Daily Dose (Mar 11 – 14)

TUESDAY MAR 11 —

We live in a world that needs healing, from the gentle hands of grace.
And here’s the good news: grace is alive and well in our broken world.
Writer Kim Rosen visited a safe house in Kenya for young Masai women who had run away from home to escape genital mutilation. The girls liked to sing, and asked Rosen if she knew any songs. When Rosen said that what she really likes is poetry, the girls asked her to recite a poem. The first poem to come to Rosen’s mind was Mary Oliver’s, The Journey, a poem about leaving home, which begins:
“One day you finally knew
What you had to do…
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company”
By the time Rosen was done reciting this poem, she and some of the girls were in tears. One of them asked, “Who is this woman, Mary Oliver?  Is she Masai?”
We do not know the horror experienced by these young Kenyan women, but we do know what it means to feel, even in a small way, the encumbrance of shame, or the weight of fear.
To not be seen.
To not be known.
To feel broken.
To, quite literally, disappear.
Rosen writes, “It can be lifesaving to return to a poem that you hold within you. It lives inside you like a sanctuary, like a mosque or a church. Whether you know it by heart, or you turn to it on the page, that poem literally does what I believe temples were created to do. It returns you to what matters most.”

I preach this stuff.
I believe in the restorative and healing power of sanctuary. And grace.
Borrowing the words of Robert Browning, “God is the perfect poet.”
So. I wish for every one of us—sanctuary; and the permission to go there and be nourished at that well.
I wish for every one of us, the permission to quit keeping score; with ourselves and with others.
I wish for every one of us the permission to set down the weight we carry (any weight of should, or nagging grievance, or feeling never enough, or the assumption that brokenness makes us less than.) Set it down. Not to run from, but to let it know we are more than the weight we carry.
And I wish for every one of us, eyes to see those left out (on the outside), to offer a hand of compassion and mercy and inclusion.
This week, I choose to invite this self, this vulnerable broken Terry, to the table to speak. The sacrament of the present becomes a place for honesty, and confession and learning, and empathy and healing. And here’s the good news: I will not lose laughter, or wonder and awe, or gratitude and gladness, or empathy and compassion. They will all be strengthened.

WEDNESDAY MAR 12 — The sacrament of the present becomes a place for honesty, and confession and learning, and empathy and healing. A place where I am welcome to invite this self, my vulnerable and broken Terry, to the table to speak.
As I wrote on Camino Pilgrimage, “I realized that I wasn’t crying to please or impress anyone. I was crying because I wanted to connect with the core in me, with the light that shines, even and especially in the darkness. (And yes, to understand the reasons why I put a bushel over the light.)”
Grace embraces and invites this self—the vulnerable and broken self—in every one of us. And with this invitation, we embrace the certainty, and savor the gladness that comes when we recognize, honor, and respect the image of God in everyone. No exceptions.

Pema Chödrön’s reminder, “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

Yes, and Amen. When I do this—when I see that compassion and brokenness (vulnerability) are connected—I see that we are not on this journey alone.
Do you know the word Ubuntu? (It is one of our favorite grounding truths in Sabbath Moment.) A Nguni Bantu term meaning “humanity” often translated as “I am because we are,” and also “humanity towards others”, but is often used in a philosophical sense “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.” As chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Desmond Tutu used descriptive words to speak about Ubuntu intimately binding it within Christian principles of goodness. He describes the person true to Ubuntu as one who is “generous, hospitable, friendly, caring and compassionate.” He says it as a state in which one’s “humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up” in others. Tutu says of Ubuntu, “I am human because I belong, I participate, I share.”
Yes… compassion does indeed become real when we recognize our shared humanity.

So. “Here’s to the bridge-builders, the hand-holders, the light-bringers, those extraordinary souls wrapped in ordinary lives who quietly weave threads of humanity into an inhumane world. They are the unsung heroes in a world at war with itself. They are the whisperers of hope that peace is possible. Look for them in this present darkness. Light your candle with their flame. And then go. Build bridges. Hold hands. Bring light to a dark and desperate world. Be the hero you are looking for. Peace is possible. It begins with us.” Thank you L.R. Knost.

THURSDAY MAR 13 — “I think it’s not just relevant, like, but I think it’s actually necessary, because I think that beauty is not a luxury, but I think it ennobles the heart and reminds us of the infinity that is within us,” John O’Donohue wrote. “I always love what (Nelson) Mandela said when he came out — and I was actually in his cell in Robben Island one time, when I was in South Africa. After 27 years in confinement for a wrong you never committed, he turned himself into a huge priest and came out of this sentence, where he said that ‘What we are afraid of is not so much our limitations, but the infinite within us.’ And I think that that is in everybody.”
Yes. Rabbi Naomi Levy’s reminder, “God who was speaking those words to each one of us, ‘Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet.’”

