bluecollarmystic

"As I moved in -widening around the world, the solid ground of the tradition never really shifted. It was only the lens, the criteria, the inner space, and the scope that continued to expand. I was always being moved toward greater differentiation and larger viewpoints, and simultaneously toward a greater in my ideas, a deeper of people, and a more honest sense of . God always became bigger and led me to bigger places. If God could “include” and allow, then why not I? If God asked me to love unconditionally and universally, then it was clear that God operated in the same way.
Soon there was a much bigger world for me than the United States and the Roman Catholic Church, which I eventually realized also contained paradoxes. The e pluribus unum (“out of many, one”) on American coinage did not include very many of its own people (women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ people, poor folks, people with disabilities, and so many more). As a Christian I finally had to be either Roman or catholic, and I continue to choose the catholic end of that spectrum—remember, catholic means universal. Either Jesus is the “savior of the world” (John 4:42), or he is not much of a savior at all. Either America treats the rest of the world and its own citizens democratically, or it does not really believe in democracy at all.
But this slow process of transformation and the realizations that came with it were not either-or decisions; they were great big both-and realizations. None of it happened without much prayer, self-doubt, study, and conversation. The journey itself led me to a deepening sense of holiness, freedom, and wholeness. Although I didn’t begin thinking this way, I now hope and believe that a kind of second simplicity is the very goal of mature adulthood and mature religion.
My small, personal viewpoint as a central reference for anything, or for rightly judging anything, gradually faded as life went on. The very meaning of the word universe is to “turn around one thing.” I know I am not that one thing. There is Big Truth in this universe, and it certainly isn’t mine."

"Nothing is sweet or easy about community. Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to each other as a gesture of .

In we say: “Life is full of gains and losses, joys and sorrows, ups and downs—but we do not have to live it alone. We want to drink our cup together and thus celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives, which seem intolerable when lived alone, become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of mutual care.”

Community is like a large mosaic. Each little piece seems so insignificant. One piece is bright red, another cold blue or dull green, another warm purple, another sharp yellow, another shining gold. Some look precious, others ordinary. Some look valuable, others worthless. Some look gaudy, others delicate. We can do little with them as individual stones except compare them and judge their beauty and value. When, however, all these little stones are brought together in one big mosaic, portraying the face of , who would ever question the importance of any one of them? If one of them, even the least spectacular one, is missing, the face is . Together in the one mosaic, each little stone is indispensable and makes a unique contribution to the glory of . That’s community, a of little people who together make God visible in the world."
The community:
Ev'ry piece necessary
Make Source visible.

"In the ancient and medieval worlds, people believed the universe was structured as a “great chain of being.” The “fan” of reality began with God and cascaded downward through all of creation from high to low: angels, humanity, animals, plants, and minerals. This “fan” formed a pyramid, with the most important beings at the top…. This pyramid structure, the great chain of being, was believed to be the sacred pattern of the universe, in which authority, power, and knowledge flowed downward. Everyone and everything had a place. Yet in a deeply spiritual way everything was also connected to God, since God was the head of all. To stay in one’s place ensured earthly protection and eternal salvation. Hence, ancestry was important—it located every person in this spiritual superstructure, securing each a place in God’s divine order in this life and beyond.

But there is another way of seeing a spiritual pattern to the universe. Through the search for our ancestors, we discover that the branches of our family trees are . When we make our way through the thick canopy of the past, we discover that lineage is anything but a line. It looks far more like a web.

The great chain of being has been replaced by a “web of life” or “web of belonging.”… Our conception of reality has shifted from top-down chains of authority supported by technical expertise and mechanical organization toward living systems of and knit together in a web of life the great web of belonging.

The shift from God at the zenith of the great chain of being toward God with us in a great web of belonging is the heart of today’s spiritual revolution.… The great web is the woven world of the planet and the people and the God who dwells therein."
Perspectives shifting,
Widening, op'ning, Blooming.
Web of belonging.

