former mother-in-law (Betty). I wrote this piece for our mothers.
We Remember Them
We remember them in the song of the cardinals
We remember them in the bright flash of red
We remember them in the turning of the maple leaf
We remember them as we savor a cup of tea
We remember them when we see a favorite card or board game
We remember them when we set the table with their place settings
We remember them with love
I wrote this piece about Thomas Merton. While not an ancestor in the genealogical sense, he is very much a spiritual companion for me.
For the Dead – Thomas Merton
I imagine sitting on the front porch of your hermitage
Talking and listening
Embracing moments of silence
Letting the song of the birds touch my heart
I imagine your laughter and the twinkle in your eyes
We both sip a glass of bourbon
Noting that the distillery inspired a photograph
The sun is beginning to fade
Darkness prepares to descend
Yet Sister Moon will guide my way back
I see you smiling in the twilight as you wave farewell
I hear your invitation to visit again
I will
On this All Hallows’ Eve as the veil between this world and the next is thin, I know that I will continue to feel their presence along with the presence of so many others as I continue this journey through All Saints and All Souls days.
The sun has set and the Vesper Lights flicker and glow
Today was a day of rest and recovery for my sweetheart following her flu shot and COVID booster
In the middle of the day, we attended an Abbey of the Arts retreat
Reflecting on and writing about our ancestors
Through prayer, contemplation, song, and writing we explored their gifts to us
It was at times very emotional as we remembered them by name
Now as my eyelids grow heavy
I lift this humble prayer to you
Dona Nobis Pacem
Grant Us Peace
A wee prayer from the heart of your Padre…
“A voice from the dark called out,
The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”
—Denise Levertov
“Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year. The Celts divided the year into two seasons: the season of light and the season of dark . . . . In the silence of darkness comes the whisperings of new beginnings.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Sacred Seasons: A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year – A Self-Study Online Retreat
