Fall is here. School is underway. And now our own school (RE) at Unity has begun. In teacher training this fall KP challenged us to bring our passions to our practice of teaching; to practice meeting the passions of our children, to risk being undone. A beautiful and sober invitation […]
After traveling and Easter and spring break, I was back in my classroom this week. Our story was the “Life Cycle of the Human Being”. We looked at pictures of people in different stages of life and thought about how we weren’t two any more. All of us are much […]
Today I got the pleasure and the honor of exploring Christian traditions of contemplation and meditation with a lovely group of women. One of the things we did was an active imagination contemplation on a passage from a gospel. I used Mark 6:53-56 which is a short passage whose language […]
by sarahcledwyn
Today I joined a group of women to walk an indoor labyrinth in silence. I love community labyrinth walks. Not only do you experience the twists of the path itself and it’s movement towards and away from the center, but you also meet fellow travelers, move with them, walk away […]
My favorite roll in my Spirit Play class is that of the door teacher. It’s hard to explain what to do in this role. The teacher takes on a particular presence of hospitality and loving witness. It might not look like the door teacher is doing much during class. They […]
by sarahcledwyn
Today I had the lovely opportunity to meet a new person who does incredible artistic work. She obviously pours her soul- her whole self- into her work and the work pours itself back into her, a mutually sustaining practice. I find that the more I engage my own soul purpose, […]
Our story on Sunday was preparing the children for our merging of the waters ritual in the fall. We imagined where we might collect water this summer and we each poured our water into the gathering bowl saying in response, “This is the water of our community”. The children loved […]
The Storyteller role in our classroom seems clear cut. There is a book with the ritual we use to open our class. The book contains the story. The Storyteller leads the class through the ritual and the story and dismisses children to their work. But this role done well is […]
These past weeks have been a whirlwind. Even contemplative minded folks can get overwhelmed by the many demands of life and forget to pause, reflect and simply be. This has been my last few weeks in Spirit Play. There is so much to do. I have found that the change […]
by sarahcledwyn
This has been an intense season of change in my life. Last spring I started studying with a meditation teacher after a synchronistic meeting. I had already been engaged in a meditation practice- survival meditation as I thought of it. I did not start meditating to enhance my life, or […]
Out Of a great need We are all holding hands And climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, The terrain around here Is Far too Dangerous For That ~Hafiz Tonight I find myself in a still place. I am pondering how to love. I am pondering what it looks […]
Out Of a great need We are all holding hands And climbing. Not loving is a letting go. Listen, The terrain around here Is Far too Dangerous For That ~Hafiz Tonight I find myself in a still place. I am pondering how to love. I am pondering what it looks […]
by sarahcledwyn
This week in Spirit Play we told the story of Passover, which turned out to be about three stories in one. Before the story of celebrating Passover, we started with the story of Exodus. The story was highly condensed, giving mention to Joseph and then explaining that the Hebrew people […]
Last week in our Spirit Play class things started a little haphazardly. I was running late for one and my teacher friends were running even later than me. There was a little chaos as we gathered in the hallway together and then moved into the classroom in a big bunch […]
by sarahcledwyn
I wasn’t looking forward to Spirit Play this week. I thought about what I might say. I thought about what I might not say. I fretted just a little. And then I took a deep breath…and the day began. The day began slowly with a sp
I am one who is seeking and finding refuge, opening a soft place in my heart opening up like my newborn in warm water gently blossoming to let in the sun and the bees an invitation into beautiful sanctuary. I am one who is […]
by sarahcledwyn
Published
This has felt like a long week. I am tired. I feel as though I could look back and sigh and simply walk to my bed and sleep. I feel as if I’m half asleep already. So I look back instead and re-focus my weary eyes on the week. I […]
by sarahcledwyn
I went to my first Bat Mitzvah last week and was moved by the service and the many messages within the readings and Torah. The part that I keep talking about, though, was a midrash that the Rabbi shared. Midrash for those unfamiliar with it are stories written as a […]
by sarahcledwyn
As a part of my daily practice, I have been sitting with verses from the Christian tradition in the morning after meditation. This morning I was sitting with a few verses from a Psalm and one verse from the Signs Gospel. Psalm 77:17-21 The waters saw You, O God, the […]
by sarahcledwyn
This week in my Spirit Play class, one of my friends wanted to show me the block structure he made. As with all our classroom materials, they are intended to be used one way, in this case to build churches, and they are actually used in a multiplicity of ways. […]
by sarahcledwyn
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Are you ready?
by sarahcledwyn|Published
Fall is here. School is underway.
And now our own school (RE) at Unity has begun. In teacher training this fall KP challenged us to bring our passions to our practice of teaching; to practice meeting the passions of our children, to risk being undone. A beautiful and sober invitation as we begin the year. At it’s heart we are called to prepare ourselves to be fully alive and fully in relationship to ourselves and the children we companion and witness in our classes. It is to be ready to be lit up like our flaming chalice. We are called to be present in kindness and generosity whether we judge our class successful or wanting. And there is always something to learn.
This Sunday we learned to “get ready” in our class. We get ready as we begin by sitting criss cross apple sauce with our hands in our lap. We quiet our minds and our voices and our bodies so that we can listen. We practiced this in my class several times when the attention of the children began to wander. I practiced it myself as I realized a piece of ritual I missed or did out of order, remembering for myself and my class that we are all learning Spirit Play together.
Part of the philosophy of Spirit Play is to use whatever comes up as an opportunity for us to learn in community and this is something that I sometimes am not quite ready for. This week we had one child who wanted to play at the sand table instead of sitting on the rug or with the door teacher. I invited him to sit a few times, but he did not accept my invitation. After a few attempts I brought my attention back to our circle and let the moment be what it was. We began our circle and one child heard the scraping of a tool scooping sand against the bottom of the table and spoke up to say she was distracted. I listened and suggested we all get ready again and focus our attention on what was happening in our circle. We moved on with class and a second child raised her voice to say that the sound of the sand table was distracting. I also listened to this comment and reflected back to her that it was hard to listen with that noise and then I kept going with class. I recognize in myself my desire to smoothly lead our class ritual and my loss at what to do after having extended an invitation that wasn’t accepted. As I play it back in my head, I wish I would have let our community of children voice their distraction and offered it as another invitation into the circle. Or to have started a conversation that might include the question, “What would help you come into our circle?” I wanted to model acceptance and kindness, which maybe felt more accepting to the sand scraping then to the children asking for help to not be distracted in the circle. I maybe forgot that we all have a place and a voice, and part of what church is, is to navigate that in community and in love. If I had gone this imaginary route, maybe we would have all come to awareness that our friend at the sand table arrived at class needing to go to the bathroom which was making him uncomfortable. Instead, as we went on with our circle, he had an accident and then happily joined us on the rug after he was relieved and clean. There are many ways to get ready.
