A ten-minute walking garden meditation

If it's not raining, most summer mornings you'll find me outside with my cup of tea, wandering my garden paths and moodling/meditating on the beauty of growing things and the Creator who silently and secretly somehow makes them grow.

So instead of my monthly garden report, before the harvest begins in earnest, I thought I'd leave you with this morning's ten-minute walking garden meditation, done in silence (well, as silent as my neighbourhood is on a workday morning) so you can see the beauties of creation found in my backyard. I especially love the beautiful things birds and wind planted here and there.

Enjoy!

Ecumenical Advent Prayer 2020

If you're looking for a bit of Advent reflection, here's an opportunity in these pandemic days to pray for our healthcare workers, those who are sick, and for an end to COVID-19 and its many related issues. I'll be livestreaming the prayer at 7 pm (Mountain Time) from the safety of my own home, thanks to the wonders of the internet, and we'll spend some time with scripture, silence and song, in a way that we can sing along in our own places with no worry about catching or spreading the virus. 

The icon of the Mother of Tenderness, above, written by a brother from the Taize community, will grace the prayer space as we anticipate the birth of Christ among us in these dark days. Those of us who long for God's light can sing it together. Feel free to copy the link below and share with friends...

Please join us by clicking here: https://www.facebook.com/events/381497772952842/

Sunday Reflection on a Monday: We are all one body

I found myself short of time and words for moodling yesterday, Corpus Christi Sunday, but this morning during centering prayer, so many words came to me about how every person on our planet is part of one body, God's presence in the world, through our many faiths. Faith means that we believe in beauty, goodness and truth, though we express our belief in God in so many different ways. And I can't help but feel that we really need to pray together more often, in spite of our differences.

This coming Sunday, there's a perfect opportunity for people of different faiths to pray together for peace. Our Southside Taizé Musicians group and the community of the Sai Baba Centre on Whyte Avenue are joining together in a Prayer for Peace, inviting people of all faiths. If you are in the vicinity, I hope you will join us for silent meditation followed by two peace chants and refreshments. Perhaps our combined prayer will help with the peace process with North Korea, or give some respite to other places of conflict. One never knows how prayer is answered.

Our prayer this Sunday is inspired by the brothers of the Taizé community, who gather every Sunday evening with the young pilgrims who come to them from around the world. All sit in silent meditation for a time, and at the end, the brothers lead a simple prayer-song for peace. It is one of the most powerful prayer experiences I have ever had, and it is what we will do on Sunday with everyone who gathers with us.

Humanity's body has been divided into factions for too long. It's time to become aware of our oneness and to lift our hearts and souls to the God who makes us one, to pray for peace among all.

God in the sound of silence

You
are not to be found
in a wind that splits rocks,
the crash of an earthquake,
or the fury of a fire.

You would rather walk on water
than scare away the fish.


You come to us in silence,
not violence.

You wait for us to quiet ourselves
so you can speak to our souls.

And so, God,
we ask you to heal us
of the many forms of noise
that prevent us
from hearing your voice within us.

Incline our ears toward those silenced
by the fear, injustice, and prejudice
of markets, politics,
and the exploitation of your creation.

Help us to find ways to silence
the chaos that keeps us from you.

Give all your people the deep desire
to build a loving, peaceful, just world
that we can create together,
with your help.

+Amen.

To the well again

The woman at the well icon at Taizé

Every day, Lord,
I try to return to the well to sit with you.
Heaven knows I'm not always successful
when it comes to actually getting there...
and staying there!

But when I do come,
you know me better than I know myself,
and you show me to myself in the silence.
You tell me everything I have ever done,
and I don't always like what I hear.

But resting in your presence
and listening for your voice
I discover who I really am
and how deeply I am loved.
And our silence together
often inspires me to action --
to move from silence with you
-- to presence with others.
I know what you want me to do -- or not do.

Now that you have given me your living water,
my thirst for you only increases,
and I only want to return to the well
to sit with you again.
Help me to get there...
and stay there!

+AMEN.

The original 40 days of Lent

I don't know about you, but I've never really given a lot of thought to the original Lent, the forty days when the holiest of holy men walked into a desert to spend time with God. It seems to be what was needed before Christ embraced his mission to teach us all about how love and the suffering that comes with it bring us to resurrection and deeper love.

In Jesus' day, going out to the desert was a practice mostly undertaken by the Essenes, a sect in Roman-occupied Palestine who embraced simplicity, prayer and fasting as a way of life. John the Baptist probably "trained" in that tradition, and it's clear that the average Jane and Joe of his time looked at the desert-dwellers as either really holy or really crazy people. You can tell from Jesus' comments about John (Matthew 11:18). Going into the desert wasn't something taken lightly -- a certain reputation came with it.

