Parinama

  God is like a live wire. Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters In the case of other people, we try to control them and hold them within limits that enable us to feel secure. Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love How is God like a live wire?   Electrifying, startling, disturbing?   There are people we come across family, friends, co-workers who are like live wires.   Until you realize their potential, it’s hard not to get scorched. I have an aunt that is a live wire.   She is only 13 years older than me and in an extended family we lived together when I was young. I remember how as a teenager she bit her nails until they bled and wouldn’t stop smoking even though I would steal her cigarettes and stub them out. I was a bridesmaid at her wedding and was so happy when my cousin was born to have a little brother-like baby to care for and play with. While she has suffered health difficulties her whole life including losing all of the hair on her b...

  If you bring forth what is within you, then what you bring forth will save you. And if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you." Gospel of Thomas Spring is the season of hunger. The deer are desperate for new green shoots, the roots for water, the buds for the sun.   I hunger for sunlight, movement, compassion for myself and the forgotten.   I hunger for an end to these wars, the violence against women, connection to the ineffable majesty of the divine, beyond myself, God. Our hungers are holy and (w)holly of us and beyond us.   What we hunger for must exist even before we know what is possible.   To long for intimacy, affection, love, God is to know these things already exist. We are made for longing.   Whatever hungers are emerging from our innermost selves should be honored, treated with tenderness, and an understanding that to take the first small step...

    There were times as a child when I felt blissfully at peace and one with the world.   Perhaps these times standout so stunningly, like sunlike sparkling from the tender ripples of a dark lake, because things weren’t always so peaceful.   Sometimes, they were downright terrifying.   But, at other time, when I felt safe and calm, I could lose myself in play and playfulness, the love of the adults surrounding and protecting me, the magic of nature. I long for this peace again and surprisingly am beginning to find it again in my aging, a return to a child’s simple way of being in the world. It comes, I believe, not through aging itself but as fear has abated, a grace of spiritual renewal and practice, this return to childlike awe, delight, curiosity, and surprise.   As a child, in those moments of delight, I felt utterly safe.   The adults around me were calm and happy, not the usual anxiety and agitation where things might spin out...