So, how do you get ready? In what ways are you quieting your mind, heart and body in order to listen to the moment? Are you showing up to class having met the needs of your body and soul? Are you receptive and open to the unexpected lessons that emerge in this room every week?
Come, let us wonder together.
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I Would be Fed
by sarahcledwyn|Published
After traveling and Easter and spring break, I was back in my classroom this week. Our story was the “Life Cycle of the Human Being”. We looked at pictures of people in different stages of life and thought about how we weren’t two any more. All of us are much older than that now! We talked about all the many things we can do now that we couldn’t do when we were two. It’s a lot of things, even for those of us who are only three.
After our story we took time as we always do, to wonder together. We always ask, “If you were something or someone in this story, who or what would you be?” One of my children answered that she would be the person being fed. I had to clarify because part of the life cycle lesson is a baby being fed and completing the cycle by showing an elderly person being fed. “Which person being fed are you? The old person or the baby?” “Both”, she said.
This answer struck me. Probably it caught my attention because I tend to be the person feeding and not the person being fed. That was even part of the focus of the lesson. We can do so much as we grow. We can keep learning and our hearts can keep growing even when our bodies reach their full height and start shrinking again. We can do. We can grow. I like being a do-er of many things. I like being the leader. I like imagining and sharing a new way. I like growing in my thoughts and growing in compassion as I age.
So, even though I firmly believe in the value of simply being, of simply breathing, I have to admit that it’s very difficult for me to be graceful about being fed. I am ok at exchange. I am ok with mutuality. I can open to receiving most of the time if I know there will be an opportunity to give back or if I have already given something first. The pictures we witnessed together were of being fed. Not just someone else setting dinner in front of me which they have prepared with their love and effort, but a human with a spoon in their mouth that they weren’t holding themselves. I do not desire to be the person being fed.
It makes me a little uncomfortable to think of myself in a position where I cannot manage to get a spoon to my own mouth. It makes me uncomfortable to think about someone sitting in front of me, loving or indifferent, feeding me. And this discomfort is not just about the idea of physically being fed, although receiving that with grace must be a challenging practice for those who experience it. This way of being for me is also spiritual. It’s difficult for me to be vulnerable and admit that kind of need. I like leading the group and asking the questions. I like opening the space, observing and going inward. And there are spaces in my life where I share deeply and those are a refuge. However, I don’t often experience the kind of spiritual need that would require the equivalent of someone lifting a spoon to my soul.
I am going through significant transition in my life right now and it has highlighted to me the ways in which I struggle to stay steady, to be confident, to be unafraid and to show that face to my own self and others. It’s hard to allow feelings of fear and doubt and anxiety to surface. They sometimes do. They come when someone asks a compassionate question about how I’m doing. They come when all that emotion gets so stuck in my body that I’m in physical pain. But I’m having a hard time welcoming my own feelings of helplessness and despair and brokenness. When I was two, I could just cry and release every difficult feeling and the adults who loved me would hold and comfort me. When I was two I could ask for help for everything. These things seem to be much more difficult as an adult. So I find that I need to keep doing my work. I need to continue letting my children teach me what it means to surrender. I need to remember the love inherent in the Universe that makes it ok to know when despair needs expression and company. And I need to open, not just to giving kindness to others when they are in need, but to receiving it when I have nothing to give or am overwhelmed by the feelings that seem much bigger than me.
Who or what are you in this story? Are you the one being fed?
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On Retreat
by sarahcledwyn|Published
Today I got the pleasure and the honor of exploring Christian traditions of contemplation and meditation with a lovely group of women. One of the things we did was an active imagination contemplation on a passage from a gospel. I used Mark 6:53-56 which is a short passage whose language captured me a few months ago when I ran across it in my morning scripture readings.
“Once they had crossed over to land, they landed at Gennesaret and dropped anchor. As soon as they had gotten out of the boat, people recognized him right away, and they ran around over the whole area and started bringing those who were ill on mats to wherever he was rumored to be. And wherever he would go, into villages, or towns, or onto farms, they would lay out the sick in the marketplaces and beg him to let them touch the fringe of his cloak. And all those who managed to touch it were cured!”
I read the passage a few times and asked the women to imagine themselves in the story. Where are they? On the shore? Running around over the whole area? In the marketplace? On a farm? And what do they experience there with their senses? Is it hot, does it smell like lake-shore, is there sand on their feet, do they hear animals or people?
And then I asked them to consider who they might be in this story. Are they Jesus? Are they one of Jesus’ followers? Are they bringing their loved one for healing? Are they themselves laying in the marketplace hoping that Jesus will come near? Are they a shop keeper or bystander watching and wondering what is happening?
And then I asked them to inhabit the story and imagine what might come next after the text ends.
Today I read this passage and found myself in the marketplace. I have heard a rumor that Jesus is coming and I am in need of healing. My family humors me and doesn’t understand why I would go, but I know I need to go, even if they don’t understand. I have no mat. No one can tell that I am there too hoping and waiting to see if the Healer will come here. No one can see my illness. I can see the others, those with scaling skin, those laying in the hot sun barely breathing, those with withered limbs, with all manner of physical illness. And I see those family and friends who have brought them here, anxious mothers with their sick children, friends standing by, all of them ready to rush their loved one close to him, to help them to reach out, to press in all around in the chance that they will come close enough to be cured. They are the ones who really need the Teacher. They are the ones he should reach out to.
I don’t know why I thought I could come here, whole in body, and seek for my own healing. There are so many here who will die if they are not helped. Still….I will stay regardless. Maybe there is a chance he will come here and at least I will see him and see for myself this man of God. I smell the fires of the cooking ovens. I wait for a long time. The air feels tense with anxiety; everyone straining to see down the path. Will he come? And then suddenly there are shouts and a great many people run down the road. He is coming. He is coming here. I hold back assuming there is no room for me to get anywhere near him. He is pressed from all sides. Everyone is scrambling and calling out. Voices everywhere beg and plead. He walks through the crowd slowly reaching out and touching the sick.
