"Praise to the Creator and Preserver"
 |
| Easter sky quill in the desert |
Yet choosing to stop writing altogether is worse, somehow. I am one of those people who needs written expression (mine as well as others’) to digest, process, and make at least some vague sense of what is going on, internally and externally. When I go without writing for too long, it’s as if I’m losing some inner appendage, renouncing my ability to perceive. And so I tell myself: the loss of your faculties will come soon enough. In the meantime, write. When, how, and as you can.
I have been thinking lately that our world, or at least our species, might be in the hospice stage of its evolution as environmental, political, and cultural crises proliferate. I recall when my friend, KD, was dying of cancer, and the hospice nurse who stayed by her side in those final hours. How carefully she turned and tended to and washed KD’s body. Smoothing lotion on her limbs. Dampening her lips. Comforting. Inviting me to share memories out loud. Not denying her impending transition. Not speeding it up. Being with her, and being with me, her friend, through it. Perhaps not curing, but healing.
“This is the precisely the time when artists go to work,” Toni Morrison famously wrote about what creators do in times of fear, calamity, or despair. "We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." Sometimes I bristle when I see this quote, the stony part of my heart wanting to hunker down and be left alone. Besides, I might say to myself -- she's addressing artists, not wannabes like me ...
Nevertheless, here I am, writing. I was in the desert yesterday for an annual Paschal potluck, with a blessing and healing ritual led by my St.Francis-inspired friend, Amadeo. He included poems and prayers to Brother Rain, Sister Wind, Grandfather Space, and our generous ancestors, the Stars. We were reminded of interbeing, the term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh, the recognition that all things are connected and dependent on one another for existence. It brought to mind a revelation I had years back about the significance of collaboration—be it among communities, ecosystems, species, ideas, creative impulses… Nothing that exists gets here on its own. Work, writing, nourishing, tending – is always in some way a collaborative effort. It seems I sometimes forget that – perhaps a hazard of years of introverted work.
Thus I’m reminding myself that writing, (and praying) too, is always collaborative. This gives me strength: seeing myself, all of us, our work, as part of a cosmic web, everything threaded through everything else, receiving and generating, inhaling and exhaling … irrepressibly birthing and dying.
Blackout Psalm 118 (King James, with updated verbs, with use of Karl Rahner’s various names for the Lord. See this post for explanation on "Blackout Psalms.")
Give thanks,As part of his practice of "Counting the Omer," Rabbi Rami Shapiro is using the Psalms and the Ten Commandments as base texts for "blackout" or erasure poetry. (For more info on this, check out his Substack post of April 1).
He explains: “Blackout poetry dates back to Caleb Whiteford, a neighbor of Benjamin Franklin, who published redacted versions of local broadsides to reveal humorous new meanings ‘hidden’ within the text. Centuries later, the Dada movement and Beat Poets extensively used blackout poetry…I have come across many lovely versions of the Lord's Prayer over these past few years, including the Casa del Sol Prayer of Jesus, the New Zealand Anglican version, Neil Douglas-Klotz's translation from the Aramaic, and the Celtic Lord's Prayer (attributed to John Newell).
Below is yet another version inspired by a comment on Cynthia Bourgeault's Substack post of 3/5/26. The commentor's name is Pieter -- who shared an alternate Lord's Prayer without a citation -- so as far as I know Pieter is the author. I have further revised it here -- so I guess one could say this is a co-creation by Pieter and me:
(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.
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.
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!
