Daily Dose (September 2 – 5)

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 2 — On this Labor Day, I did something atypical or me. I put my pen down. And ceded to a day to rest.
A good walk in the woods, a chat with two very young boys, ecstatic, hunting and finding lost golf balls in a pond on the golf course. (Boys who take to heart Howard Thurman’s invitation, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” It did my heart good.) I napped. I listened to music. I read. I moseyed in the garden. I watched and listened to the birds. And I napped a wee bit more. Let’s call it a restorative Labor Day.

And for Sabbath Moment, here are two invitations to take with us into this week.
“Awake, sleeper, to the beauty around you. Rise up from your dreams to catch the scent of a new day. The Earth opens its arms to you, inviting you into a bright morning of sacred love. Step out into the world with confidence. Walk in certainty. Be fully alert to the messages in every flower, the whisper of every cloud passing overhead. This creation was made for all of us, a gift of discovery beyond description. Walk in beauty, each step a prayer, until the evening comes, the peace of eternity wrapping you in its blanket of stars, dreaming visions of the holy, until the last light lingers, alone in the stillness of the night.” (Thank you, The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston)

“The most visible creators I know of are those artists
whose medium is life itself,
the ones who express the inexpressible
–without brush, hammer, clay, or guitar.
They neither paint nor sculpt–
their medium is being.
Whatever their presence touches, has increased life.
They see and don’t have to draw.
They are the artists of being alive.”
J. Stone

And speaking of the garden and gardeners, yesterday I mentioned the passing of my friend Philip Roderick, Founder of Contemplative Fire. For some years, Philip and I sponsored a conference entitled Gardens and Grace. Or as Philip and I would say, “Gardens and Grace is an invitation to everyone; to embrace the gift that when paying attention and slowing down in the garden, gardening becomes an instrument of grace. As we are nurtured in God’s creation, we do slow down, we do align ourselves with God, and we are propelled into the world to build God’s Kingdom.”
Onward my friends. Our, in Philip’s own words, “This is a path of unknowing and knowing, of being loved and loving, of letting go and taking hold…”​​​​​​​​​​​​​

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 3 — This week we’re remembering the graciousness at the heart of creation.
An affirmation confirmed yesterday on my walk, watching two young boys hunting golf balls, “playing” unreservedly, and with their whole heart. They were living The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston’s affirmation, “The Earth opens its arms to you, inviting you into a bright morning of sacred love.”
And my mind goes back to the first day of my Portuguese Camino walk (November 2024), when I came across a young fella playing, and captivated (and yes, delighted) with his soccer ball, playing and practicing against the wall of a road overpass. Did he notice me, or did it matter that I was his grateful spectator? Not in the least bit.

And it connects me to our other theme for the week; our job title, which is Tikkun olam. Literally, repair of the world. Tikkun—to repair the soil of the world with nutrients: kindness, a balm of generosity, a capacity to accommodate fragility, and a softness of spirit.
And I would add: this graciousness is alive and well when we “become like a child.” The invitation to remember and to reclaim the profound sense of joy, innocence and trust. This invitation allows us the gift of letting go of scorecards, and savoring the permission to be here. Now.
Gratefully and gladly, the full force of life and the gift of enough—the graciousness at the heart of creation—usually envelops me when I’m looking the other way, say for answers or magic or resolve (maybe a reprieve from moments of disquiet). It is a lot like grace in that way. It enters in, slows the heartbeat, and before you know it, you’re sitting still. Relishing, contemplating, savoring and just being, if only for a moment. And the magic or answers don’t matter anymore. These moments, when I become like a child, re-introduce me to a world that is antithetical to the world that tells me the five things I must do to get past, or get over, or stay on top.

For me, it happens on my morning walk, with shafts (marionettes) of light, messages of hope through the cathedral of trees. Lord have mercy. I walk through the forest slowly, as a prayer.
When I look up, an occasional wispy cloud rides a river through the southern sky like a backdrop which has missed its cue and is hastily escorted across the stage.
“’Real life,’ as we once knew it, lacks our newfound essential need for sustained titillation,” Neil Postman recently wrote. “Therefore, solitude and the pleasure of a cup of coffee while lounging outside in leisure soaking in the bliss of a garden or a setting in nature becomes an abhorrent abyss of boredom. This sort of pleasure (of ‘real life’) satisfies the soul while ‘toys’ arouse only the outer senses… Like love, we seek pleasure in all the wrong places… the real loss is the negation of my soul.”

And this from Anna Quindlen. “So here is what I wanted to tell you today:
Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of saltwater pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work… Get a life in which you are generous.”