He is amazing to watch and as he moves further into the crowd, an amazing calm moves through the people. They witness him in awe. Everyone who touches him, everyone he touches, even just a brush of his clothes, becomes well. They sing and shout their praises. Mothers weep in gratitude. I watch and wish that I too could come close. Suddenly everything stops and he meets my gaze through the crowd. He knows exactly why I am there. I am embraced in a feeling of all-encompassing love. There is nothing but his gaze and somehow I am standing before him. He takes my hands and tells me that I too am well. And I am. I am well. I am a boundless perfection beyond all thought and word. I am an essential piece of everything and there is Love, only Love. Everything is Love. He smiles at me and tears run down each of our cheeks. He says, “Come. Follow me.” And I do. I leave everything I have known for Love and Joy.
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Moving in Moving Out
by sarahcledwyn|Published
Today I joined a group of women to walk an indoor labyrinth in silence. I love community labyrinth walks.
Not only do you experience the twists of the path itself and it’s movement towards and away from the center, but you also meet fellow travelers, move with them, walk away from them and meet them again. The moving bodies were a dance, were thresholds and doorways, were eyes filled with love and compassion, strangers or angels coming into presence with me. The form of the labyrinth itself is truth that I am trying over and over to remember. We are not lost. We move in. We move out. We move in toward the center of the path, toward the center of our breath, toward the center of love and then back out as we lose our balance, step aside for another, get blurred in the lines and go back the way we came.
This week the darkness has been thick, has left me blinking and reminding myself to breathe. The darkness has felt reassuring, then terrifying, then peaceful then empty. I know that there are beautiful things hiding in the darkness. I know that to sit there I need more than what I know or see. The next moment is impenetrable. The next moment may be a cliff edge or a warm bed of leaves in a safe place. The next moment will change everything whether we notice or not. The next moment will change everything. It always does.
So tonight I am sitting in the dark, but not alone. This transformation is only possible because of love; because I am held in love, because I reach out, because I open myself when another’s hands find mine groping for something to hold on to. This is the death I chose, holding hands in the dark with you, with the Universe. I know that I cannot get lost. I know that I am not alone. I am moving in. I am moving out.
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My favorite roll in my Spirit Play class is that of the door teacher. It’s hard to explain what to do in this role. The teacher takes on a particular presence of hospitality and loving witness. It might not look like the door teacher is doing much during class. They just sit by the door.
But really, they are a living threshold between the known and unknown, between our physical sacred space and the rest of the building, between the Mystery beyond and this tangible eternal present moment. If I imagined peeking through a key hole into the door teacher, this is what I dream her internal process might be like.
“First a breath for myself -to be fully here and ready. I open my lungs, my eyes and my heart. I am ready.
Good morning child. Wait. Stop. You are here. You have arrived. Take a moment to catch up with yourself. There is no rush. Take a moment to stand here and look in my eyes. Your name tag and your coat are not as important as stopping here for just a minute so you can fully experience my joy that you are here. We are here together!
Now that your coat is hung and your name tag on, you can say goodbye to your parents. Tell me friend. Are you ready? Are you ready to walk down that hall and enter a holy space? Are you ready to listen and to work and to play? If you are ready, then you are free to enter. Please go into our room. Sit on our rug. Join the storyteller to prepare for our story. If you are not ready, then please sit here next to me. Sit here in my safety and love; in the still point between being gifted to us for our class and your own choice to enter. You can stay with me as long as you would like.
My children are here. My children are getting ready. I embody the closing of the door, the creation of our sacred circle of safety and delight. Our class has begun.
I sit here by the physical door. If the circle is too much, if you find you cannot get ready, I am waiting to receive you. Here next to me you can hide if you need to. You can grow calm in the presence of my calm. I am serene, beaming my love into our room, witnessing wiggles and miracles and each beautiful being who has joined us today. I witness unexpected kindness. I witness conflict. I witness insight. I witness the whole human drama played out right in this one room. The circle of our community is playing within my beating heart and before my wondering eyes. The children have walked through my open heart door and dwell there for our learning time. This is meditation. This is practice. I am listening with my whole self.
And then the time comes for the children to get centered again on the rug, to end their formal sacred play with us. I bless this room and say a silent gratitude for each of these souls, present and transformed today. I open the door, open the seal of our class and resume my post, ready to send you all out into the world again, changed and loved.
Good morning. Your parent is here. You are ready to be on your way to whatever your day holds. But wait. Stop. You are making a crossing. Take a moment to stop in this doorway, to look in my eyes and receive a blessing. I am so happy that you were here with me today. My love goes with you until we see each other again. Your heart and mine have touched today and neither will be the same again.
The last child is gone. I take another moment, to breathe, to close my eyes and feel my heart. I feel the affect of this love, of all the love that moves between us. I see that we are the same. I see that we are different. I practice seeing you as you are. I practice seeing myself as I am. We are Light and Glory and we are Muddled and Distracted. I practice being love and doing church with all that we are.
I forgive myself my inattention, my slips, my mistakes made today. I dedicate this practice of teaching to the increase of Love and Life everywhere in the Universe.
May it be so. May it be so!
Open your hearts door teachers! Feel what it is to be love and be loved. May the threshold that you are move you deeper into your own integrity, service and joy.
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Today I had the lovely opportunity to meet a new person who does incredible artistic work. She obviously pours her soul- her whole self- into her work and the work pours itself back into her, a mutually sustaining practice.
I find that the more I engage my own soul purpose, more of these people appear in my path. They inspire me, help me and show me that the life I can’t quite dream up for myself is indeed possible. I find myself feeling recognition when I meet a soul which has found it’s beautiful and unique expression. For Marilyn, who I met today, her healing, her medicine, her work is creating Labyrinths. She spread several out on her floor. She had gorgeous paper paintings on the wall with beautiful designs. One of them was a butterfly pattern in a circle of blue and white. The circle border was the path leading into the contour of the wings. She stood reverently before this painting, arms upraised tracing various configurations as she moved in, out and around the design. It was beautiful and sacred to watch her. It was like dance and worship and beauty reflecting beauty.
