The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We contemplated the ways we are called to love and courage.  We reflected on how our practice of mindfulness develops the ability to listen deeply and to stay with difficult truths.  We cultivate compassion and wisdom so that our actions can benefit all.

We heard part of the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde’s post-inauguration homily.  She called on the President to show mercy to the many, many people who are vulnerable to great harm because of their social position.  She also prayed that we all show “the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation and the world.”

We heard the poet and writer Maria Popova’s encouragement to Love Anyway.

We heard eco-activist and writer Joanna Macy’s encouragement to stay engaged with even the most difficult truths in life. Her words are drawn from the beautiful book, A Wild Love for the World. This is a collection of writings from leading spiritual teachers, deep ecologists and activists that explore the Joanna’s teachings.

We heard Jane Hirshfield’s poem, On the Fifth Day.

Guided Reflection

Welcome.  Last week we reflected on inter-being and inter-breathing with the great web of life.  We imagined ourselves as trees generating life sustaining energy for the world around us.  We contemplated who and what we love and will protect.  This week I witnessed a courageous protective action offered by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde.  Reverend Budde spoke truth to power with love in her post inauguration homily.  Her are some of the closing words she spoke in addressing the President:

Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara and temples.

I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation and the world.

Her last words rang like a bell in my heart.  May we have the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak truth to one another in love and walk humbly for the benefit of all beings.  This encouragement allowed my heart to keep breaking open rather than break down.  Poet and writer Maria Popova reminded me:

You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway — because life is transient but possible, because love alone bridges the impossible and the eternal.

We love anyway.  What do we have to lose?  We can live mindfully and compassionately and when we falter begin again and again.  I confess that I needed these words this week.  I began to feel myself slide into cynicism and despair.  I could feel these states in my body.  These sensations were also a mindfulness bell.  I chose to reach out to a sister friend.  We shared our hearts and found our way to a sense of equanimity.  

In her book, A Wild Love for the World, eco-activist and writer Joanna Macy writes about moral courage.  The invitation is:

. . . to not look away, to not turn aside, but to be fully present to what confronts us.  The mirror wisdom is a radical teaching, calling for total attention, for depth of acceptance, a call to “just fall in love with what is.”  

Joanna believes that “being fully present to fear, to gratitude, to all that is – is the practice of mutual belonging.”  Even in the midst of great turbulence and even peril Joanna believes:

Our belonging is rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our climate.  

We belong to each other.  We belong to Earth.  We can draw strength from these belongings.  I can draw on the experience of Earth abiding under my two feet.  I can lift my gaze to the beautiful confers rooted and rising around me.  I can sense the presence of those in our circle.  The dear ones I can call on when I’m feeling down, fearful and grieving.  The ones whose open heartedness helps to dispel the fog of cynicism that arises during our troubled times.  I am also grateful that I can reach to the wise ones whose example, teachings and writings point me toward clarity.  Here is Jane Hirshfield’s poem, On the Fifth Day:

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking,
of rivers, of boulders and air.

In gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

In our practice we enter silence so that we may find voice of silence.  The voice which speaks with wisdom and compassion.  The silence that enables us “to speak the truth to one another in love.  [To] walk humbly with each other . . . [for the benefit of all beings.] 

Let us begin practice.  Let us cultivate a steady loving presence for ourselves and others.  I invite you to lie down or recline with pillows so that you can be completely at ease.  Let’s begin by bringing awareness to the body.  You might take a deep breath and let it go.  Notice how your body settles on Earth’s body.  Can you sense Earth’s abiding presence?  Become aware of her steady support. 

Feel the points of contact where the firmness of your bones are grounded.  Sense how the length of your spine finds rest. Feel the weight of the head heavy on the ground.  Can the muscles of the face soften?  Feel the upper back and shoulders’ relationship to the ground.  The weight of your arms and the fingers gently curling from open palms.  Can the hands let go a bit more?  Sense the gentle rise and fall of your chest and belly.  Breathe easy.  And the weight of your thighs, legs and feet released of load.  The feet a bit lighter in rest.  

Sense the wholeness your body.  Can you find a sense of integrity and inner strength?  Your body and Earth’s Body abiding and present. Feel the in-breath.  Know that you are breathing in.  Feel the out-breath.  Aware that you are breathing out.  Each moment can be a pause to breathe and feel.  Present.  Here.  Now.   Sense your heart center.  Breathe and feel the front of your heart.  In and out.  Breathe and feel the sides of your heart.  Breathe and feel the back of your heart.  Breathe and feel the wholeness of your heart.  Observe your response to this with a tender tenacity. Be faithful to this moment.  And this one.  And this one.  Sometimes it takes courage to feel what is true.   To explore the willingness to stay.  Stay.  Abide with Body experience.  Open.  Curious.  Present with this unending stream of sensation, feeling and thought.

Here we are, together, attending to this moment.  And this moment becoming the next, becoming the long arc of history.  Sensations, feeling, thoughts come and go.  In this stillness of pausing and attending can there be an openness?  Can there be an allowing this experience to be?   Feel breathing and space around this experience.  Allowing experience in spacious abiding awareness.  

Some feelings and thoughts may arise from anger or fear.  And below the bands of anger or fear may be currents of grief, deep caring and love.  What is revealed in the time of steady loving presence? Steady yourself and see.   Breathe and allow.  Feel what is true.  Stretch the mind until you can see and listen with a soft heart.  There may be a call to hearten.  To let everything belong.

You might savor this belonging rooted in the living body of Earth, woven of the flows of time and relationship that form our bodies, our communities, our world. In the healing space of loving awareness we can offer our capacity to keep feeling and so kindle the light of our courageous hearts.