"To let grief work its alchemy on you yields gravitas, by which I mean the ability to be present with the bittersweet reality of life, which always includes loss. There’s no way to be spared sorrow. I wouldn’t even wish that upon someone. But we shouldn’t get stuck in our grief; it’s not a permanent address but a companion that walks beside us. Everything I love, I will lose. That’s the harsh truth. You either have to shut down your heart — and miss the love that is around you — or wrestle with that truth and come out the other end. There is indeed such a thing as joyful sorrow.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible."
Open unto me,
Full spectrum humanity:
Depths of thanks and grief.

"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
The intersection:
Your great gifts and the world's needs,
Fully awake folks.

Shalem Institute / Contemplative Voices Award 2023 opening the mind and awakening the heart to the living Spirit

ANAM CARA

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the "soul friend."

In everyone's life, there is a great need for an anam cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home.

The anam cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance. Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other. Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed. When the soul is awakened, physical space is transfigured. Even across the distance, two friends can stay attuned to each other and continue to sense the flow of each other's lives. With your anam cara you awaken the eternal.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara,
25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

Fanore Beach, Co Clare, Ireland - 2023
Photo: © Ann Cahill

"There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his (or her) work… It destroys the fruitfulness of his (or her)…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
What is yours to do?
To find the intersection:
World's hunger / your gifts

"There is no force in the world better able to alter anything from its course than love. Ruskin's comment that you can get someone to remove his coat more surely with a warm, gentle sun than with a cold, blistering wind is particularly apt."
Open and willing,
Break my heart for what breaks Yours,
Love alters the course.

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

Step along the way,
Do something, and very well,
Future not our own.

"Too loud, too sweeping, too preachy. When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it. All love and bliss! And they seem to have no idea that the affluence (which for them is the Kingdom of God) has another side to it – the buried bodies of children in Vietnam [and Palestine]....”

One of the persistent themes is the contemplative monk's critical role in to the reality of the . Specific ethical criteria can assist in judging particular ethical issues in terms of a just and humane society. For Merton, the mindless association of individuals in a technological collectivity must be replaced by a spiritual community.
Love is nonviolent.
System change is coming soon.
I and Thou are One.

"Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,

promise me:
Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember brother, remember:
man is not our enemy.

The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.

And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.

Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road
the sun and moon will continue to shine."
These hot tears falling.
Man is not the enemy.
Compassion brings change.

God Doesn't Have a Fragile Ego Evolving Faith In 2018 two of my friends, Rachel Held Evans, and Sarah Bessey started Evolving Faith, a conference for those in the wilderness of faith; questioners, and post-Evangelicals and those for whom no convenient term applies. The next Spring, on the night our beloved friend

"Indigenous peoples throughout the world have something profound and important to teach those of us who live in the so called modern world. I have long believed this to be true, even before I discovered to my delight that I was related to the San People of southern Africa. I suspect that if each of us looks far enough back into our genome we will discover that we are all indeed related.

Indigenous Peoples remind us of this fact. They teach us that the first law of our being is that we are set in a delicate network of interdependence with our fellow human beings and with the rest of creation. In Africa recognition of our interdependence is called ubuntu. It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong to the whole, to the community, to the tribe, to the nation, to the earth. Ubuntu is about wholeness, about compassion for life."
Interdependent.
Intimately related.
Interbelonging.

"What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what he Himself takes most seriously. At any rate, the Lord plays and diverts Himself in the garden of His creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear His call and follow Him in His mysterious, cosmic dance. We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing. When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Bashō we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash--at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance."

Join the Cosmic dance,
Where God only says one thing:
Come and dance with Me.

Reconnect and remember, the Peace of Wild Things.

Voices shouting bad
advice: I can not listen.
Find peace in wild things.

"Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.

Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.

But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.

II.

Sometimes
melancholy leaves me breathless…

III.

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!

The lighting brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

IV.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

V.

Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.

VI.

God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my body

like the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again—
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably—
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.

VII.

Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.

After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listened

to the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing."


Open up my eyes,
Pay attention to it all,
Transformational.

I encourage everyone to read the Pope's encyclical Laudate Deum.
"Once and for all, let us put an end to the irresponsible derision that would present this issue as something purely ecological, “green”, romantic, frequently subject to ridicule by economic interests. Let us finally admit that it is a human and social problem on any number of levels. For this reason, it calls for involvement on the part of all. In Conferences on the climate, the actions of groups negatively portrayed as “radicalized” tend to attract attention. But in reality they are filling a space left empty by society as a whole, which ought to exercise a healthy “pressure”, since every family ought to realize that the future of their children is at stake.

