Parinama

  I reach out to God, to find God inside.   Hiking recently in the White Mountains, it was a bitterly cold and windy day.   There were several slippery inches of snow on the ground.   The trail was long – thirteen miles up and down – but not too steep except at end.   I wasn’t the fastest on the trail that day – several other hiked past me on the way up, on the way down.   And surely not the most confident.   I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it up until I did!   Despite my lack of confidence, fatigue, and cold, I put in a great effort to keep moving one step following the next for hours. And after a time, my mind began to empty of its usual ruminations, the things I worry about over and over again dissolving into the emptiness inside allowing me to take in the aliveness of that mountain.   The snow falling off its shoulders like an old woman’s long hair, like mine, the lavender overcast sky, the green-brown boughs of...

  I find myself returning again and again to the puzzle of action and surrender as spiritual practice.   These seemingly contradictory stances are foundational to yoga philosophy (Abhaysa and Vairagya) and also contemplative Christian practices (Action and Contemplation or prayer).   How are we to both act in the world and surrender? To understand this paradox, we first need to consider the different part of our selves.   There is the egoic small self which is ever focused on self-preservation through accomplishment, achievement, belonging, love.   We need to build up this part of the self in the first stage of life as we learn about who we are, what we are about, how we want to live in the world. We can’t help to become overidentified with these outer parts of our lives, what we have accomplish, what we own, what we seem to have power over.   And this leads to the suffering when these parts of us embedded in material things inevitably...

  During our church service, there is a time for people to come up to altar for a healing blessing.   The pews in our church are in the round so the altar is at the center.   People stream into the altar from all directions like rivers flowing into the ocean. The blessings and prayers are given with oil crossed onto the forehead and hands on the head.   The choir sings a melancholy and gentle song of prayer for the healing.   All are welcome for a blessing for themselves or for those they care for who are in need. This part of the service breaks my heart wide open with compassion and humility. I can’t help but weep at people’s courage for integration, repair, stability, and hope itself.   Sacred healing is not about being cured from what plagues us but becoming whole in our woundedness and loving to what has been abandoned.   The ceremony helps me to see how we all carry these wounds of inner estrangement even if they usually remain...