Wellspring: inspiration and guidance for a spiritual journey

Culinary Delights, by Tom Ryther

Preparing my dinner,
pouring hearty tomato soup,
into a stainless steel pot,
to heat.

Oh so carefully (obsessively?)
spooning the last remnants to that soup
into the pot (waste not, want not).

This act,
penetrates my consciousness
with my father's being.
He, his essence,
woven through me.

This pricking,
surfacing memories,
in recalling his frugality,
through mine.

His telling me of those times as a boy
in Northern Minnesota,
during the depression,
when the meaning of "hard"
was also woven through them.

Commonly,
lunch,
for the almost cheaper by the dozen siblings
(10 ultimately),
was,
cold oatmeal sandwiches.
cold... oatmeal... sandwiches...

This culinary delight,
for their times,
the creative efforts
of Edna, Dad's mother.

My god - how spoiled we are,
in our dominant popular culture,
in the good ole U.S. of A.

We, with our strawberries
from South America
in December,
and Alaskan Crab
flown special,
to Columbus, Ohio,
for a party of politicians.

How would Dad,
his farm family,
have viewed this
provision of such sustenance...?

How do those
who cannot indulge
in such pleasures,
view this, us...?

Marie Antoinette said,
"let them eat cake".,
allowing her to know a new meaning of "hard".

The Bureau of Indian Affairs representative said,
back in the late 1800's,
concerning the natives not having adequate,
frankly anything,
"let them eat grass".
He, found on that Minnesota prairie,
scalped,
his mouth stuffed with grass.

Pogo said,
"we have met the enemy
and it is us".

Admiral Stockwell said,
Who am I,
and why am I here"?

The envelope please...
The answer is...

A bum knee and Buddhism, by Joy Collins

I have been an avid runner for 37 of my 53 years. Whereas I was once speedy and competitive, for many years now I have been a slow jogger without a running watch. Running has been my most constant meditation practice.That has changed in the last six weeks. As oft happens to a post-50 year old body, my knee began acting up for no apparent reason. As a young, fierce runner, I would just continue running and my body would miraculously heal. Now, 6 weeks later, even a leisurely dog walk around the block causes me pain. I hope to get it correctly diagnosed by an orthopedic doc in mid-January. Meanwhile, my frustration mounts as my body fails me. No endorphins to elevate my mood. No aerobic exercise to burn off holiday chocolate. No anchor of my most constant and calming meditation practice. I find myself snippy, this morning even telling my partner I resented her being able to go to her water aerobics class. This is not very spiritual!

When I paused to check in with myself, I was reminded of a quote from one of the books for our upcoming Wellspring session on Buddhism. In Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor asks the question: “Since death alone is certain and the time of death uncertain, what should I do?” How does this connect to my bum knee? My knee is a teeny reminder that eventually my whole self will fail. That is certain. When and how is unknown. But not the “if.” Given this truth, what shall I do? There are people I know who seem so gracious and serene at the end of their lives, let alone when they have something relatively minor like a knee problem. And there are those who seem to go kicking and screaming. I think Batchelor is suggesting that while I might not have a choice about my injured knee, I DO have a choice about my attitude. And that Buddhist ideas and practices can help me move away from snippy, a bit more towards gracious. Since I’m not getting any younger, and more ailments and injuries are certain to appear, why not cultivate a bit of graciousness today with my knee? As Batchelor says, “it requires that I examine my attachments to physical health…for they are ultimately lost.” He believes it is simply the ability to keep pondering the illusion of permanence and to stay in THIS moment that will get me through.

Maybe on this gray December day, I’ll go sit for a few minutes in front of the fire with my snoozing dog, and contemplate all that I in fact am grateful for in this very day.

Wholeness is not about perfection, by Joy Collins

Over Labor Day I spent 10 days on Cape Cod. I walked the dogs on the Provincetown beach every morning, marveling at the dishevelment the ocean tossed ashore each day. Lots of empty scallop shells, picked clean by the seagulls. But even messier: cracked, fragments of oysters, various clams, snails, crabs and smelly seaweed, a junkyard of the sea. And yet, as everyone knows who’s walked a beach, there was this awesome beauty and peacefulness at the same time.

During the days of these beach walks I was also re-reading the first book of our Wellspring year, A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. Early on he says, “the wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection...nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness – mine, yours, ours – need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.”

As I think about our kickoff Wellspring retreat coming up this Saturday, I take comfort in my beach memory as well as Palmer’s words. I so strive for and worry about not attaining perfection. What if this new group doesn’t like me? What if people don’t show up? What if the new listening exercise bombs? What if, what if…Apparently, I still have perfection confused with wholeness!

I like a meditation suggested by Judith Hanson Lasater in her book, A Year of Living Your Yoga:

“What do you want: perfection or wholeness? Often we strive for perfection. But perfection is unattainable, and striving for it limits us. Today sit quietly for a few minutes. As you breathe, imagine becoming a large container within which to hold your perfection and imperfection. When you can hold both, then you experience your wholeness.”

