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Hope Practice

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“A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope.” H oward Thurman, Theologian, teacher, mystic “[T]he only thing they needed was hope. Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather “an orientation of the spirit.” The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong.” Bryan Stevenson, Mercy Where does hope come from?  What does it feel like in the body? How does our language for hope change its experience of what is possible? When I come up short on hope, and this happens more often than I care to admit, I think of my grandparents, their lives of poverty, struggle, small and great joys.  I am instructed in gratitude. There were the migrations and making a life in a foreign land with a foreign tongue, the doing without food, clothes, love, t...
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Open Hands

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Along this spiritual path, we are invited to live with “open hands”.  Hands that are open to receive life’s unfolding, to let go of what is no longer needed, to give into the bounty of life and receive it back in a new form. I have found it nearly impossible to live with open hands but not entirely. At some point in the struggle to accept what is happening, life itself wrenches my close palms open so that I might find a way through to the new life.  When crossed into thresholds of loss, the first human reaction, instinctual, is to grip, to hold on more tightly to what is being lost, to try and salvage the old life.  How could we do otherwise?  What has kept us, loved us, restored us is slipping away and with it our sense of solidity, vitality, strength, protection. There is for me an experience of being thrown into a new and foreign land, the tools I used to plow my fields no longer work in this new place.  The brick I used to make my house doesn’t exist only re...
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Loving

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When asked by his followers “Rabbi, what are the most important commandments?” Jesus responded, “The first is to love God with all your heart and the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Other commandments are built upon these.” What does it mean to love God?  What exactly are we loving?  And with what kind of love? The mystics who believe in an ‘in-dwelling’ God, would say that we love God when we are merged with the in-dwelling God.  This is not unlike the “yoking of the consciousness with the Divine” that we find in yoga philosophy. In this yoking, the small self that we measure by our status in things like wealth, power, praise and the adoration of others, falls away as we feel ourselves beyond measure in our unity with the infinity of God, mystery, Divine life itself.  There is in this merging the feeling of love flowing two ways, towards the presence that holds us and back towards us in return.  James Finley describes this beautifull...
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