Late last week I listened to a radio show on Public Radio Remix, a station dedicated to telling the stories of ordinary people. I love this station for the ways in which it continues to lift up the very extraordinary ways in which seemingly ‘ordinary’ people move in the world. The colorful stories sometimes make me laugh, other times they can make me cry. They never fail to inspire me.

The story that grabbed my attention this past week was called, I believe, ‘Mantra Wagon’. It was a story of a woman who had been traveling across the country in an RV- kind-of vehicle. She would pull up in public spaces and attracts people’s attention by asking them what their ‘mantra’ is. For the people who don’t just turn and run, considering her a little ‘goofy’, she explains that we all have mantras we repeat to ourselves all the time. Sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we are not. She then re-asks the question and commits their responses to an audio file that she has edited into some very interesting listening.

“There’s no such thing as vacation.”, one man repeated over and over. ” I can do anything for 10 weeks.” said another with more and more emphasis the longer he recited this sentence. ” I think I can, I think I can.”, yet another person replied echoing the message of the Little Engine that could. All these mantras carried around by people walking the streets along side of us. Who would have guessed?

Of course, it caused me to consider the mantras I have allowed to become a part of the rhythm of my daily walk. Certainly, ” breathe, breathe, breathe” is the top runner. I have found it so helpful in so many situations. When I want to say the right thing. When I am sure I will say the absolute wrong thing. When I want to make sure I don’t say anything at all. “Breathe” is one of the best mantras I know to connect a person with their essential self, their sense of spirit, the Presence of the Holy.

“There is enough time.” is another mantra I have allowed to roll under my breath. This was particularly handy when I was the parent of young children or even teenagers. While holding a full time job, making a home, and finding my way through the maze of parenting, to have the message of ‘enough time’ flowing through the veins of my day, was a very good thing. What I learned from that mantra is that, if repeated well, there is enough time for what is really important. And who doesn’t want more of that?

I am sure there have been other mantras that have inched in and out of my life from time to time. Phrases like “I can’t, I can’t” or “Not me, not me.” Sometimes the mantras we practice choose us and sometimes we choose them. Some of them serve us well and others have the potential to do immense harm. Messages of “I’m not good enough.” or ” I’m not worthy.” come to mind. I think of the number of children who walk around with these mantras so engrained in their psyche they carry them well into their adult lives.

What mantras do you repeat to yourself? Are there mantras you allow to guide your days without even recognizing them? Are they helpful to your life? Or are they hurtful?

Whatever the mantra is that is leading you through your days, I pray it is one that reminds you that you are a beloved child of God. May the words that become the personal mantra we all speak to ourselves be ones that bring us hope and fill us with gratitude.

I can’t help but believe such a mantra would be pleasing to the Holy and certainly healing for us.

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh

This past week I have had several reminders of how important it is to walk gently upon the Earth. Mostly I have had reminders about how important it is to speak gently and handle those I meet with tender care. The fact of the matter is that most of us get up every morning and head out into the world with little thought of those we might meet along the way. Speaking for myself, I know I have so many things on my own agenda that I rarely give a thought to the many things all the human beings I come into contact with may be carrying. It is a sad yet true statement.

But at least twice in the past several days I have been reminded that each of us wake up, plant our two feet on the ground if we are lucky, get dressed, brush our teeth and proceed out the door with our invisible bags jammed full of all that has happened to us. Yesterday. Last year. When we were children. In that last relationship. Before our kids were born. At the doctor’s office. When we were five years old, on the playground. No one else can see the wounds or the medals we wear from these past experiences. But they are there.

I was reminded this week that many people walk out into what will become their day with wounds that have never healed, never even been offered an antibiotic ointment or colorful band aid. They may be sitting on the bus or in traffic next to us, listening to music or talk radio, trying to just get through the next few minutes. Tears may be just below the surface or packed so deep in a well that if the water began to flow, it would create a flood of biblical proportions. Their fears might be riding on the surface of their dry, chapped skin or buried in the pit of a stomach that never stops churning.

The point is, we just don’t know. Right now the young man who sits across from me in a coffee shop, his black stocking cap pulled down over his ears, his puffy coat zipped tightly around his neck, could be carrying pain I would find unimaginable. The older gentleman I often see dressed in white painter’s pants grabbing a cup of coffee before he begins his work day may be suffering in ways that are certainly invisible. I just don’t know.

Of course at some level we do know because each of us have also made our way into a day, a week, a year, when sorrow or pain or sadness too deep for words has been the cape we wore. We have wondered how no one seemed to be able to see. We hoped that no one would bump into us with an bony elbow or a sharp word that would cause the carefully constructed armor we had tied on to break and fall to the ground, exposing all the frayed nerves of our weary, wounded soul.

I don’t know which side of this equation you are on right now. I do know that I am deeply grateful for the experiences that have humbled me and reminded me to be careful, very careful with my words and how I speak them. The gift of living this life, a life connected to all the many people we meet every day, demands that we handle one another with care, tender, tender care. Because we just don’t know what they have packed in their bags.

And so my promise to myself and to those that walk this path with me is that I will hope to walk gently, speak kindly and keep my heart open to all I cannot know. About that person. And that person. And that person.

So many people. So many unknown stories.