I will try to keep her words in mind as we welcome and embrace a new batch of folks for Wellspring. May we become a large container for one another!

Paddling on the lake, by Libby Moore

I've just come back from two weeks at Sylvia Lake, a lovely spring-fed lake north of the Adirondacks. My grandmother had the foresight to buy a cottage there the year I was born, and I've visited almost every summer of my life. In some ways, this is my true home, the one place of my childhood that still exists unchanged and familiar. Because my stepfather was a teacher, my family had the unappreciated luxury of long, unstructured summers – we left our suburban New York house at dawn the morning after school let out in June for ten long weeks of playing on the beach, swimming in the the clear, cold water no matter what the weather, running through the pine woods, coming home only for meals or to dry off in front of the fireplace.

Now that we're grown, my siblings and cousins share the cottage, each of us getting our two week chunk of heaven. There's no television, no computer, no need for a calendar. My daily spiritual practice falls apart in the looseness of time, but it doesn't matter because everything feels spiritual there. The lake itself holds the water that my grandmother and mother and father and stepfather and children and grandchildren have swum in. Being in the water or riding on the surface of the water in my kayak, I sense their presence, my connection with the holy, with love, with family. Early mornings, the lake is often perfectly calm, totally quiet, sometimes misty, and I paddle out and sit in the middle, surrounded by the peace of this place, the sense of being loved and surrounded by love. If I'm lucky, I'll see the pair of loons that inhabit the lake, hear them calling in their weird sound, see them diving in tandem and emerging many yards away, always together in their pair. Yesterday, my last morning, I saw a heron flapping its great gray wings to land on the rocky shore. As soon as it noticed me, it flapped off again, flying low across the calm into the fog on the other side of the lake.

I love this place. I love the connection with my past, the sense of being present in the now, the calm in my soul when I'm there. Paddling becomes my meditation – breathing in, stroke, breathing out, stroke. The water supports my kayak and my soul, the sun warms my heart as it rises and burns off the mist on the lake, my body rests in the calm at the center of this world. I am blessed.

UU Bloggers, by Libby Moore

This year I attended my second UU General Assembly, in Portland, Oregon (the city itself was enough of a reason to go – what a great place!). Being my second GA, it seemed more manageable than last year, when I felt guilty about all the plenary sessions I didn't go to, frustrated by all the wonderful talks that I couldn't attend, and exhilarated by the speakers I did manage to hear. This year I knew that I had to pare down, concentrate on a single thread, spend time nourishing my soul and body as well as my mind. Since Joy and Jen and I were doing a workshop on Wellspring this year, I concentrated on topics that related to that, more or less.

Because we've got this Wellspring blog and I'm so new to the blogosphere, I went to the session on UU blogging, which attracted people who blog as well as those who know nothing about it and want to learn about this great new tool for our congregations. I'm grateful to Tina Simson for starting our Wellspring blog and dragging us into the new world, glad that I could raise my hand as one of the people who contributes to a blog.

The blogging workshop helped me understand why we're doing this and more of its potential uses, but the greater gift was discovering a blog that I hadn't seen before, translations of the psalms into language that I can live with. The Reverend Christine Robinson from Albuquerque NM, whose regular blog is called iMinister, was on the workshop panel. She said that she'd posted these psalms because so many people had asked for them, and I can see why they would ask. When I open my Bible and try to choose a psalm for meditation, I find myself rejecting one after another for being too violent, too angry, too harsh. I've often felt that I had to edit so much out of the psalms – the patriarchal, wrathful god, the anger and vengeance against others, the brutal prayers for victory against the enemy – that I can't even focus on the deeper meaning. I skim from one to another looking for something I can agree with. Robinson has given me language I can live with, prayers of compassion and hope, honest acknowledgement of my own feelings. When I read her translation, I can rest and reflect on what it means to me today, without having to edit or rephrase or reject. I am grateful to her for posting these beautiful psalms - and grateful as well for the many resources out there that help us all find strength in our faith. This new world has much to offer us.

Tools for the trip: web resources for a spiritual journey, by Tina Simson

I recently went on a guided retreat for three days. The spiritual advisor told me “don’t bring any books.” She said that after I told her I was a UU. It turned out to be quite engaging but we UU’s do need our resources. Here are a few web tools we’ve found to enhance the journey.

If you haven’t come across Speaking of Faith, a program and website from American Public Media, you are in for a treat. This resource explores many varied topics, issues and concerns regarding faith in the world. From programs on the private faith of Jimmy Carter, to the teaching of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, to the sacred sounds of whales and elephants, this treasure will expand your heart and mind. Listen from the site or download to your Ipod, but make this a part of your day.