As I sit remembering, I am savoring the experience of simply being present with someone as they speak and dream and share about a pursuit which captures them and brings them deeper down into its mystery and our own mystery. I appreciated her dreaming and scheming and listening as we looked at a design I hoped to incorporate. I could see and feel the creative spirit moving through her. She had me walk a new design that was a long rectangle so it could be used in a hallway. At the end/center of the path, she had drawn concentric arches that invited one into a threshold instead of an ending. Standing in the several thresholds of that path, I was moved to say, “yes” with every step to remind me that I am choosing to walk into the center of everything. I am choosing my own dying, my own birth. And we had opportunity to sit in some silence, a gift for her she said. The silence is rich. It is one more threshold.
So tonight I am grateful. I am grateful to see the Beloved, the Divine Friend in the eyes and the art and the work of another. I am grateful that my own reflection in their presence brings me into my own holy center, from where my love and my art and my work emerge. I am not only grateful to Marilyn, but also to the many many countless people who have gifted me with their deep selves. Some of them have shared their work, their story, some a simple gaze that speaks more profoundly than anything. We are present here together in this beautiful, difficult, wonderful and amazing world. We are gifts for one another. I thank the Universe to be witness to such unfolding Light as it is constantly born among us. I thank the Love beyond all Love that I can look around and meet so many eyes and think, “Oh yes, I know you. I recognize you.”
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This is the water of our Community
by sarahcledwyn|Published
Our story on Sunday was preparing the children for our merging of the waters ritual in the fall. We imagined where we might collect water this summer and we each poured our water into the gathering bowl saying in response, “This is the water of our community”. The children loved participating. They loved having their own water to pour. We also had an interesting conundrum in our opening liturgy.
One of the things we start class with is sharing our joys and sorrows. We pick a joy stone or a sorrow stone and put them on our scale and then either share them verbally with the class or keep them in our hearts. It started right away. A few kids picked multiple stones and put them on the scale. I observed. Then when we were part way around the circle I wondered to the group if there would be enough stones for everyone. Some children responded by choosing just one stone as is our usual practice. Some children couldn’t resist following the example of others and taking multiple stones. And this time, it really happened. We ran out of joy stones before we got around our circle.
We stopped. I sat in silence and looked in our bowl of stones. I looked in and picked up the bowl. I observed to the class that there were no more joy stones. And then I was quiet. They looked around. I looked around. “What do we do friends?”, I asked. They looked around. I looked around. I asked again what we might do so that we could continue with joys and sorrows. Then there was a mad rush as the children took all the joy and sorrow stones that we had used and put them back into the bowl. “Hmmmm”, I said. And then we continued.
For our story, I poured each child a small amount of water. “Why do I only get that much”, a child complained. I said, “Everyone gets a little water. This is how much we have to share. We want to make sure everyone can have some. There is enough water for everyone as long as we share. Do you remember what happened with our stones this morning. There is enough for everyone if we take only what we need”.
Share is a word I don’t often use with pre-schoolers. I have been trained by parent educators to use the words “take turns” when trying to negotiate toys and resources. Share, in a child’s experience means they need to give up what they have; taking turns is a move toward some mutuality, autonomy and cooperation. But I really think share here is appropriate. We don’t want anyone to go without. We want our whole circle to have enough stones to chose one joy or sorrow. We want everyone to be included in our circle of community…to pour their contribution into the gathering bowl of our beloved community…to join their integrity, service and joy into a force that creates a new and more beautiful world for everyone. In order to do this, we need to be aware of each other. We need to receive what is enough and share the rest. This is a lesson beyond the community of our church. What do we have to share? Who needs it? How are we in community? How are we all in this together so that the water rises for everyone? I wonder. This is the water of our community.
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Being the Story(teller)
by sarahcledwyn|Published
The Storyteller role in our classroom seems clear cut. There is a book with the ritual we use to open our class. The book contains the story. The Storyteller leads the class through the ritual and the story and dismisses children to their work.
But this role done well is an invitation into a different world. A good story draws you in so that for a moment, the story is your story, the message is spoken right into your soul. The telling is so important. We are working with our stories this year so that the content is rich and ripe, but that is only the very beginning. To be an invitation that draws one into the moment, we must take care to tell it with reverence and fascination. The story is an opening to bring us all on a journey together.
If we peek inside the story(teller) we might witness this: I sit with the story in the days before class. I wonder about it. I live the story. I become the story. By Sunday I do not need the book. I am the book. Within me is the story that is every story. It is my story and it is yours.
Our first story is always the story of our opening ritual. It is the welcome and the greeting we sing to one another. It is the meeting of the eyes as we share a peace greeting, “I see your beauty. I hear your needs. I honor the wisdom in you”. This is a story we share. This is our story of Spirit Play. This is the story of the spiritual life.
And then begins the story of the week. Our ritual has gathered us into a community of safety and love. Now we are ready to journey together into a new time and space. We are ready to encounter ourselves and wonder about what is mysterious and scary and surprising. A box or a basket containing our manipulatives comes off the shelf. It is time. We begin with wonder…What is in here? What could this be? I handle our props as if they are the most fascinating treasures. I dissolve into the telling of the tale. I am a mirror. I am an invitation. I am the story. I am each character. I am the scene. I am the dramatic pause. On a good story day, I do not make eye contact during the telling. All my attention is focused on the story itself leaving the children to draw close and see themselves and see for themselves. We lose ourselves together as we move along the narrative.
When the story is done, we pause and come back into the room. I emerge from the character, from the role and sit with these children as a curious fellow explorer. What have we seen in this story? We wonder together. These stories are metaphors and symbols. These stories are myths and dreams. These stories are illustrations of human life and meaning. They are a microcosm of the whole. The experience of the story and the questions that follow are designed to bring us further on this journey of discovery. What part of the story do you like best? What part is most important? Who or what would you be if you were in this story? Is there any part of this story we could leave out and still have everything we need?
And the story moves on after the telling and is playfully processed through art, through puppets, through sand and exploration. We become the story. The story becomes our play. The story becomes a teacher and we take it with us in our hearts and hold it and turn it and look for it’s treasure. If we take the time, we see ourselves there and know ourselves. That awareness gives rise to our continued growth into people of integrity, a community of joy, and a life of service. We bring our story to this story. We hear this story and create a new ending, a meme, a backstory, a story within a story. Our class creates a new story every week by our presence with one another. We are transformed and that changes the world every week. Create this story with us. Let’s write in Love and Life and Joy.
