detachment from our identity makes us available

A wonderful message from Fr Thomas Keating this week at the Contemplative Outreach website: detachment from our identity… makes us available to become who we really are, which is God’s idea of who we really are.

relationships are our boundaries

This from the Christopher Budd, RC Bishop of Plymouth, England in his pre-lenten pastoral letter:

We are not totally autonomous, but individuals in relationship. And those relationships are our boundaires and the guarantees of our autonomy and dignity… is our life and thinking conducive to building community?

I was struck by this, and not just by the fact that Bishop Budd talks about autonomy rather than independence as the thing to be aimed for – an important distinction. The phrase that leapt out was: relationships are our boundaires. This is something I can understand physically: it’s where I butt up to another person that I know that they begin, and I end. The rest of that sentence though is a challenge. Relationships as the guarantees of our autonomy and dignity? May it be so. This is something I will have to sit with

Hildegard of Bingen: the Christian sufi

I, the fiery life of divine wisdom,
I ignite the beauty of the plains,
I sparkle the waters,
I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

In a move that will both please and surprise, Pope Benedict has announced that he will canonize Hildegard von Bingen in October 2012 and at the same recognize her as a Doctor of the Church. If you don’t know what this means: A Doctor of the Church is the highest recognition that the Catholic church can give to a theologian. So far there are 33 Doctors of the Church, only 3 of whom are women. Pope Benedict writes She brought a woman’s insight to the mysteries of the faith. In her many works she contemplated the mystic marriage between God and humanity accomplished in the Incarnation, as well as the spousal union of Christ and the Church. She also explored the vital relationship between God and creation.

Hildegard of Bingen: the ropes of the universe

In this famous painting, The Man in Sapphire Blue, Hildegard depicts the golden and fiery ropes of the Universe that hold all things together.

Septentrio

This beautiful 16th century model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is currently on display in the British Museum. A compass rose on the roof has for its cardinal points Orientes, Occidentes, Meridies and Septentrio, and it turns out that these four were common at that time.

Septentrio refers first of all to the constellation of the Great Bear, a name we can trace back to Greek myth. However, the modern picture of a bear with a long tail is not the ancient one. Bears do not have long tails. The three tail stars were seen by the Romans as oxen (triones) drawing a wain, and the word septentrio is a contraction of septem triones. The etymology of triones is unclear. Some say that the word originally meant a trio of oxen.

The word was used in the late 1st Century BC by Vitruvius in his 10 books on architecture.

The Great Bear is also found in the Book of Job (the oldest book in the Bible). Jewish astronomers are said to have seen the three tail stars as three cubs following their mother.

What I find strange about all this is that the Great Bear does not contain the Pole Star, and never has. Until the advent of electricity, everyone had a strong awareness of the stars. Septentrio makes no sense as North unless it refers to Ursa Minor.

Lechem Chuki: Our Daily Bread

As we mentioned before, people have long puzzled over the line in the Lord’s Prayer “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). The surviving gospels, all in Greek, have the unknown word επιουσιαν, a coinage of the evangelists. Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic or Hebrew and Matthew’s gospel was originally written in Hebrew. What might he have actually said?

One possible explanation is given by the website Hebrew4christians. They suggest that the phrase daily bread is lechum chuki, which is found in Proverbs 30:8. (Only the NIV actually translates this as daily bread). The meaning here is the bare necessities, the food one needs to survive – be it physical or spiritual.

Fang Song: Let Go

放 鬆
mandarin pinyin fàng sōng
cantonese fang song
English: “release loose”. Let yourself be loose. Relax; let go.

This is a basic concept in Chinese martial arts but hard to explain. It’s often rendered as “relax” but this word also has the connotation of collapsing. To stand with fang song is to be stand with structure but without tension.

This very nice article on an Irish website points out that most people are much stiffer than they realise, and talks about the importance of loosening the joints. There is also a nice series of articles on this site on Chinese swords.

Fruit-Gathering

I feel that all the stars shine in me. The world breaks into my life like a flood.

The flowers blossom in my body. All the youthfulness of land and water smokes like an incense in my heart; and the breath of all things plays on my thoughts as on a flute.

Fruit-Gathering LXXXIII:I
– Rabindranath Tagore

The vision of blossoming flowers is a theme in Eastern alchemy. In China, advanced practitioners are said to see visions of falling snow or flowers. I think Hildegard of Bingen may have described a vision of falling lights in one of her visions, but I can’t find the reference. This line of Tagore is more likely to refer to the opening of the chakras, symbolised as lotus flowers, but it enchanted me because it gave me the idea of flowers floating around inside my body.

You can read the full text of Fruit-Gathering here.

Love and gratitude: the divine economy (3/3)

Love and gratitude is a powerful formula, but when things go wrong, we need to be reconciled to one another. For this we need forgiveness; and for this, we need yet one more thing: the change of heart that the Greeks name μετάνοια – metanoia.

A friend told me about a Hawaiian reconciliation practice called ho’oponopono. This has a formula of four statements:

I love you
I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you

This seems to work even if you just say it to yourself.

Most amazing of all, we seem to be able to use it for other wounded people. Just say these words – to yourself – with the intention to help someone you know is wounded, and healing seems to come.

Lord, I have not yet done that for which I was made

O Lord my God,
teach my heart this day
where and how to see you
where and how to find you

You have made me and remade me,
and you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you unless you teach me,
or find you unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire
Let me desire you in my seeking
Let me find you by loving you
Let me love you when I find you

- St Anselm (1033 – 1109)

Thank you Becky for sharing this