Parinama

  It was cold here again this week.   After a few days of warmth and sun, snow covered the morning ground, ice hung again from the branches.   Still, crocuses are punching up through the heavy leaf litter right through the last of the snow.   I am excited for Spring, the end of slushy snow and mud season so I can head out into the mountains again and especially so that I can go swimming in the holy lakes and rivers of New England.   Swimming in lakes and streams has long felt like a spiritual experience to me.   The sensuality of the waters flowing over my body, the lightness in the floating, the playfulness in the tumbling and diving, takes me out of my small sense of sense into the feeling of oneness with the aliveness all around.   I can recall the first time I experienced this as a child swimming at Walden Pond. We would often go there in summer my parents and grandparents and me for a Saturday at the beach.   I loved being...

  I was hungry and you gave me food. (Mathew 25) In a world in which people are oppressed, the image and likeness of God are the very humanity involved in the struggle against the forces against of humanity Christ often comes to us as the crucified and powerless (Adam Bucko)  The commitment to take care of one another is often described as a vow to invite all sentient beings to be our guests (Pema Chodron) Jesus came into the world to show us how to love each other asking us to do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.   Through this radical acceptance of each other, we heal ourselves and our broken world.   This is what God looks like in the world, treating each other with humanity and respect. Not all spiritual traditions invoke the Divine or Jesus in this holy act of compassion, but all of the wisdom traditions ask us to be more compassionate to ourselves and others.   They all would agree that to be compassionate, we n...

  c. 1200, "reliance on the veracity, integrity, or other virtues or sound principles of someone or something; religious faith," probably from Old Norse traust "help, confidence, protection, support," from Proto-Germanic abstract noun *traustam (source also of Old Frisian trast, Dutch troost "comfort, consolation," Old High German trost " trust , fidelity," German Trost "comfort, consolation," Danish trøst, Gothic trausti "agreement, alliance"). My understanding of trust in a relationship, an institution, a situation has shifted through this spiritual journey.   I used to think of trust as something that had to do with the qualities of the other person, they were either trustworthy or they were not. Someone was trustworthy if they treated me with respect, kindness and consideration, forgave me when I acted badly, mostly came through with what they promised.   Trust was broken when I was let down in these w...