59. If there is sincere interest in making COP28 a historic event that honours and ennobles us as human beings, then one can only hope for binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored. This, in order to achieve the beginning of a new process marked by three requirements: that it be drastic, intense and count on the commitment of all. That is not what has happened so far, and only a process of this sort can enable international politics to recover its credibility, since only in this concrete manner will it be possible to reduce significantly carbon dioxide levels and to prevent even greater evils over time.

60. May those taking part in the Conference be strategists capable of considering the common good and the future of their children, more than the short-term interests of certain countries or businesses. In this way, may they demonstrate the nobility of politics and not its shame. To the powerful, I can only repeat this question: “What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power, only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?"
Collective action,
A transformed community,
Loving your neighbor.

The power of love,
Overcomes love of power,
Real interbeing.

Friends, once again Facebook has cut off the poem I posted earlier today. So I am re-posting it here for those who’ve not yet had a chance to read it...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It takes no special talent to see what’s ugly, numbing, depressing, and death-dealing in our world. But staying aware of what's good, true, and beautiful requires us to open our eyes, minds, and hearts, and keep them open.

Mary Oliver’s “Mindful” reminds me to look and listen every day for whatever it is that will "kill me with delight," "instruct me in joy and acclamation," and give me a chance to grow wise.

With eyes wide open, we can begin to see beauty in the most surprising places—not only in nature but in human nature. That's what gives us the inspiration, strength, and courage to resist all that's wrong and work for what's right.

Thank you, MO, for reminding us how to keep hope alive!

[My 10 books are at tiny.cc/qocmuz AND http://tiny.cc/5rcmuz.]

At the heart of things is a secret law of balance and when our approach is respectful, sensitive and worthy, gifts of healing, challenge and creativity open to us. A gracious approach is the key that unlocks the treasure of encounter. The way we are present to each other is frequently superficial. In many areas of our lives the rich potential of friendship and love remains out of our reach because we push towards 'connection.' When we deaden our own depths, we cannot strike a resonance in those we meet or in the work we do.

A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us to be truly present where we are. When we approach with reverence great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty of things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace. Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready, expectant heart.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

Rich Mullins Was the Misfit Christian Music Needed The witness of the writer of “Awesome God” still challenges white evangelicals.

All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)

Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

County Galway, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

A friend wrote this beautiful poem. I hope it resonates with you as well!
Flowering action,
Hope and solidarity,
Blooming changemakers.

"Arguments don’t change minds, stories do. Jesus seemed to understand this. Parables don’t tell you what to do and they have no didactic endings. After all, what’s the conclusion of the Prodigal Son? The “moral of that story” is what we put on it… our response to it. Parables were how Jesus tricked people into things."
Need better mirrors,
To share our humanity,
Paradigm shifting.

"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."
Remind me again,
Returning to the One Source,
A Hidden Wholeness.

"Even a wounded world is feeding us.
Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the
gift."
Interdependence,
The collective consciousness,
Solidarity.

It resonated a bit too much.. am I oldish?!

Today marks one year since Frederick Buechner passed. He left us such profound words and encouragement!

If you allow yourself to be the person that you are, then everything will come into rhythm. If you live the life you love, you will receive shelter and blessings. Sometimes the great famine of blessing in and around us derives from the fact that we are not living the life we love, rather we are living the life that is expected of us. We have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from the book, Anam Cara, 25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from, 'On the Death of the Beloved,' from his books,
Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Galway Bay, County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

Living Ourselves Into New Ways of Being with Brian McLaren by The Cosmic We with Barbara Holmes and Donny Bryant

All through your life, the most precious experiences seem to vanish. Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience. This is probably why the soul never surfaces fully. The intimacy and tenderness of its light would blind us. We continue in our days to wander between the shadowing and the brightening, while all the time a more subtle brightness sustains us. If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We would live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: https://johnodonohue.com/store

Ballyvaughan Pier
County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill