Daily Dose (August 26 – 29)

TUESDAY AUGUST 26 —

“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Thank you, Rabbi Abraham Heschel.
And Mary Oliver’s reminder,
“it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world”

So. What if embracing the temporal nature of our life—that butterfly nature within—is about the permission to fall shamelessly and wholeheartedly in love with this life? And this moment—whatever it may bring? And what if this permission to fall wholeheartedly in love with this moment is about hearing the voice of grace?
Know this my friends: God’s grace is our ballast.

Which reminds me of a story that helps float my emotional boat these days.
While a young mother waited at a post-office-counter, her four-year-old daughter occupied herself with the opportunity for self-entertainment, exploring around the lobby, looking, prattling, not an item left untouched.
The girl finds a penny on the floor. “Look momma,” she says proudly, “a penny.”
Her mother, busy with a clerk at the window, mumbles an acknowledgment. Others in line smile while some shake their head and cogitate about the regrettable decline in discipline. The girl walks to the other side of the lobby and places the penny back onto the floor. Feigning surprise, she says, “Look mamma, I found another penny.”
Delighted, she keeps at her enterprise, placing the penny in a different location, until she has found five pennies, each one of them brand new.

Okay. It’s a make you smile kind of story. Certainly, meant to lift the spirits, but I’ll bet you serious money that I would have likely been one of the curmudgeons. There is nothing like being made to wait in line, sidetracked by a bothersome, disconcerting and merry child.
And yet. Jesus goes out of his way to connect the Kingdom of God with children, and the child (can we say the butterfly nature?) within each and every one of us.
It is not hyperbole. Because “children live in a world of imagination, a world of aliveness,” Mike Yaconelli writes. “Playing Superman and feeling alive, (the child in us) hears a voice deep inside, a warm and loving voice, a living, believing voice, a wild and dangerous voice.”
And then somewhere, somewhere along the way, we “grow up,” or are tempted by an obligation to “control” life.
We realize that we can’t fly after all, and our “God-hearing,” goes on the blink. We go from flying-wonder-child, to exasperated and intolerant consumer, undone by all the ways we can feel annoyed.
Somehow, the gift of just being me, isn’t enough. And we disconnect from delight and wonder and joy and gratitude. It’s as if we lose our true identity.
It’s as if the little girl in the story is swimming in a sea of grace, and in her heart and mind, that sea is available to everyone.
You see, the penny is a paradigm.
And here’s our question today: What paradigm owns me?
Here are my pennies…
God is alive in well in everyday life, and in the people around me
The ordinary is the hiding place for the holy
In small gifts and gestures, we find ourselves celebrating the sacrament of the present
In honoring grace, I say yes to sanctuary, resilience, unity, inclusiveness, wholeness and healing

“When we see a butterfly, it stirs the magic and wonder within, awakening and stirring our hearts and spirits. And a world without butterflies would be a world without hope.” Anonymous ​​

WEDNESDAY AUGUST 27 — “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Thank you, Rabbi Abraham Heschel.
I have no techniques.
I cannot tell you what to do.
I cannot give you permission.
But I can tell you this: life is about being present.
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” Henry Miller
So, why do we hold on to the notion that life—or our spiritual healing, or spiritual inspiration or spiritual retreat—begins someplace other than where we are right now? Why is it so easy to begin the sentences in our mind with “if only…” or “when…”?
I invite you instead to give yourself the permission to…
Regain the foolishness of wonder
Mary Oliver’s reminder,
“it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world”

Embrace the sacred in the daily
Celebrate gooseflesh
Go human
Find God in the ordinary
Live playfully
Spill laughter
Invite serendipity
Radiate compassion
Spill light
Allow your Spiritual Renewal to be a journey
Savor this moment
Practice the Power of Pause
Delight in life, knee-deep in the sights, smells, sounds and textures of the day
And remember that Grace is a gift given to all.  Without exception. Period.
Slowing down lets us see.
Seeing allows us to be amazed.
Amazement gives way to gratitude.
In Gratitude we relinquish control, and embrace life.
This life. This exquisite and extraordinary and often messy life.

But Terry, pain and suffering are real, cruelty and meanness abound, there’s work to do.
Yes, there is work to do. The work of compassion, and creating sanctuaries, and advocating, and addressing inequalities, and healing. And the list goes on. But that work (yes, that light) spills instinctively from one who is grounded, and at home in their own skin. No exhausted or unraveled by a compulsion to prove or earn or perform or control.
Late in her life, American poet and writer May Sarton was questioned about what she wanted to be when she “grew up.” She replied: to be human.
Yes. And Amen.
To be human is about regaining what has been lost in the shuffle when life has been relegated to keeping score and making waves and accumulating power.
To be human is about honoring and cultivating the “good life”.
And by “the good life,” I don’t mean our cultural craving for competitive consumption (what you might see featured in Forbes or on the latest reality TV show).
Gene Logsdon helps, and cuts to the chase. “The things that matter in a bad life, we know, are: gaining power over others, accumulating as much stuff as you can, getting revenge on your enemies (who are everywhere), and drugging yourself one way or another to forget the pain of not quite being human.”