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Too Tired to Play
by sarahcledwyn|Published
These past weeks have been a whirlwind. Even contemplative minded folks can get overwhelmed by the many demands of life and forget to pause, reflect and simply be. This has been my last few weeks in Spirit Play. There is so much to do. I have found that the change in our curriculum from our regular stories into reading books to the children is both sad to me and a relief. I feel none of us get as much out of the book reading as we do with our regular stories with objects to act them out. And, I have also been relieved that I can come with less preparation than usual. There is no story to try to memorize for another week. I can just come. I can just read.
Last week in Spirit Play we were talking again about families. This time we specifically talked about families who have adopted someone. I read through the books and wondered with the children and dismissed them to their work.
I had a chant running through me that day so I sat witnessing and observing the play happening around me occasionally humming to myself. I actually felt very connected to the children and joyful. And also very tired. One child used the nesting blocks to stack into a tower. She found ways to stack large blocks onto little blocks by stacking them sideways making spaces in her tower that were open to one side and into which another block fit. We stacked together in silence. I handed her boxes and she handed me boxes and we stacked till things fell and then stacked again, and again. We made sculptures and towers and nests and spaces.
Inside I was chanting to myself, “Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song. Listen, listen, listen to my heart’s song. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you. I will never forget you. I will never forsake you.” Over and over. Last week my heart just needed to rest. It was good to rest. I found rest in observing the classroom. I found rest in the silent dance of building and re-building. It was enough. It was beautiful. I am happy to have found for that moment, a place of acceptance in being easy on myself and letting myself simply be. When I forget that open space and focus on what I do (or more often, what I haven’t gotten done) it can feel like my heart is out of place, like it isn’t welcome. I want to bring my heart into belonging. I want my whole self to be like the families we have been learning about…to be all one because of love. I want to honor my doing and honor my resting. I want to choose my heart and choose my work. I want to relish my rest as much as my accomplishments.
I am so grateful to be with our children in a space of openness and exploration where we can listen to our own and each others’ hearts. That’s one way our church is a family for each other…to welcome each others’ heart songs and encourage each other in the dance of doing/being and belonging.
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Give us this Day
by sarahcledwyn|Published
This has been an intense season of change in my life. Last spring I started studying with a meditation teacher after a synchronistic meeting. I had already been engaged in a meditation practice- survival meditation as I thought of it. I did not start meditating to enhance my life, or because I thought it was something I should do as a spiritual person. I started meditating because I felt like if I didn’t, I might just lose myself in the Universe and be unable to manage being alive. And my practice deepened further when my healer/teacher withdrew from my life. By last spring I was ready to get some guidance and focus to stabilize and enhance what I was already doing. The method I studied was a hindu/yogic style practiced and taught by Paramahansa Yogananda. As soon as I began the techniques of this path, something happened that surprised me, but maybe shouldn’t have.
Jesus returned to me. I think this happened for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had not engaged in devotional prayer for a very very long time and praying that way brought me back to practices I had engaged in many years before as a serious disciple of Jesus. Secondly, well, Jesus and I had a thing. We had a deep and committed relationship until I up and left him in the late 90’s.
Since Jesus came to me again, I have found myself closing a large circle in my life. I find myself feeling comfortable thinking of myself as Christian….almost. I have found a few Christian mystics who feel like my tribe and my people, something I searched for with very little success early in my life. I find myself reading the Bible again with eyes opened in a very different way than they ever have been. Jesus and I made up.
I am in the midst of transition where I cannot see what will happen next and it seems terrifying at times. I would never ever have thought I would find myself praying something as traditional as the Lord’s Prayer, but I seem to be profoundly coming back home in an alive and authentic way that has included saying and appreciating this prayer….almost. Some things about Christianity still chafe. The almost exclusive referencing of God as male, the literalism that sometimes dominates reading of biblical text, and especially the institutional atrophy that has reduced some churches to rote supporters of a social status quo. All of that feels dead. However, there is a reason the Lord’s Prayer is said so frequently. I incorporated it back into my personal prayer mostly for the line, “Give us this day our daily bread” which I feel is another way of recognizing that the whole Universe is a gift running through my hands and doesn’t belong to me at all. And yet, in this moment, I have everything I need and so much more.
It is hard for me to pray this prayer without modification. It holds powerful truth, but for me it also holds some pain. So, what does one do? Retranslate.
Here is my Lord’s Prayer that I’m trying on in the morning and evening:
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This is the Day
by sarahcledwyn|Published
My spirit play friends were busy “working” with our story last week, with many children absorbed in various activities. One friend worked with a rubber band board, a piece of wood with nails pounded half way into it to make a grid. She showed me and then added to her work and then called me over again.
“Tell me about it”, I requested. She told me it was the day God made us. Now that is something you don’t see every day. I asked her to elaborate, to tell me more, but she had no grand story to match her work of art. She asked me to look and see the vertical stress and then to look and see the stress to the sides. “Look at the stress lines.”
I had many more questions, but she wanted to move on to play with other things. I wonder though, what day she was talking about. Was it the day of the big bang? Was it the day of our conception? Was it today when we woke up? Is it right now as we inhale?
And what kind of stress must have been present at any of those moments, or days? Do new life and creation always flow from stress or tension? If so, how might we view those experiences in our life with more positive regard? There is an idea in spirituality that we should regard all our difficulties as teachers and those hard things in life as invitations and opportunities to grow. What does the stress of trying to create a calm space for several wiggly 3 and 4 year olds have to teach me? What does the discomfort of my own internal judgement invite me to learn? In that tension, what do the stress lines look like? What new creation do they make possible?
These are things I have been sitting with this week. And I have taken those questions into my teaching practice. And I have taken those questions into my own meditation practice. Sometimes we can’t know or see what kind of new life may arise as we sit and reflect. Sometimes we can only make it through the tension of the exhale as it invites the next breath. In this moment I am made and made anew. That looks like evolution and growth, imperceptibly, but always changing and being transformed. This is the day. This is a new day.
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Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That
~Hafiz
Tonight I find myself in a still place. I am pondering how to love. I am pondering what it looks like to let go.
Can letting go be a gift even considering the terrain? Can letting go as we are climbing together open the way for us to grasp another’s hand more securely? Is there a way of loving and climbing together with our hands open, without holding on? Or is there a way to lovingly let go with trust that someone else will be there to hold us?
