Gift from La Luna

I keep a journal, most of which I keep private. But sometimes there are nuggets that are "blogworthy." In the interest of "getting out there" more as a writer (as far as a publicly viewable but generally unknown blog allows, lol), I'm going to share an entry from time to time... 

(From March 21, 2025)

Last night, after I fell asleep in the reclining chair while re-watching an episode of Lodge 49, Kirk covered me with a blanket to make sure I wouldn’t get cold. We do this for each other … Kirk frequently falls asleep on the couch, I on the chair… and when one of us decides to pull out of this bad sleep hygiene moment and go to bed, usually in the middle of the night, we will cover the other with a blanket. We no longer try to wake each other up – we have mutually decided that it’s just better, at that late point, to let the other continue sleeping unless or until we make our own decision to go to the bedroom to continue sleeping.

This time I was graced with a sweet gift. It was maybe 3 or 4 in the morning, and Luna [now nearly two years old], purring, came over and crawled into my blanketed lap. I petted her for a few moments, and she remained in my lap for longer than the usual 20 seconds or so. She stayed for quite a while and fell asleep herself, purring more softly as she entered into a deeper slumber.

And that’s the first time that has happened.

Usually, Luna might attempt to sit in my lap but because she tends to dig her claws and “knead” me – I pull her paws away, and she generally takes that as a signal to get off my lap. I intend it as “don’t dig your claws in, sweetie,” but of course she doesn’t understand. This time, however, the blanket (plus the extra cushioning provided by my bathrobe), provided buffering from her kneading, so it ended up not being an issue. Thus, we have mutually discovered the secret to napping together with her on my lap.

It was the sweetest hour (or so) there, half-zonked out in the recliner with Luna purring and snoozing in my lap. It felt like she was just letting all her felinity and trust and animal affection radiate out from her warm body, granting me the delight of her silky, slumbering company in those liminal moments where waking and sleeping and dreaming cozily merge into a hypnagogic bliss.

When I finally emerged from the chair – later, after she had left to attend to the rest of her nocturnal to-do list, I felt like I’d been given some subtle antidepressant. I was still tired and needed more rest (in fact, I went to bed and slept until noon!), but I felt bathed, tenderized, kissed.

So let me claim that at the top of my gratitude list for today, alongside the blue sky and warm sun and birdsong of early spring.

Centering Prayer and Sacred Breath

A member of my Centering Prayer group asked a good question about using the breath (versus a word) as one's "sacred symbol" during this silent meditative practice. (The sacred symbol is a word, breath, or inward glance that's returned to after one notices they've gotten caught up in actively thinking about something). Drawing on what I have learned over the years from guides like Thomas Keating, David Frenette, Cynthia Bourgeault, and others -- here is my response to her question. I hope it helps to clarify. 

Q: The whole discussion [we had about] using the breath...............there is a very subtle distinction of using the breath to escape our thoughts … or the practice of CP which sees the thoughts and then dismisses them; returning again and again to God.  Even returning to the breath is not what we want (that is my understanding); although it's helpful to get out of a mind maze.  We just want to be surrendered and open............yes?

A: Centering Prayer (CP) does hold a distinction between “returning to or noticing the breath” as a sacred symbol (an alternative to using a sacred word) versus actively following the breath. When the breath is a sacred symbol, it is used the same way as the sacred word is used: as an aid in returning to your intention to consent to God’s presence and action, i.e., to surrender. Then, once intention is re-established, the symbol doesn’t need to be continually repeated. Following the breath would bring “thoughts” and a kind of focus and concentration into the practice – and it would no longer be considered Centering Prayer. It could make a fine meditation practice, for sure – it’s just not CP as Keating taught it. And Keating might even suggest a “following the breath” practice as an optional companion “active” practice to CP – but he would hold that it is not the same thing as CP itself. He would likely say, “you might do this before or after your Centering Prayer.”

Christian Meditation, at least as I learned it when I tried it out years ago, is a mantric practice that includes the breath. One repeats the mantra “Maranantha,” (translation: “Come, Lord Jesus”) continually, inhaling on the first syllable (“Ma”), exhaling on the second syllable (“ra”), inhaling on the third syllable (“na”), & exhaling on the final syllable (“tha”). The current guide for the Christian Meditation lineage, Fr. Laurence Freeman, was good friends with Keating, and there are a few recorded dialogues with the two of them admitting that while CM & CP are distinct practices, they “lead to the same place.” CM is a focused, concentrative practice, while CP is a receptive, surrender practice. Concentrative practices, they both claim, become more receptive over time. (With CM, I heard, one notices over time that the mantra disappears of its own accord). Some people are more temperamentally inclined to concentrative practices, at least initially. I noticed that when my mind was especially busy and chattery, having the anchor of a mantric word-breath practice was very stabilizing.

Richard Rohr has also suggested using “Yahweh” as a kind of sacred meditative breath-word – inhaling on Yah and exhaling on Weh…. And then there’s James Finley, who suggested expressing “I love you” to God while exhaling, then receiving from God the same phrase “I love you” while inhaling.

