Lent: Reflection 3

(this entry has a subtitle. it's full name is Lent: Reflection 3, Lessons from Phase One)

Sad Moments

I feel tears streaming down my
heart and a happy smile on my
face soon fades into a sad moment
of my life.
My heart feels like somebody
pulling the love out of me,
like a tornado sucking a house to a
greenish sky,
that falls to Earth.
--Sahara Sunday Spain, age 9

Sahara understands and articulates something for me, a piercing, pinching feeling in my heart, "like somebody pulling the love out of me". At SisterFire this week we talked alot about forgiveness. This makes so much sense for me right now, because of issues in my personal life and because of this season in my religious calendar. I practice imagining god(dess) with the face of someone really wild to me...like George Bush, to remember that everyone is divine. That doesn't always work. So I practice asking god(dess) what it loves about this person. I know the goddess delights in them. That really helps me see this person as beautiful, even when i am really angry or hurt, even when...and this is big...the person who needs forgiveness is me.
So I don't want to harbor hate, fear, or resentment. I don't want to rehearse painful experiences, playing them again and again in my mind. Instead I want to open my fists and overturn my palms, saying "I surrender". I give in to the love that so desperately wants to flow through me, into and out of the world. I choose to forgive and accept forgiveness. Sahara understands:

The Love Experience

When you say, "Love,"
You have love streaming through
your body,
So when you love,
everybody loves you,
with the same kind of love,
that you have.

Lent: Reflection 2

"Laughter is carbonated holiness." --Anne Lammot

Lent: Reflection 1

i've been laughing lately. trying to enjoy my life. asking the goddess to hold my hand while i adjust to things not going my way. remembering what makes me smile. falling in love with myself...sometimes. writing. listening hard to the silence. taking it step by step, "bird by bird". praying to better understand repentance, because i think becoming truly repentant...the sort that causes me to cry for how i have dishonored myself and others...the sort my minister would call having "a contrite heart"...will move me into a place of real forgiveness and compassion toward all people...even me.
in part of the episcopal liturgy there is a prayer in which the priest calls out, "Give thanks to the Lord our God". the people respond, "It is right to give God thanks and praise". and this is my favorite part: the priest then calls back a lengthy statement about God's many titles which begins with "It is right". as if the writer of this prayer thought this point was so important they had to make it twice. it is right to be thankful for our lives, to live in a way that says to the creator, to the universe, to all there is, Thank You. when i can only see a foot in front of me and my list of blessings looks short, it is right to be thankful. so thank you. thank you. thank you thank you thankyou thankyouthankyouthankyou...