Tonight I begin with me. I am feeling grief and sadness. I am feeling resigned. I also have the unhelpful script running through my mind that suggests that I should not be feeling any of that. That old voice would like me to try harder to stop the changing and shifting of life, to squelch the movement of transformation, to just stay put. That voice is full of violence. It is a voice of control and shame. Tonight I choose to hold it’s hand, to tell it that it’s ok to feel all the feelings that arise. There is nothing it could have done to avoid sorrow. There is nothing to be done now, but to sit in the stillness with this moment and its emotions. My total allegiance is to Life. Come what sorrow or joy follow, it is what it is. I choose to hold on to my self in compassion and gentleness as I live as best I can into a larger truth with love, always with love. And today I was reminded that great grief is the truth of great love. We wouldn’t mourn if it meant nothing, if we hadn’t opened our hearts to possibility.
I bring my intention this evening to the truth of my grief, the truth of my love. I bring my intention to be fully alive in this moment and the next one. I bring my intention to keep my heart open, even if it’s dangerous. What else are we here for?
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This week in my Spirit Play class, one of my friends wanted to show me the block structure he made. As with all our classroom materials, they are intended to be used one way, in this case to build churches, and they are actually used in a multiplicity of ways. I crawled over to his structure and he began telling me about it.
He told me that inside were the “bad guys” and that he had made towers with guns to shoot them. I listened. I lost my center for a moment. Here I was at church, a place of love, after just telling a story specifically speaking against violence. I was uncomfortable. I asked, “Do you think the guns are love guns? And when they shoot a bad guy, they instantly turn him good?” This was followed by a dismissive gesture from my friend and another launch into the dramatic story of the bad guys and the guns.
I am grateful that I have read the book “Killing Monsters” in which Gerard Jones makes a case for the role of make-believe violence in children’s play. The gun, for most of our children is a metaphor and a tool for power. They don’t understand the reality of a gun the way we grown ups know it. This is one way children play with their own agency. They play with the idea of power and using their power to defeat things that are “bad” “scary” and out of their control. So, I re-centered and tried to remind myself that this play is actually sacred play as much as anything else happening in our classroom. I reeled myself back in and continued to listen. Here is what the “bad guys” were doing in there. They were angry. They stomped into the room and threw their toys all over. They threw toys at the windows till they broke them. They threw toys and made a big mess. They were loud and they yelled. Hmmm, with my parent ears on I hear that the “bad guys” were throwing a big tantrum.
I asked my friend, “Wow, those bad guys are throwing toys. Do you ever feel angry like that? Do you ever want to throw your toys?” The answer was no, and he moved on. But friends, of course, the answer is actually yes. I have been doing my own shadow work lately. I have been naming my own bad guys and monsters that live inside my self. I have been writing their stories. They will always be bad if they have to live in my shadow, cut off from my acceptance and love. What I know about this work for myself is that if I cannot face my own evil, my own capacity to harm myself and others that those impulses come out anyway, I just can’t see them for what they are.
Walking with Black Lives Matter on Monday I had opportunity to witness what happens to the collective shadow when we don’t own it and bring it back into our circle of consciousness. Racism, targeting, violence, segregation and separation happen. We create bad guys where there are just people; brothers and sisters. We create a “need” for guns when we really need love and witness and community. Fear colors our vision and we hurt each other and allow each other to be hurt by the system we have set up and then pretend not to have anything to do with it.
My little friend doesn’t own his anger right now. It may be too scary for him to think about a rage coming out of him that breaks a window. And I wonder, what is the offering that can help him express that energy honestly and safely? What kind of witness might observe his anger, to see it, see him and take it seriously? What would be the best way to honor that true feeling in him? And then, what would be the antidote to bring him back into loving connection with his feelings, himself and our larger community?
Encounters with the shadow are truly terrifying, but we must be willing to hear what the shadow, the monsters, the bad guys have to say. Listening brings their stories into the light. In the Light we can see that all of those entities bear our own face and they are crying out for witness and understanding. In the Light, they lose their power to wound and destroy and gift us the keys to work reconciliation and love and healing. What are your bad guys? What are they doing in there? How can you disarm yourself and offer love and peace?
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Why?
by sarahcledwyn|Published
This week in Spirit Play we told the story of Passover, which turned out to be about three stories in one. Before the story of celebrating Passover, we started with the story of Exodus. The story was highly condensed, giving mention to Joseph and then explaining that the Hebrew people became hated and then were made slaves. It talked about Moses being saved and growing up angry that his people were treated badly. It briefly told that Moses demanded of Pharaoh that the people be freed and when he finally said yes, how they walked through the water to safety.
The children were excited to talk about this lesson. What are slaves? How did the water move away? Wait, if it’s the desert and there isn’t much water, how is there a river for Moses and a sea to cross? One child wanted to be the basket for Moses, keeping him safe so he could save the people. We had very rich discussion.
After the story the children selected their work. One boy was very eager to work with the story we had just told and he carefully set it out and looked at all the pieces. As I sat near, he looked at me with tiny bricks in his hand and a little bit of chain and asked again, “What is a slave”? How does one explain this to a three year old? I told him that the people had to work very hard to make the bricks and they had to do what Pharaoh said. They could’t stop and take a break unless their boss said it was ok. They couldn’t move away or try a new job. If they didn’t do what they were supposed to, someone hurt them. A slave is someone who has to do what others’ say or they’ll get hurt. I wasn’t happy about my answer. Who can be happy with their answer to such a question? It wasn’t profound or even engaging. My child looked me in the eyes and just asked, “Why? Why would someone do that?” I said, “I don’t know; there was a lot of work to be done and Pharaoh couldn’t do it all himself, so he made other people do the work”. “But why?” came back to me. Finally I just sat there and said, “I don’t know.” And that’s the truth.
Why did people in our own country promote and engage in slavery? Why does that happen between people? Why does it happen even now to immigrant workers and to women being trafficked? I don’t know. Why is it so hard now that formalized slavery is frowned upon to undo the structures of racism and mass incarceration that are its legacy? I don’t know.
Why is only the beginning of the story though. Why is the awareness that things are not right. Why recognizes that there may be another way. Why can be the beginning of coming to truth that we are all valuable and deserve basic dignity and respect. Why can be the insight before we start demanding change. Why can be the seed and the genesis of total transformation, from a life of bondage to a life of freedom. I don’t know the causes of slavery, but at it’s root it has to be a turning away from love and connection. Why do we do that? And I’m back into the mystery. I don’t know.
