Midweek Meditation: The Three Silences

In learning meditation, one of the most important postures is in the posture of silence. It can be a great teacher to the open student. When the heart is still, a little whisper, a small ripple can create waves of profound images to help us grasp a bigger sense of God's presence. The following reading is from the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

THE THREE SILENCES

THREE Silences there are: the first of speech, 
  The second of desire, the third of thought; 
  This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught 
  With dreams and visions, was the first to teach. 
These Silences, commingling each with each, 
  Made up the perfect Silence that he sought 
  And prayed for, and wherein at times he caught 
  Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our reach. 
O thou, whose daily life anticipates 
  The life to come, and in whose thought and word 
  The spiritual world preponderates, 
Hermit of Amesbury! thou too hast heard 
  Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, 
  And speakest only when thy soul is stirred!

conrade

Jolt Quote XXVII (Poem)

Life's Scars


They say the world is round, and yet
I often think it square,
So many little hurts we get
From corners here and there.
But one great truth in life I've found,
While journeying to the West-
The only folks who really wound
Are those we love the best.


The man you thoroughly despise
Can rouse your wrath, 'tis true;
Annoyance in your heart will rise
At things mere strangers do;
But those are only passing ills;
This rule all lives will prove;
The rankling wound which aches and thrills
Is dealt by hands we love.


The choicest garb, the sweetest grace,
Are oft to strangers shown;
The careless mien, the frowning face,
Are given to our own.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best. (italics mine)


Love does not grow on every tree,
Nor true hearts yearly bloom.
Alas for those who only see
This cut across a tomb!
But, soon or late, the fact grows plain
To all through sorrow's test:
The only folks who give us pain
Are those we love the best. (italics mine)


(Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

"Singapore" by Mary Oliver

Singapore

In Singapore, in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life. I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)

"When Death Comes" A Poem by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

From New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press, 25 Beacon St, Boston, MA 02108-2892, ISBN 0 870 6819 5).

"Finding Direction in Spiritual Direction"

My wife and I attended a free Public Lecture on Monday (July 16th, 2007) at Regent College. It was given by Dr Susan Phillips on spiritual direction.

Phillips begins by stating her wariness of calling oneself a 'spiritual director' for God is the ultimate spiritual director. In her work, she experiences firsthand that people find it easier to talk about their sexual lives, working lives etc than their spiritual lives. Her work then is to help people to find their spiritual bearings in order to determine how to walk their spiritual journey. Metaphors and images are widely used in spiritual direction. Quoting Eugene Peterson's Tell it Slant, truth is to be told in a way that registers with the audience, not simply a literal statement. Some other ways in which this can be done is via stories, symbols, analogies and metaphors. She uses Billy Collins's poem to help us have a glimpse of the power of poems to help us tell it slant. Following this line of thought, Phillips goes on to describe two common objects in spiritual direction: Candle and Staff. These two objects are the 'viewing lens' from which a spiritual director guides another person along in their spiritual journey.

CANDLE
The purpose of the candle is a reminder to all of God's presence with them. Christ is the light of the world, and the candle evokes memories of Christ, to help the persons to REmember, to RElax, to REmind, to REturn... It also brings warmth for the gospel is warmth-hearted. The candle is also a circle of light which brings in a complete circle of Christ's love, like a carona of starlight, God being the warmth of grace and presence. The spiritual director is 'directive', whose purpose is to help direct attention to God, his presence, his warmth and his circle of love.

STAFF
Phillips brings in the metaphor of a Shepherd, whose guiding care and skillful hands clear away the grass to make clear the path for the sheep to go. It is not a big stick of power but of care. It is a practice of constancy, of individual attention, kindess and caring. She then quotes Buber's Believe that the world can be redeemed as a way to encourage a stance of faith. Other functions of a staff includes:

1. Setting Pace: Different pace is possible within a spiritual direction session. The pacing can also be done by meeting regularly, whether one has an agenda or not. This regularity has the benefit of improving one's ability to notice any differences. It encourages one another to be accountable on a regular basis, to pull oneself out of privacy towards trusting another person to help. [I think this is especially helpful in a world where people seeks more time for themselves than any other, when what is most needed is confession of sins and weakenesses to one another]
   