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 4 — Susan’s schedule makes me dizzy, or envious, of all the energy she has. Mother of three—ages eight to thirteen—she is taxi driver, calendar coordinator, cook, consoler, house supervisor, and bottle washer. Susan’s husband commutes to work, leaving the house early and returning late, carried by the tide of freeway traffic. Susan also volunteers—at the local school and at her church, and she is involved in a local garden club.
I ask her about sanctuary. She gives me a wistful look and says, “I wish.” And then she adds, “I’ll have time someday. That’s the good news. I just need to get through these years.”
I believe her, and I know what it means to wait for better times before making plans for sanctuary. I ask her what she does when she has a small window of “Susan time.” Her answer is immediate: “A cappuccino in the breakfast nook off our kitchen that looks out at the bird feeders. I start making lists. But some days I just stare off or doodle. I love to doodle and sketch the birds I see. It’s nothing really.”
We don’t give ourselves the permission to claim or own or embrace or name our sanctuaries, no matter how small or frivolous they may seem.
Sanctuary is where you go to cherish your life. It’s where you practice being present. And it may not be that many steps from where you are, right now.

So. Where is your sacred place?
We go there because if we don’t go, we lose a part of our soul.
I used to think I had to go somewhere special—exotic maybe. Or maybe I just wanted a change of scenery, a wave of a magic wand making all the litter in my life go away. And I confess that I still am mesmerized by bucket-list books and the ten thousand places I need to go before I die. I guess I assumed that I could enjoy sanctuary only with the change of scenery, as if sanctuary couldn’t happen in my real world.
I remember a wonderful conversation with Luanne, a patient in hospice at a local senior center. At age ninety-three, she still carried herself with dignity and poise, even if the facts of the day were sometimes muddled and jumbled. “It’s my teatime,” she tells me. “Excuse me?” I ask. “Oh,” she says, “I have a special tea. I can sit up for about thirty minutes, so I have the nurse help me to the chair by the window, where I sip my tea.” She is smiling, and I know that even in this room surrounded by medical equipment, sanctuary can be found.
I think through my own day. Sometimes my mind just goes blank. And I want to choose and find sanctuary, but then I wonder whether I’m doing it correctly. This is for certain: I can tell the days I don’t have my teatime.
This week, in remembering the graciousness at the heart of creation, we’ve talked about embracing the child within. And embracing what makes us come alive. And today, embracing what allows us to pause and be at home in our own skin.
In my conversations with both Susan and Luanne, I learned that it can help if we ask ourselves a simple question: “What is saving me today?”

I can tell you that my garden is a restorative place, but today, the two big bucks that visit, decided to see what else they could much on, now that all the raspberries are gone. I decided to chat with one of them, once I saw him eating blackberries at the edge of the garden. And I knew that at least, we had that in common. Not a bad place to begin.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5 — “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Thank you, Howard Thurman.
Thurman’s invitation is grounded in the reminder of, and the abundance in, the graciousness at the heart of creation.
Okay. This all sounds good. And we want to say, “Yes and Amen”.
But I can tell you that there are times when I wonder. What about the times I don’t see the graciousness?
What about the times I see only darkness, when I see only the shadow side?

Here’s my conundrum; I do want to embrace this invitation to be more human and fully alive.
And I don’t want to run or hide from sadness, or the rawness. And I don’t want to give way to apathy, or to anger and bitterness.
So. What do I do with the darkness—the shadow side—in life?
What do I do with those veins of disappointment, doubt, disillusion, insecurity, disenchantment, un-fulfillment, heartache, shame—or, you name it—which can course through our psyche.
Over the years with Sabbath Moment, I have written about life’s “shadows”. I did not do so to generate interest. I wrote for some catharsis in my own soul, because some days, the shadows plague me. And, it turns out that whenever I did write about shadows, it did generate interest. And I’m glad I wrote, because in the writing (the speaking, the voicing, the embracing) I gave myself the permission to live there, find acceptance there—to find the sacrament of the present moment there—at least for the time being.
I know that there will always be someone, usually in the name of God, to tell me that I need to pray more, or believe more, or try harder, but I find restorative grace and healing in having someone say to me, “I don’t know if, or how, you lost your way today, but if it’s okay by you, I’ll sit with you on the back deck for a spell. Let’s just watch the sky, and see if we can’t relish, and take heart in the colors the shadows make at dusk.”
Yes, my friends, even in the shadows, wherever you are, be all there. Because even in the shadows, let us remember the graciousness at the heart of creation.

“Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter’s day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these!” Charles Dickens (Martin Chuzzlewit)

“He is one of those people to whom you must allow moods,
–when their sun shines, dance,
–and when their vapors rise, sit in the shadow.”
Harriet Prescott Spofford (The Amber Gods)
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​​​​​​Prayer for our week…
We Are the Fundamentalists
we are the fundamantalists
  not those who claim the name
but those of us
who believe in human rights
  for everyone
who believe in fundamentals
  of fairness
    of equality
      of equity
who believe in recognizing injustices
  of past of present
    and being accountable
      for ending them
who believe in caring
  for nature
who believe in restoring
  in maintaining
    the environment
who believe in working toward peace
  toward freedom
    for all
yes we are the fundamentalists
Charles Thomas
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Photo… “I enjoyed Mick Owen’s recent photo in Sabbath Moment, alongside the Ohio river, and marveled to think that I was capturing this photo alongside that very river… up or downstream! Thank you Terry, for connecting souls!” Mary Esker… Thank you Mary… and thank you for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com