What I do know is that when I feel that separation or disconnection from Love, when I see it’s effects in the places we are broken, I am moved. I want something different. I ache for freedom and reconciliation for all of us. I yearn for oneness that comes from recognizing love in myself and in everyone. That question of why moves me. It’s an invitation into exploration. It’s an invitation into action. It’s an invitation into wonder. Why moves to how. How can I change this in me? How can I change this between us? How can I change this in the world?
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I Might be Ice
by sarahcledwyn|Published
Last week in our Spirit Play class things started a little haphazardly. I was running late for one and my teacher friends were running even later than me. There was a little chaos as we gathered in the hallway together and then moved into the classroom in a big bunch to sit on the rug. Somehow everyone decided to sit in one corner instead of on their square. Name tags were missing. None of us were “ready” to begin class. Someone brought over a book. Someone wanted to sit on my lap.
One persistent child has been asking for weeks if we would please talk about death today. I have been telling her that in some way, all stories of change are stories about life and death, but she did not want to deal with metaphor. She wanted to talk, straight up, about death. This was our second week of life cycle stories so I assured her that yes, we would talk about frogs today…and death. Before I could get us organized, another child piped up and wistfully said that she really wished she was Jesus so when she gets dead, she will come alive again. And that’s all it took. The conversation was out of the mouth. Someone chimed in that they know that, yes, all things do die. Someone else wondered what happens after someone dies. Another child said that things die, but maybe not her. Yet another child insisted that their mother told her that everything else might die, but not her. I smiled amused and echoed that yes, everything does die. That’s true. And then, someone wondered what we would be when we came back. Would we be ice?
Now this question captured me. A few years ago when our cat was killed, my son asked to hear stories about kids who had died and come back. I did a lot of research on near death experiences and so that reading entered my mind at the thought of coming back after death. When I talk to my kids about death and they ask this question about coming back we trace the mystery….no one knows, but some people think we are just gone when we die, others think we come back again maybe in a new life. But ice? I had never thought of coming back as ice. So we thought about it together.
“Maybe” I said. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me likely that we are indeed ice at some point in our lives and after our deaths. “Did you know”, I said “that your body is mostly made of water? Actually, if you live in St. Paul and drink water from the sink, most of your body is made out of the Mississippi River.” The room exploded with exclamations. “No! We aren’t the river! What?!” “Yes”, I said “We are the river and that water moves through our bodies all the time. Was there ice on the river this winter?” The children said yes there was ice on the river. “Then it’s probably a sure thing that some of the water that has made your body was ice before it was part of you and will be ice again after you die.” Again, loud exclamations erupted. “No way! That can’t be true! I don’t believe that!” It was a delightful exploration that ended as we found our way to our squares marveling at the amazing things that were just said.
This reflection has sat with me this week. I often contemplate breath in my own practice. The breath is a transient part of our body and aliveness. We share the breath with all things breathing that have ever lived on our planet. The words for spirit and breath are the same in many languages and the action and metaphor of the breath can hold deep meanings for our reflection….but water. I don’t think of myself often as a water cycle, but I am. Water is coming and going through me all the time. It is a resource that is finite on our planet and shared among all living things. The water was yesterday part of the river and today is nourishing me and then will move back into the river, be evaporated into the sky, fall as rain on a pond and nourish the frog and the fish and the plants. It makes me wonder as much as meditation on the breath, where my edges are? If I am water am I everywhere at once? Am I the oceans? Am I the clouds? Who am I to feel separate and alone if we are all one wave together or one fog or one sheet of ice? What an interesting version of eternal life. How do I care for the water in me, for the water of our planet so it is pure and healthy and not degraded and fouled? How do I honor the connection between us that is so much more than the difference? I am contemplating this as I drink in the Mississippi River, as I walk in the rain and look for the greening of spring, as I look into your eyes.
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It’s Not So Hard
by sarahcledwyn|Published
I wasn’t looking forward to Spirit Play this week. I thought about what I might say. I thought about what I might not say. I fretted just a little. And then I took a deep breath…and the day began. The day began slowly with a spacious amount of time for everyone to wake up, eat and get ready. And then my son refused to go to church. And I happened to be the only parent in town on Sunday. So the negotiations started, and the tears, and the screaming, and the consequences. I managed to remain mostly cool calm and collected in the face of the very loud and tearful resistance. I got my children into chapel and headed down to our Spirit Play room. I greeted the other teacher and took some more deep breaths and went to sit on the rug. The morning was already harder than I thought it would be.
The lesson this week continued to revolve around all families matter. This lesson was on families who have experienced divorce. This is a hard subject to talk about with kids…both kids who have two homes those who live all together. I wondered if there would be any questions. Actually I wondered if I would be able to get through the lesson. Our family is currently in the middle of this very transition. It’s hard to talk about. I don’t really understand myself how we got to this place. I wondered if it would be hard to read about kids who sometimes are with one parent and sometimes with another. So, just in case I would cry during the books, I started by sharing a sorrow that my family is going through a divorce and that was what we were talking about that day. And I shared a joy. And usually the kids are very good about listening to each other, but suddenly everyone was sharing and wanted to talk about their joy that was like mine. It took a while to get things centered and calm and for us to take turns listening. That wasn’t what I expected to happen.
I didn’t cry while I read the books. I didn’t expect that either. And once the children were off and playing everything hummed along quite joyfully. I was really expecting this to be a hard class. Instead I got to hold a child who was sad to separate from his mother and he called me over later to look at his play-dough sculpture of an angry bird. Another child simply sat next to me as I read her a book and leaned in so that we were cuddling. Many of the kids engaged me in laughter as we pretended to fall asleep and wake up. I laughed. I was hugged. It was really nice. It wasn’t what I expected.
I am so grateful that our church is a place where we can talk about hard stuff, even with children, especially with children. I’m glad that our circles of community can engage in holding sorrows and laughter. I am glad to join your children in play and learning and wonder. I am glad that this is a place where I am loved no matter if I’m put together or if I’m going through a hard patch. I am grateful that I can be ok in myself and where I am in the midst of community. This week the children taught me not to anticipate my own grief, but to be actually where I am. Maybe it’s not so hard. Maybe it’s not what I expected. Maybe it’s better.
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Haven
by sarahcledwyn|Published
I am one who is seeking and finding refuge,
opening a soft place in my heart
opening up
like my newborn in warm water
gently blossoming
to let in the sun
and the bees
an invitation into beautiful sanctuary.
I am one who is seeking and finding rest,
is sinking into the support of
water
to be nurtured and birthed.