2. Protection
   
3. Directive: Not what to do but the how and where.
   

In the question and answer time, one question relates to the pitfalls of Spiritual Direction. Phillips lists the following:

• Dangers of inflation and deflation
  
• Becoming too isolated, implying that all spiritual directors ought to have supervision and consultation themselves
  
• The need to attend to one's own care

On the Calling to do Spiritual Direction:

• Main feature of spiritual direction is to help discern one's calling
  
• There is a danger of turning spiritual direction into an 'industry', a professional career, in which Phillips advises prospective spiritaul directors not to give up their full-time job!

Regarding fees, and charging for services:

• There is an association called the Spiritual Directors International in which one can get some guidelines. It is not a governing body, but basically a resource and a multi-religious forum for spiritual direction.
  
• Fees depend on the local market but is usually lower than typical psychotherapy sessions.
  
• Depends on one's own training and experience

The session is helpful for me as I ponder and pray over my call towards spiritual direction.

---

Directions (by Billy Collins)
[from: http://www.poetseers.org/contemporary_poets/poet_laureates/billy_collins/directions]
You know the brick path in back of the house,
the one you see from the kitchen window,
the one that bends around the far end of the garden
where all the yellow primroses are?
And you know how if you leave the path
and walk up into the woods you come
to a heap of rocks, probably pushed
down during the horrors of the Ice Age,
and a grove of tall hemlocks, dark green now
against the light-brown fallen leaves?
And farther on, you know
the small footbridge with the broken railing
and if you go beyond that you arrive
at the bottom of that sheep's head hill?
Well, if you start climbing, and you
might have to grab hold of a sapling
when the going gets steep,
you will eventually come to a long stone
ridge with a border of pine trees
which is as high as you can go
and a good enough place to stop.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.

Still, let me know before you set out.
Come knock on my door
and I will walk with you as far as the garden
with one hand on your shoulder.
I will even watch after you and not turn back
to the house until you disappear
into the crowd of maple and ash,
heading up toward the hill,
piercing the ground with your stick

I love this...

... Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude...

___ Thus is Art
Self-magnified in magnifying a truth
Which, fully recognized, would change the world
And shift its morals. If a man could feel,
Not one day, in the artist's ecstasy,
But every day, feast, fast, or working-day,
The spiritual significance burn through
The hieroglyphic of material shows,
Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings,
And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree,
And even his very body as a man,–

(Book VII, Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

"Death be not Proud" - John Donne

I chose the film "Wit" as part of my theological interaction paper. Directed by Mike Nichols, the main character Dr Vivian Bearing was powerfully portrayed by Emma Thompson. When I borrowed the tape, the librarian reminded me to have a box of Kleenex tissues on hand as the film is a weeper.

Dr Bearing was a Professor in the arts, a top authority in 17th Century poetry, espcially John Donne. Hard, demanding and uncompromising, she gained herself a famous reputation. Right from the beginning of the film, she was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic Ovarian cancer, and the rest of the film was about her struggles and observations of how she was treated as the medical professionals began her chemotherapy treatment.

One of the oft quoted poems was the one below by John Donne. She learnt it from her former professor, she recited and taught it in class, and eventually in her dying moments continued to recite it by heart. The verse numbers are included for ease of reference. At her death, the film played back her recitation of the poem, defying death's hold on her, that once she dies, death indeed shall be no more.
1 Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
2 Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
3 For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
4 Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
5 From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
6 Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
7 And soonest our best men with thee do go,
8 Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
9 Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
10 And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
11 And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
12 And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
13 One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
14 And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

The film is a scathing rebuke on the medical research community, and people who put research above human compassion, treating Dr Bearing like a mere research subject. The film ended wonderfully, with Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Rabbit. Strange that at the dying moments, Dr Bearing did not want to be read John Donne's famous poem, but a simple children's story. The director puts a brilliant contrast with Medical research vs Literary Arts, Research-Focus vs Human Compassion, and high-style poems vs children's story.

My heart was moved.

ks