Meeting #33: July 21, 2020
Meeting Theme: Our contentment depends on our capacity to intentionally let go and, in turn, intentionally embrace. Are we able to let go of our preoccupations with feeling the way we believe we must feel. Yes, our feelings inform our thoughts and, with insight and wisdom, guide our behaviors. But be cautious about clinging to your feelings, including the pleasant ones. Learn from the feelings that arise spontaneously to the events of your living, then embrace responses filled with and guided by love.
Today’s Quotes:
Dropping the Banana by Anne Merewood
All I have to do Is let go –
Like a falcon Releasing a rabbit;
Like an athlete Relinquishing a golden dream;
Like a hungry child Tossing a ripe mango
Into the sun.
All I have to do I dread. What happens If I can’t let go?
What happens if I can?
Surely it is safer Not to experiment –
For – see here – I am not alone!
I recognize you, fellow monkeys,
Clinging to the thresholds Of normality.
Rattling imprisoned limbs, You dare me to desert.
All I have to do, I do.
Finger by finger I loosen my grip.
I let go. There was no banana.
Only a fist Contorted by fear, Choking the innocent air.
Love After Love by Derek Walcott, 1986.
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Gently Guided Meditation: Breath/Body/Mind awareness.
Video of Meeting:
Meeting #34: July 23, 2020
Meeting Theme:
Letting go. When we attempt to let go by stopping some thoughts or some feelings those thoughts and feelings only become more of our awareness. When you find yourself unable to let go of unwanted thoughts and feelings try doing something different. Something you might never have done. Something that is kind, caring, contemplative. Something that becomes YOU.
Today’s Quotes:
AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS by Portia Nelson
One. I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Two. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
Three. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
Four. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Five. I walk down another street.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Gently Guided Meditation: Breath/Body/Mind awareness.
Video of Meeting:
James M. Walsh Pastoral Counseling 