What exactly does one do in a desert for forty days? No one really knows what Jesus did with his forty-day "time away from it all retreat." I can't begin to imagine fasting or praying for that long, so I guess that's why this video with Matt Maher's song, 40 Days, caught my attention. Kudos to the video creators!

To be honest, I didn't really like it when I first saw it a few weeks ago, but after listening to the gospel reading this morning, I had to find it and watch it again and rehear the lyrics... and now something in me has changed.

The images, while simplistic, touch something fundamental about the meaning of Lent. It is a time apart from the ordinary, an opportunity for silence, solitude and simplicity. The image that stays with me the most is Christ on his belly in the dust, watching a flower grow, probably in deep conversation with the One who made the flower.

What will you do in the desert for these 40 days?

Let's pray for peace

Every week in Taizé, the brothers of the community begin with a prayer for peace on Sunday evening. For the half hour before supper, pilgrims fill the Church of Reconciliation for silent prayer, Imagine a thousand people praying together in silence.

Silence is something that is definitely lacking in our world. It often seems that we are uncomfortable with it, because it feels like an emptiness, a void that needs to be filled somehow. In silence, our own thoughts and anxieties can seem too loud, and rather than pay attention to what's really going on in our souls, we turn on music, or the TV, anything for "background noise" or distraction. We put a wall of sound between ourselves and our hidden depths.

Unfortunately, that wall of sound also gets between us and the voice of God in our lives. We forget the story of Elijah on the mountain, waiting for God:

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before God, but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but God was not in the fire; and after the fire, a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. 

--1 Kings 19:11-13 

And then God and Elijah had some time to chat. In the silence.

The brothers of Taizé's silent prayer for peace is an opportunity for pilgrims to sit with their own souls for a while, to confront their own internal struggles and reach for the peace that God alone can give. They know that in a time of silence, our monkey-minds whirl around for a while, but if we give the silence a chance, we can come to a peaceful stillness where God converses with us without using words. Then our anxieties can lift and we can reach a place of true peace, the kind of peace our world really needs these days. At the end of thirty minutes of silence in Taizé, the brothers sang the beautiful chant below, and I found myself moved to tears of happiness.

Tomorrow evening, we will be praying (with a bit more silence than usual) for peace at Holyrood Mennonite Church. Please join us for our ecumenical prayer of silence and songs from Taizé at 7 p.m., followed by friendship and community.

And if you're too far afield to enjoy praying with us, please enjoy Da pacem Domine below and offer your own prayers for peace in our hearts, homes, communities and nations -- our world can always use them.

#23 of 100 Simple Suggestions... Observe silence

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(Sotto voce: There are all sorts of reasons to leave silent space in our noisy, hectic lives. If you want to know more, check out Anne D. LeClair's book, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (2009, Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-135335-2). If it doesn't convince you about the value of silence, nothing will, except maybe trying on one day of silence a month like Anne did.)













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P.S. Looking for more Simple Suggestions? Try here.

For a good Good Friday

Just a suggestion for observing Good Friday this year: see if you can spend the day mostly in silence. The world is a noisy place that doesn't often give us a chance to think or move beyond its distractions, to go deeper into ourselves to find where God really lives, and emerge refreshed and focused on the important things.

These days, I'm reading a wonderful little book by Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise: A Meditation on the Practice of Silence (2009, Harper, ISBN 978-0-06-135335-2). Here's an excerpt from the flyleaf:

Silence... reminds us to pay attention to the ordinary moments of our existence. In silence we can learn how to listen, become more compassionate, ignite and nurture creativity, uncover our inner yearnings, and ultimately find peace and improve our well-being. By confronting ourselves and learning from the anxiety that arises when we are freed from distraction, we can become whole.

Honestly, it almost sounds like a self-help book, but it reads much better. LeClaire is almost poetic. And she has underlined for me why I appreciate my days off in the quiet of my home. When I don't get a quiet day in a week, I often feel off-balance or stressed in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't "get" silence.

Tonight, Christian churches around the world enter into the three high holy days of Easter, and for our family, the weekend will begin with silence, continue with an inner-city Way of the Cross walk and an evening of  Taize music, move to Easter egg dyeing and music rehearsal, and reach its climax with a Saturday evening Easter Vigil celebration and extended family time on Sunday and Monday. It's my favourite weekend of the year, and there won't be time for any online moodling.

So to you and yours, the blessings of silence and song in these holy days. Have a Happy Easter!