I feel like the luckiest woman on the planet tonight. For the price of having to get up really early tomorrow (this) morning, I got to hang out with dozens of fabulous women from all sorts of spiritual traditions, attend a wonderful keynote event in the Cathedral, and sign up for two great workshops tomorrow plus a free lunch and dinner. How great is that???
The conference is touching me in tender places; I'm weeping again, in a good way. "All our sorrows are the same." I'm feeling inspired and nourished. We are talking about God and faith, and I am much less alone.
Plus, my friend G-, who I haven't spoken to in quite awhile, phoned just now and we had a great conversation. I feel my life has done nothing but improve since I decided to get off the escalator.
For the last several days I've been feeling unusually sensitive and responsive to circumstances in the world. I've succumbed to tears a few times (not my usual behavior, I assure you).
I don't know exactly what's going on, but it's not bad. I think some of it has to do with being more available to feel touched by things, because of the difficult but valuable decisions I've made recently. Some of it is probably the odd combined sensation of stress and release from stress than I'm experiencing. And perhaps some of it has to do with the gradual disappearance from my bloodstream of the medication I'd been taking for over a year.
I served at the Healing Rite this past Sunday. It was a wonderful All Saint's service, replete with smells and bells and well-known scripture. There were more people than usual presenting themselves for the Rite, and it seemed to me that the Holy Spirit was especially available. I was, as always, deeply moved by the profession of faith demonstrated by those who come to the chapel. It's a difficult thing to ask for help, to acknowledge the limits of one's own abilities or control, and to entrust one's concerns to God. Of all the things I do in my life, none makes me feel as privileged and as grateful as does serving as a minister of healing.
[Update: This happens sometimes. I just received a telephone call from one of the people I prayed with Sunday, who wanted to thank me and tell me about the happy outcome of her medical tests. She sounded apologetic about "dumping all her worries on me." I assured her that she hadn't dumped anything on me, but rather that she had brought her fears and anxieties before the throne of grace. I thanked her for sharing her good news with me and added "Thanks be to God." I know very well how little this has to do with me, and without pushing her away, I wanted to shift the gratitude away from me and direct it where it belongs.]
I don't usually quote another person's blog entry almost in entireity, but I wanted to share this note of Aquinas's with you:
It's not words, and it's not events, and it's not retreats, though those are all good things. No, it's about the every day, boring habit of love. If you want to help others be free in love, you don't focus on events, you focus on the every day interior battle to develop a habit of love.
Perhaps this is the problem with a spiritual or ecclesial life or ministry that is event-oriented. It can build excitement for a moment, but it cannot build the daily habit of love.
Events are easy; they are quantifiable; they can generate "energy." But by themselves they cannot build the habits of heart in which God may find the space and freedom and peace in which to dwell.
This year, the theme of my parish's retreat is "Play." It couldn't be coming at a better time for me. Now all I have to do is figure out how I'm going to pay for it.
[Update: Ask and it shall be granted; knock and the door shall be opened. My wonderful church will be subsidizing me for this journey. I am very grateful.]
A friend described what sounded like an ideal job ~ a sojourn in a crystal palace filled with brilliant minds who loved to exchange ideas. Academic credentials were not the coin of the realm, but rather the quality of thought and conversation. (Sign me up!)
There was, however, one guy who didn't share this particular ethos. The walls of his office were covered with his credentials, citations, and awards. (In DC, some people do the same thing, but they are generally supplemented, or dominated, by pictures of the occupant shaking hands with the powerful.) This practice is called building an "ego wall."
The problem with an ego wall is that it becomes a barrier to keep people out. No one talked to this guy.
The ego specializes in walls. What walls have I built that should be torn down?
I'm sorry, but this has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read:
Creating the perfect Zen garden is now possible, thanks to the work of a team at Kyoto University in Japan.
They used computer analysis to study one of the most famous Zen gardens in the world, at the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto, to discover why it has a calming effect on the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come every year.
The researchers found that the seemingly random collection of rocks and moss on this simple gravel rectangle formed the outline of a tree's branches.
Calling Dr. Rorschach, Dr. Rorschach come to the emergency room stat!
The team from Kyoto University used image analysis to calculate the symmetry lines of the minimalist garden.
They found that the points halfway between the rocks formed the outline of a tree's branches.
Please note that the diagram used to illustrate the article shows the garden from above ~ infamously a perspective from which NO viewer ever sees it.
The notion that abstraction works because it triggers subconscious literal images may (and I emphasize, MAY) have some merit. But this is surely not the way to prove it. In this case, even if you buy the "tree" analysis (which I don't), certainly one could simply say: the human mind finds proportions attractive ~ for example the golden ratio ~ and some trees and some abstract spacing share those proportions.
Among other idiocies here, the analysis fails to take into account:
The sand raked into patterns around the rocks.
The relative heights of the rocks.
The colors of sand, rocks, and moss.
The proportion of the garden's enclosure.
The atmosphere of the temple environment.
The cultural reverence of visitor's who are expecting to see something special.
Here's my favorite bit:
The Ryoanji Temple garden was created sometime between the 14th and 16th Centuries by an unknown designer.
No explanation was ever provided for the layout of the garden.
HELLOOOOOO! It's a Zen garden! Explanation is precisely and utterly anathema to the whole experience. The goal is not to see trees, symbols, or tigresses, or Chinese ideograms. The idea (if I may even use the term) is to be present, aware, awake, and of beginner's mind. The fact that they were even trying to make "something" out of the "empty space" between the stones shows how wrong-headed the whole undertaking was.
Even more ridiculous is the notion that somehow now there's a magic formula for producing Zen Gardens! (Are they claiming to have found "trees" in every Zen garden, or what?)
This entire project was an unmitigated waste of CPUs ~ totally misconceived from the very start. The fact that it was apparently published in Nature appalls me.
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