Anyway, I have gone on and on…!  But these are fine questions to ask and good distinctions to make: ideas to take seriously and also to hold lightly, with good cheer, as Freeman and Laurence and Rohr have done in their dialogues with one another.

--Mary W.

Theopoetics for the Human Family

It has been almost two years since my presentation "Theopoetics and the Human Family" was aired as part of Bruce Alderman's / The Integral Stage's Future Faces of Spirit series on YouTube. Thus far, it's been mainly folks in Integral circles, a few Facebook & Wild Contemplative Lady friends, and my sister Adinah who have taken a peek.  I have ... felt shy about sharing it. Part of it is that I was so exhausted the day it was recorded, and in the video it seems like I'm straining to NOT sound tired. 

In other words: Vanity. Appearances. Surfaces.

So I post this in the spirit of letting go of this kind of self-consciousness. This is part of my journey, part of how story spills out through me. So be it!

The Blues as Contemplative Opening

"The moan is the birthing sound, the first movement toward a creative response to oppression, the entry into the heart of contemplation through the crucible of crisis..." -- Barbara Holmes

Betye Saar, Frieze

This moan, I think, is where the blues comes from. The blues as an unstoppable cri-de-coeur, the heart breaking within the pain as God seeps through the cracks -- Christ who weeps with us -- Jesus who is close to the shattered. With that moan Spirit flows through and widens the heart  in ways that cannot happen through our small separate self willing it. Something beyond ourselves enters in through the wailing, silent or sung, enlarging our capacity for compassion and the broader reaches of love and care that stem from that. We cannot do this on our own. But we can join our moans with the moans of others, invoking the God of our weary years, and be brought to a strength and a "peace that passes all understanding." We might find that we are carried--or graced with a mysterious capacity to carry--"for my yoke is easy and my burden light." (Matthew 11: 28-30).

Diurnal and Nocturnal Impressions

Some writing mined and revised from my handwritten journal. Recently, I am capturing impressions of the hours and seasons. It is writing practice. It is also one of the ways that I pray. 

Before the storm: The charcoaled bellies of the clouds hang low. May midnight thunder rumble.

After the storm: All the crows and l'il brown birds pecking the rain-drenched ground! There is food to be found.

Spring, midmorning: The breeze is blowing through the trees, now lush with leaf and blossom. With the daylight streaming through the branches, dappled patterns play across the ground: a slow shimmering of shadow and sun. It is not a rare effect, but I have loved this dance of dark and bright, this gift of leaf and wind, since girlhood.

I linger in this moment. Like the tiny insects that hover a few feet above the ground, I remain there—floating, quivering—savoring the brief sweetness of the season.

*     *     *     *     *     *    

Summer, first unmasked walk through the neighborhood after a year of pandemic: 

It is twilight, the hour of rose-hued horizon and moon-flowering sky. I am lucky to live in a place that is often quiet at dusk, with paths largely deserted. I relish the evening chill on my lips; my unshackled nose takes in the spice of blooms that open when the day dims down.

How I have missed these walks. How I have longed for that moment as the light pauses before revealing its primal aura—oh liminal hour of celestial presence—when planets appear and owls’ wings unfurl. 

Somehow, hope retrieves me at this hour. Somehow, possibility returns. Of course, I am familiar with the sleight-of-hand that low light plays – softening the edges, warming the coolness, inviting invisible crickets. It does not matter. The unbraided edges of dreams can now trickle in through my re-opened heart and loosen the rigidities of the day. Soon, the sleep-breathing of mammals sweetens the air. Soon, the cocoon of night wraps us in its luminous expanse and lifts us out of the callousness of the day.

 

Prayer For When You Forget to Say Grace

I was raised to say grace before meals. Usually when I was called on to do so, my reliable and to-the-point prayer was "God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen."

When it was my dad's turn to pray, his recitation was so fast that I never really knew the words to the prayer until I was old enough to look them up. It always came out as, "Bless us O Lord, and these thy gisswhissweroboutaceveshuthbounty, through Christourlordamen."

I got the sense that God might be a bit miffed if you were out somewhere, maybe at McDonald's with friends, and no grace was said -- not even your own little silent secret prayer (your default to keep folks from perceiving you as a goody-goody)...

Nowadays, I know that no scolding Deity in the Sky keeps track of such things and that Spirit savors authentic gratitude, however and whenever it is expressed. But I offer this prayer for all who might experience that sting of contrition when you eat and later realize you forgot to say spoken or silent grace.

Bless me O Lord

for what I just ate.

You know how I always

start praying too late.

I'm ever grateful

for the food I've received.

When my prayer is delayed,

please don't be peeved.

Amen.

O Holy One Weeping

O Holy One weeping

with us and through us,

widen our hearts

to receive your 

peace in the thick of this

chaos and pain

so that we turn to --

    not on --

one another,

becoming vessels of mercy

and wild tenderness

as we ride these storms

of our world

in transition.

Amen.