So, here’s our question. How do we remind one another of the infinity that is within us, when times are tough, dark and hurtful?
And how do we remember, even in the belittling and demanding places, that we can hear and affirm that voice, and with it, walk one another home?
It is so easy (and tempting) to see our vulnerability as a weakness, or limitation or flaw, and not as the affirmation of a strong and resilient heart.
Nelson Mandela served 18 of his 27 years in Robben Island. Margaret Wheatley tells this story of a time that she had the unique privilege of touring Robben Island (now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre).
The tour group stood in a long narrow room that had been used as a prison cell for dozens of freedom fighters. Picture yourself in a space crowded, cramped and barren. The prisoners lived without cots or furniture, cement floors now their beds. The only light entered through narrow windows near the ceiling.
The tour group listened to their guide’s narration. “I was a prisoner in this very room,” the guide tells them. The gravity of his words co-mingles with the cold seeping up through the floor. There is a chill.
The group stares through prison bars, surveys the lifeless cell, and tries to imagine the stories about the suffering from relentless threats and capricious brutality.
The guide pauses, as if remembering, gazing the length of his former cell. Speaking quietly, almost a whisper, he says, “Sometimes, to pass the time here, we taught each other ballroom dancing.”
Okay, when I first read this story, I wasn’t ready for that ending. Even with the gut-wrenching bleakness, I confess to grinning, and then, admiringly, laughing out loud.
Ballroom dancing? A group of demoralized and weary men, beaten down and brutalized—and yes, vulnerable—teaching one another to dance.
The affirmation of the infinity within. You gotta love it.
“Liberation begins with an awareness that you are worthy of so much more than whatever form your chains have taken today.” Cole Arthur Riley

This week, I choose to invite this self, this vulnerable broken Terry, to the table to speak. The sacrament of the present becomes a place for honesty, and confession and learning, and empathy and healing. And here’s the good news: I will not lose laughter, or wonder and awe, or gratitude and gladness, or empathy and compassion. They will all be strengthened.

FRIDAY MAR 13 — “Blessed are those who understand life blossoms wherever water flows… Where tears are shed, divine mercy is shown.” Rumi
Yes, and Amen to this invitation. Let us bring our vulnerable and broken selves to the table to speak. The sacrament of the present becomes a place for honesty and truthfulness, and a place for confession and learning, and a place for empathy and healing.

Today marks the 12th anniversary of his papal election, and Pope Francis will celebrate it from a sobering location: a hospital suite, where he has battled double pneumonia for the last month in the gravest health crisis of his pontificate.
Earlier this week, gratefully, doctors said that Francis was no longer in imminent danger of death, and a long recovery period is likely. And from his hospital bed, Pope Francis gifted us with these words…

“The walls of hospitals have heard more honest prayers than churches.
They have witnessed far more sincere kisses than those in airports.
It is in hospitals that you see a homophobe being saved by a gay doctor.
A privileged doctor saving the life of a beggar.
In intensive care, you see a Jew taking care of a racist.
A police officer and a prisoner in the same room receiving the same care.
A wealthy patient waiting for a liver transplant, ready to receive the organ from a poor donor.
It is in these moments, when the hospital touches the wounds of people, that different worlds intersect according to a divine design. And in this communion of destinies, we realize that alone, we are nothing.
The absolute truth of people, most of the time, only reveals itself in moments of pain or in the real threat of an irreversible loss.
A hospital is a place where human beings remove their masks and show themselves as they truly are, in their purest essence.
This life will pass quickly, so do not waste it fighting with people.
Do not criticize your body too much.
Do not complain excessively.
Do not lose sleep over bills.
Make sure to hug your loved ones.
Do not worry too much about keeping the house spotless.
Material goods must be earned by each person—do not dedicate yourself to accumulating an inheritance.
You are waiting for too much: Christmas, Friday, next year, when you have money, when love arrives, when everything is perfect…
Listen, perfection does not exist.
A human being cannot attain it because we are simply not made to be fulfilled here.
Here, we are given an opportunity to learn.
So, make the most of this trial of life—and do it now.
Respect yourself, respect others. Walk your own path, and let go of the path others have chosen for you.
Respect: do not comment, do not judge, do not interfere.
Love more, forgive more, embrace more, live more intensely!
And leave the rest in the hands of the Creator.”
(Thank you, Pope Francis.)

I say amen to Fr. Antonio Spadaro’s affirmation, “In the world today, the powerful yell. (Pope Francis) whispers.”

Prayer for our week…
Slow me down, Lord
Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, amid the confusion of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in my memory.
Help me to know the magical, restoring power of sleep.
Teach me the art of taking minute vacations
–of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book.
Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values that I may grow toward the stars of my greater destiny.
Amen.
Wilferd Arlan Peterson

Photo… “Dear Terry, Just such a lovely day I had to share. Lake Merritt. And sunshine on Oakland, CA. Much love to you,” Anne Carter Mahaffey… Thank you Anne… I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com