This site, Spirituality and Practice, was recently found by our blogger Libby and offers a plethora of resources from many faith traditions. A true melting pot, you will find Zen to Christian practices, tips on new movies and solutions to life’s struggles, like how to deal with difficult people from a spiritual perspective. They even link to online courses in spiritual practice and topics from some of the best-known teachers. This site is so big; I subscribed to the free newsletter.

Life Now Radio is a new venture offered jointly by our home congregation First Unitarian Church of Rochester, NY, and the First Universalist Churches of Rochester. Rev Kaaren Anderson from First Unitarian, is the host and she skillfully explores diverse and engaging topics. I particularly loved the most recent, The Meditating Mom and The Art that Saved Me, reminded me how significant art and music has been in my life. I use the Podcast subscription for this and listen as I’m traveling around the city. I’ve been known to take a wrong turn just to finish a show!

Thankfully we are a denomination that can laugh at ourselves. This link will give you hours of laughter. Make sure you ‘click here’ under the heading for more jokes. I don’t know how often jokes are added but I’ve but it on my favorites list as a reminder not to take myself too seriously. It boasts over 700,000 visitors.

Tripping over Rumi, by Libby Moore

A while back, when we were trying to think of an appropriate name for this spiritual deepening program for Unitarian Universalists, we thought about a saying which had been used at the start of our quiet times during a spiritual retreat in Mexico that Joy and I attended. The quote was attributed to Rumi and goes like this:

We begin by remembering
The sound and feeling of the One Being,
The wellspring of love. 
We affirm that the next thing we experience
Shimmers with the light of the whole universe.

The "wellspring of love" seemed perfect for our vision for this group, but, wanting to be accurate, we did a little more research and discovered that indeed, this wasn't a Rumi poem at all but a poetic translation by Neil Douglas Klotz of an Arabic word, bismillah, a way of readying oneself for prayer.

More recently, as we planned a program to tell prospective new participants about Wellspring, we chose a poem called "Tripping Over Joy," also attributed to Rumi, as a discussion starter. It's a beauty of a poem, full of light and joy:

Tripping Over Joy

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, "I surrender!"
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.

But again, on further research, we discovered that it was written not by Rumi, but by Hafiz, another Persian poet who lived a century after Rumi, according to several sources on the Internet.
They're all such lovely words; it's not surprising they were attributed to Rumi, who seems more familiar to us and who wrote so many other beautiful words. Does it matter, all this checking on Internet sites? Maybe not. I'm not a Rumi expert. I just know that these words speak to me and open my soul to the universe. Maybe it's just the words themselves, wherever they come from, that matter. Sit with them a while and see what happens.

Springtime Meditation, by Joy Collins

This time of year in Rochester can be so dreary. Late April and there are merely daffodils out. It is easy to think color and blossoms may never come again, let alone warmth and short sleeves. I chuckle to think how this mirrors my occasional despair that I, too, cannot make life changes.

Years ago I memorized a helpful meditation or prayer for this time of year, called Gayatri, which I found in the Book of Runecards by Ralph Blum:

You, who are the source of all power,
Whose rays illuminate the whole world,
Illuminate also my heart
So that it too can do Your Work.

As a Unitarian I’ve always wondered to whom to pray, and the sun seems as good as source as any, especially as the days grow miraculously longer. As an early morning woods hiker, I find myself this time of year reciting this out loud as the sun peeks over the horizon and through the empty branches. I imagine my heart opening to the sun. And I then feel blessed.

Bringing the sea to a snowy April day, by Tina Simson

If you’re like me, you find spiritual grounding at the ocean. But for we landlocked people (or actually snow-locked, today), reflecting at the ocean may come only once a year. At a recent retreat, I learned this meditation called Ocean Breath. I provide it here, so with a quiet setting and a settled mind, you too can smell the salt air and hear the gulls.

Ocean Breath meditation

Sit upright in a comfortable chair, or stand. Consciously release all the days troubles and tensions from your mind and body.

Breathe in for seven counts through your mouth making an ssssccccccc sound.
Hold your breath for one count
Breathe out for seven counts through your mouth with an aaahhhhhhh sound.
Hold your breath for one count
Repeat the sequence

Feel each breath as a wave upon the shore of a divine ocean. Gradually identify with the deeper aspects of the sea. Allow the sound of the breath, the waves crashing upon the shore, to fade into the distance. Attune to the subtler rhythm of the ebb and flow. Say to yourself, “I am the wave, make me the sea”.

The breathing provides a sense of settling and the sound of your own breath becomes the ocean as you rock in the comfort of our primal home. Try it in silence or with the help of quiet music.

New Earth Records offers a wide array of reasonably priced music for meditation and some can be downloaded for your IPod. ITunes also has great options and you can listen to the music before you download.

A friend of mine said she put a bit of sunscreen on to enhance the sensory input…whatever works, I think you’ll enjoy this one.