Hymns of Harmony

[At the going away party, I felt] grateful to be alive then and there with such good fortune and so many loving, special friends. It was almost too much for me, and I had to wander off to the edge of the redwoods to be alone for a little while. I started listening to the insects absently, until I began to hear patterns and waves of patterns in their music. I could hear one chorus end and another start and hear the creatures all shift and syncopate their music to the new wave, and I realized, for the first time in my life, astounded, that they weren't making random noises, that they were actually singing in huge harmonies, harmonies of sweeping waves, harmonies involving thousands of voices! Ripples of subtle shifts were repeated as heard and transmitted for as far in any direction as I could focus my hearing. I looked up at the sky and the clouds and the stars and moon, and I looked at the silhouettes of the magnificent trees around me, the motion of the branches in the gentle wind. I thought of my many friends who loved me, .... I felt that rare oneness with the universe, that sense that maybe it all does mean something. I felt complete.

~ Reuel Parker

I think this sums up why we need "wild places."
How do we remain connected to the wider/larger harmonies of the world, with God's creation, with a sense of Paradise here and now?
As people on the water, where do we find these moments of astounding connection?
How do we share them with others?
How do they shape our lives as Beloved Children of God?
How do we join in this hymn of praise?

Blessed Be

William Sloan Coffin: Faith, Hope, Love

Here are some quotes from William Sloan Coffin - see his book Credo.

Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living. Descartes too was mistaken; "Cogito ergo sum" - "I think therefore I am"? Nonsense. "Amo ergo sum" - "I love therefore I am." Or, as with unconscious eloquence St. Paul wrote, "Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love."
I believe that. I believe it is better not to live than not to love.*

Of God's love we can say two things: it is poured out universally for everyone from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet; and secondly, God's love doesn't seek value, it creates value. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because we are loved that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement.**

Because our value is a gift, we don't have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves, and what a world of difference there is between proving ourselves and expressing ourselves.***

We don't have to be "successful," only valuable. We don't have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.****

*page 5; **page 6; ***page 6, ****page 7

Celebrating Love on Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day.

Today I thought I'd share an interesting quote from The Mountain of Silence (Kyriacos C. Markides. The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality. Doubleday: New York, 2001).

What better way of approaching "love" in an unsentimental and deep manner; the ways in which we willing lose ourselves in the other that this day celebrates!

Humility, or the overcoming of egotistical passions, can be attained either within the context of monasticism or within life in the wider world with its myriad positive and negative “temptations.” Marriage, or example, is considered by the Ecclesia [the church] as a form of askesis [spiritual exercises], an arena for transcending one’s ego absorption for the sake of the other. It is a mistake, Father Maximos argued, to consider marriage, as many traditional Christians do, as first and foremost a means for procreation. The primary aim of marriage is askesis engaged in by two people who are asked to overcome their separateness in their common ascent towards God (214-5).