So. To be human means being attentive to the life you have right now, and experiencing the sacredness and wonders within it—within the present moment.
“Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
Thank you, Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

THURSDAY AUGUST 28 — In one encounter with a teacher in India, Donald Hall asks him to define “contentment.”
“Absorbedness,” the teacher replies.
Now, I can’t find absorbedness in any dictionary.  But here’s my best guess– “Let life in.”
Let life in… in the splendor.
Let life in… in the complications.
Let life in… in the gladness.
Let life in… in the disagreeable.
Let life in… in the unfeigned moments.
This week we’ve been embracing Rabbi Abraham Heschel’s wisdom, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”
We can add to this, GK Chesterton’s metaphor, about “digging for the sunrise of wonder.”

It looks so easy on paper. And as a result, we commit ourselves to try even harder.
“You don’t trust the goodness inside you,” a friend tells me.
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t know,” I yell, affectionately, while Googling for resources on “tapping the power within.”
Am I still so afraid to believe that what I frantically seek, is already within?

I loved my garden on Vashon Island. It was a healing and grounding place for me. But even in our garden, sometimes we miss the nutritious food of life treasures.
It was a garden that took its time, which meant that for years, behind my house was a large hole. “It’s going to be a pond. You know, someday,” I would explain.
When people visited my garden, I directed traffic so that we enjoyed the charming areas, making sure that no one would notice the eyesore. On one visit, a young woman broke from the pack, and stood at the abyss… now, from years of neglect, a hole filled with dandelions. An amphitheater of dandelions. As if a five-gallon bucket of butter yellow paint were poured, creating a river to where the waterfall will begin, 140 feet away. She stood mesmerized. “Wow,” she said. “What a remarkably creative idea, to make a river and pond of dandelions. I never would have thought of that. It’s peaceful and beautiful! Genius! What ever made you think of it?”
“Oh,” I said (modestly), “It just came to me.”
My Oh My. What I saw as blight or indictment or shortcoming or deficiency or scarcity, she saw as genius. Go figure.

And that is where spirituality and growth begins; with acceptance: “Look. I never noticed that before.” In other words, I begin here. In this moment. I am not a pawn or victim or puppet. And in beginning here, I accept my imperfection—my brokenness, my divided and fractured being (what William James called my “torn-to-pieces-hood”). That here, even with the untidy parts, the untidy emotions, I can embrace the sacrament of the present moment…
in this conversation,
this relationship,
this conundrum,
this challenge,
this dandelioned pond,
this serendipity
this moment of grace.

FRIDAY AUGUST 29 — Sixty-two years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before 250,000 people who had come to Washington, D.C. to march for civil rights. In his booming voice, he gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.
So today, I needed to pause. To listen to his speech. To remember. And to acknowledge at my core, that we still need to hear—and honor—these words today.
I am a minister (old school called a “preacher of the Word”). Although, maybe we should be called “rememberers”. Because in a world where fear and distrust and judgment and hatred are real (meaning we are “not free”), it is easy to forget. To forget that every single one of us is imprinted at our core, with the Sacred (the Imago Dei). An identity (the “Word” if you will) that spills compassion and kindness and inclusion and reconciliation and healing. No one is on the outside. One word, one gesture, one helping hand at time.
You can listen to Dr. King’s speech here. And in this Sabbath Moment, I’ve included the final few paragraphs.

“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day…
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

​​​​​​Prayer for our week…
God’s desire
God’s desire is no political agenda, nor an economic vision.
It is simply kindness toward all,
a world that includes everybody, that offers beauty,
that gives life, free and abundant,
tendered in verdant hands,
that weaves us together in one living being,
one body, one life.
It is simply passion that the wanting child be fed:
for she is your own.
The “self-made” who disbelieve are the wounded
whom the Spirit sends us to heal;
the “successful” who cling to their food
are the oppressed who need to be set free.
Only the grateful are wise;
only the compassionate see clearly.
Only those who would suffer to free others
are truly free.
The divine in you is not the power to conquer wrong
but simply brave kindness.
It has its own power to open eyes, to set free.
The martyrs and prophets,
who have known glares and stones,
pogroms, marches and fire hoses,
each trail of tears the same Via Dolorosa, they know:
this is not a goal or agenda, a plan or a program;
it is not born of human will at all.
It is a gift of God, the life of the Spirit breathing in you,
the maker of worlds commanding, “Let there be light.”
Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Photo… “Hey, Terry! Hope you’re having a great week. My husband and I have recently relocated to Alaska and thought you might enjoy these photos. The first photo is of the lovely Kenai Lake on the Kenai peninsula. Wishing you a blessed week!” Penny Prior (“What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.” Eleanor Powell)… Thank you Penny… and thank you for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com