17-Jun-2005
NATURAL ECSTASY
This Week's newsletter: Praise the Moment
Praise the world -
praise its fullness
and its longing,
its beauty and its grief.
Praise stone and fire,
lilac and river,
and the solitary bird
at the window.
Praise the moment
when the whole
bursts through pain
and the moment
when the whole
bursts forth in joy.
Praise the dying beauty
with all your breath
and, praising, see
the beauty of the world
is your own.
- a Sabbath morning prayer from the Mishkan T'filah (the Reform prayer book for Sabbath worship)
THIS WEEK'S WEBSITE: Driving down the highway recently, listening to a CD of music and stories, I found myself nearly running off the road at times with laughter, then with weeping. Danny Maseng is as much of a story-teller as he is a musician, and you'll be drawn in to an other-worldly atmosphere as you listen to him.
From Danny's website: "‘The stories my grandfather told me lit up my life,' says Maseng, and they will light up your life as well. Tales of Harry's [Danny's grandfather] wisdom, the Shabbat bride, angels and mythical birds, are embedded in Maseng's soul as we are whisked away on a roller coaster journey through life, from Jerusalem to Eilat, from a Hasidic Rebbe's shteibl to a Zen Monastery."
Danny is offering a $2 discount off of any of his CDs to subscribers of my newsletter. Go to www.dannymaseng.com to listen to samples and place your order.
HOWE'S HAPPENINGS
In addition to my own "happenings" for this newsletter, please plan on attending an exciting conference which will take place in the Arboretum June 27 through July 1. The theme for the conference is "Religious Tolerance in a World of Spiritual Diversity," and is the first of the Memnosyne Speaker series sponsored by the "Sanctuary for Life." For more information, see www.memnosyneofsfl.org. For tickets, call 214-363-9366.
My next series of classes will take place the first three Wednesday evenings at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. I'll be speaking on the mystical paths of Judaism, Sufism and Christianity. For more information, click on ‘events', and scan down the center of the page.
Sign up now!! Wednesday, August 17 - Sunday, August 21: WRITER'S RETREAT in the beautiful Rocky Mountains. If you want to spend time in guided self-reflection, or if you want to hone your writing for publication, this retreat is for you. Click on ‘classes' for details.
GET REAL
I've always had this thing for St. Francis and the legends about his communion with animals. Several authors have written books saying that Francis' life was far more substantial than his connection to animals, and some have said that the emphasis on his rapport with animals is downright sappy or silly.
Maybe so, but I'm enamored by the animal thing.
"Brother rabbit," he called his little friends. "Sister deer." Legends arose about other saints' communion with animals, including some spectacular ones about the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Hasidism), but Francis is the one who appeals to me the most.
So here's my confession. When I walk to the back of my yard to fill my bird feeders, and the wild rabbits watch me warily before they scurry into the bushes, I imagine that one day, finally one day, they'll creep up to me and nuzzle my legs. When I'm in the mountains, I get delusional about deer, thinking they'll sense in me a soulmate, and will sit without fear at my feet. On my back deck, in the morning during prayer, I envision birds alighting on my head or hands.
You'd think, then, that when the latter actually happened the other day, that I would have felt all my St. Francis yearnings fulfilled. But unfortunately that isn't what happened. A bird did actually land on my head, but it scared me so badly that I knocked the hell out of it.
I'm not sure why this bird landed on my head, but I suspect it was because my hair is, let's just say, very scary-looking in the morning, and the bird probably mistook my head for one of the unkempt bushes in the back of my yard as it looked for something to make a nest with. Unfortunately, even if that bird finally HAD decided I was Francis reincarnate, it would certainly never attempt to land on MY head again. (It did fly away without serious injury, but I don't think it will risk "communing" with me again.)
Do these stories about animals feeling safe with certain saints have any truth to them? I have no idea. But I do know that one of the feelings that virtually all mystics experience is a sense of oneness with nature: experiences in which all the barriers between ourselves and the world seem to dissipate, and we simply melt into the Divine Oneness.
Personally, I increasingly find myself in almost continual awe over the beauty and diversity of this world: the sheer mind-boggling variety of trees and plants, the incredible diversity of spiritual paths, and the endless wonders of the human mind and spirit. This attitude has begun to creep into "minor" areas of my life, also. I've always been afraid of all kinds of insects, for instance, but I now find myself letting them crawl on me, observing their movements and, again, feeling a deep awe over the diversity of life forms that exist.
I used to think that Buddhists who refused to kill even a fly were just plain weird, and I admit that I still secretly harbor a few of those thoughts. I'll swat a mosquito in a heartbeat, and I'd probably torture a roach or a fire ant. But I'm now seeing more of what I first learned through Buddhism, and that is that all life is sacred. Nature is sacred. Animals are sacred. All spiritual paths and religions are sacred.
This world isn't perfect, but it's beautiful, and I hope to breathe it in with all my senses - spiritual and physical - every moment of my life.
THIS NEWSLETTER is sent every other Friday around noon, allowing you the leisure of the weekend to look it over. Please remember: readers of this newsletter consist of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, and others, and I'll try to represent the mystical/spiritual aspects of all of these.
IF THIS NEWSLETTER uplifted your heart and drew you
closer to the Divine, please forward it to others who
might enjoy it. Thank you!
Blessings,
Mary
ALL SUBSCRIBERS to my newsletter will receive a 10%
discount on either of my books at any event, excluding
bookstore signings. Other discounts - for recommended
CDs, conferences, classes and events - will also
regularly be offered. To receive a discount on any
offer in this newsletter, simply print the newsletter,
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it to the event or send it in with your order.