I am one who brings the belonging
of my heart
with me everywhere
and invites others to rest
in love.
I am one who moves from
I
to
We
to
Us
to Home in this moment
into greater expanding Life and Love.
Come rest in this haven.
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Practicing Gratitude
by sarahcledwyn|Published
This has felt like a long week. I am tired. I feel as though I could look back and sigh and simply walk to my bed and sleep. I feel as if I’m half asleep already. So I look back instead and re-focus my weary eyes on the week. I was able to join several other Spiritual Directors and friends from my graduate program for a retreat on Saturday.
It felt good to be surrounded by “my people”. I experienced inspiration and connection that was sustaining and life giving. I had enough voice the next day teach my Spirit Play children and to lead a webinar for facilitators of Lutheran Volunteer Corps who are bringing spirituality programming to intentional communities across the country. I am grateful I could speak. I am grateful that I am able to offer this guidance on a small scale in my classroom and a national level to an organization that has been so important in my own journey.
I am grateful that I could spend 3 days this week teaching with the Center for Congregational Spirituality. Again, my voice held and I had the chance to guide and be in relationship with clergy and other Spiritual Directors trying to bring group spiritual direction into congregational life. I am grateful that mid week I was able to join a friend in listening to a spiritual teacher inspire and remind us to be our truest, best, most loving self in the world. Yesterday I was grateful for professional guidance from others as I contemplated finances and my daughter’s cavities. Today I am grateful that I had time to cuddle my children, time to do a few little projects around the house and grateful that I got to lead a beautiful group experience.
Mostly though, this week, I am grateful for love. I am grateful that each day I feel love, I know love and I find it in myself to give love. This is what makes my tired self, here at the end of the day and the end of the week sigh with a smile on my face and a serene trust in my heart. Things may be intense in this time of transition and transformation. They may sometimes feel like every cell is being rearranged painfully, but there is life…there is Life through it all and I am lucky and miraculously blessed to be living it.
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How do the Waters Open?
by sarahcledwyn|Published
I went to my first Bat Mitzvah last week and was moved by the service and the many messages within the readings and Torah. The part that I keep talking about, though, was a midrash that the Rabbi shared. Midrash for those unfamiliar with it are stories written as a way to work with and fill in the Torah text. This particular story was written to illustrate the parting of the waters as the people fled slavery and Pharaoh’s army.
The story goes that God told the people to go forward. And then they came to the water. God did not part the water for them to show them the way through however. God said, “Go forward.” So the leader of the people, even though it may have seemed crazy, even though he maybe didn’t really understand why went forward. He walked into the water.
He walked in and God still said, “Go forward” so into the water he went, deeper and deeper. Finally the water was up to his nostrils and he was terrified that he would drown, but he kept walking in. And that my friends, that faith is what parted the waters. The practice of listening to the command to go forward and the action of following, even to the point of risking one’s life is what engaged God and parted the waters. I don’t know about you, but I am seeing in every story, the story of transformation.
I admit that even though I have been through this process countless times, even though I mostly live in a profound trust of the messages I receive from Beyond; this weekend I felt like I was up to my chin in the water and cursing. I was afraid down to by bones. I could not see how anything might open up. I was trying to look over my shoulder to see if there was any way at all to go back. But there was none. No tracks, and a force ready to re-enslave me is all I saw. And when I looked forward all I saw was endless water enveloping me. I was sure I was going to drown.
And I’m teetering there. Maybe I’m survival floating; remembering that even in the waters I can hold my breath for a bit and then go deeper. I want to move forward, so I’ll keep doing so until something opens up or I drown. Wisdom says that something will open up one way or another, even if I can’t anticipate it. Even if everything looks shades of impossible.
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Walking through the Mighty Waters
by sarahcledwyn|Published
As a part of my daily practice, I have been sitting with verses from the Christian tradition in the morning after meditation. This morning I was sitting with a few verses from a Psalm and one verse from the Signs Gospel.
Psalm 77:17-21 The waters saw You, O God, the waters saw You and were convulsed; the very deep quaked as well. Clouds streamed water; the heavens rumbled; Your arrows flew about; Your thunder rumbled like wheels; lightening lit up the world; the earth quaked and trembled. Your way was through the sea, Your path through the mighty waters; Your tracks could not be seen. You led Your people like a flock in the care of Moses and Aaron.
Signs Gospel 19:17 So they took Jesus who carried the cross for himself, out to the place called Skull (known in Hebrew as Golgatha).
It always amazes me what captures me when I put two seemingly unrelated things together, how they inform and speak to one another. This is not the first time I have had reference to the Exodus and Jesus’ crucifixion show up together and I have found deep meaning in reflecting on those two events. Both are concrete stories illustrating transformation. The Israelites are led out of Egypt, out of slavery and bondage into a barren wilderness. It is here that they are provided each day the food and water they need. It is here where they complain wondering if this wandering is better than the bondage they came from. Moses himself never realizes the promised land of milk and honey. I wonder for Jesus as he entered knowingly into the violence that would take his life, what his manna was in that wilderness. The Israelites had a cloud to guide them by day and a pillar of fire by night. What guided Jesus and gave him the strength to pass through his own barren wilderness to the cross and then into return to the Holy? For those who believe in resurrection and transformation what must it have been like to be released by death from Jesus’ body? Would it feel like liberation into another wilderness? Would it feel like the fullest essence of milk and honey?
The verses from the Psalm this morning caught my attention imagining the effect on the water of seeing God. That God was leading through this chaos, this place of creation leaving no visible tracks speaks to me about the invisible forces that move in and around us when the Sacred happens in and to us. Everything has changed, but nothing seems to have changed. This is another of those places that I envision as possibly terrifying, but also maybe exhilarating. It is that same infinite point of life/death. And in the middle of this chaos, I see Jesus, carrying his cross himself, walking consciously with love. It makes me wonder, what is my cross? Is it a burden and a punishment as I was taught or the threshold into milk and honey and liberation so profound that I can’t see it or imagine it? It may just be a mystery that cannot be put into any kind of words, a way to say yes, a way to be authentic no matter the cost. Tonight I just want to stand still for a moment, to choose again the mystery I carry. I just want to be drenched by the waters and feel completely alive in the quaking deep and the streaming waters and the lightening. Tonight I will let these images and words play in me and dream the trackless path till I rise in the morning to face another day of wonder and challenge.
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