The world is alive with your goodness, O God,
it grows green from the ground
and ripens into the roundness of fruit.
Its taste and its touch
enliven my body and stir my soul.
Generously given
profusely displayed
your graces of goodness pour forth from the earth.
As I have received
so free me to give.
As I have been granted
so may I give.
~J. Phillip Newell

One of the local television news programs has a nightly segment called “Good Question”. People can write in and ask a question they have pondered and a reporter will do his level best to research and find an answer to that question. The content varies from the profound to the ridiculous but never fails to be interesting. Since I am a lover of questions in general, I always am intrigued to hear what queries people have roaming around in their brains.

Yesterday I was cleaning out my book bag and found some notes I had taken recently while listening to a speaker. Down in the lower lefthand corner of a scrap of paper, I had written a question the speaker had posed: “What dialogue is imperative for the good of the world?” Good question!

I remember sitting up straighter in my seat when this question was stated. I say stated because the speaker’s point was not to answer the question but to explain that in the community in which he lived this was a question that bound them together. Their communal conversational life was grounded in exploring what dialogues they were commanded to have for the good of the world. When I found the piece of paper and was re-introduced to the question, my mind started spinning.

What dialogue IS imperative for the good of the world? What do you imagine these conversations might contain? Have you had any conversations lately that led to the good of the world?

Last night I led a group of people through a book study where ‘living with reverence’ was a central theme. It seems to me that so much of what might bring us and conversely the world to a greater good is the practice of living reverently. What if our community dialogue led us to honor the Holy within ourselves and then turn that mirror toward each person we meet? Would the on-going practice of such dialogue lead to the good of the world? I believe it would. Would we, through the gift of this dialogue, find ourselves more aware of the Spirit within us and within all Creation?

This might lead us to have some very long and compassionate conversations about the inequity of resources in our communities, nation and the world. Everyday I make my drive around our city streets and see those who make their homes on those same streets. There are many contributing factors to why this is so and the reasons are complex. But as a person of privilege and faith, it is something that should and does nag at me. What kind of dialogue might happen that would bring an answer that moves these people and all of us to a common good?

There are so many dialogues that are imperative for the good of the world. In some ways it is overwhelming to know where to begin. But today is as good a day as any. In our workplaces and homes, in our schools and coffee shops, conversations will happen that have the potential to bring good into the world. I believe if we set our intention to bring this good into the world in all the conversations we have this day, it will make a difference. These will most likely not be the ‘big’ dialogues that the speaker was referring to but will be common conversations about common things. However, if we practice these dialogues well, it will prepare us for bringing our spirit and being in the presence of the Spirit, when the even bigger conversations present themselves.

All the way to heaven IS heaven.
~Catherine of Siena

At a workshop over the weekend, I was reminded of this statement by a 14th century nun who is one of the patron saints of Italy, sharing this stage with St. Francis of Assisi. It is one of those bold statements, short and to the point, that can catch you off guard and find you scratching your head to understand its depths. ‘All the way to heaven IS heaven.’ Seven words that can allow room for a person, if they choose, to ruminate for hours and in the end define a personal theology.

In the workshop I attended, we were handed small slips of paper with quotes. Our job was to basically repeat the quote and then, uninterrupted, bring that quote to life by speaking it as if the words were our own. Some might say, we were to preach a sermon on the words using the quote as the sacred text for our inspiration. I did not receive this quote but another person around my table did. Yet, it is the one that stuck with me, the one that burrowed itself under my skin.

Perhaps this has happened through an alignment of several things. One is that I am reading Marcus Borg’s latest book Speaking Christian in which he does a wonderful job of explaining the many ways we have interpreted and misinterpreted the original meanings of many of the words used in the Bible. Heaven or eternal life being just two. And the second is that we are coming up on this Sunday’s celebration of All Saints Day. The word ‘heaven’ plays a big role in both.

Those who sat around my table on Saturday were not rule followers so, while we were instructed not to have conversation about our quote, we did anyway. Mostly we asked questions. What do you think when you speak of heaven? What do you believe about it? What did Catherine mean? Do you believe her words to be true?

In an attempt to answer our own questions, I began to think of the times when I had experienced a little slice of what could only be described as heaven, a time of finding a home with the Holy. It had come in the simple acts of a shared meal or the breathtaking view of a sunrise over a shimmering body of water. It had come as I sat at the bedside of an older one dying or cradled a new born in my arms. It had come in through the gasps of air from deep, belly laughs and the tearful gasps of sorrowful sobs. All moments of heavenly experience. All moments of finding myself at home with the One who breathed me into being.

Perhaps I love Catherine’s statement because she does does not try to explain what or where this heaven is. She instead invites us to look for the moments of heaven that brush up against us or get smack in our face every day. It seems to me that when we do this we are less likely to worry about how to ‘get into’ heaven and more likely to reach out and touch it. Choosing this path might ultimately make for a more heaven-filled life.

This Sunday we will name those who have gone to experience what it means to be at home with the Holy One in a way that is pure mystery to most of us. It is only something that can be known on the far side of the veil. It is my prayer that we will say their beloved names with confidence that they are indeed held by this One who brought them to living and now holds them in mystery. I hope we will also remember fondly all the ways in which ‘all the way to heaven WAS heaven’ for them. Perhaps in our remembering we will remind ourselves to be awake to the heaven that comes our way this day and every day.

I have been thinking a lot these days about the word practice. As our faith community continues to live into the joys and challenges of ‘Practicing Beloved Community’, our theme for this year, I am finding that I have ample time to ruminate on the meanings of these three seemingly simple words. Lately, I have been stuck on what it means to practice.

Over my lifetime, I have practiced many things. I have practiced the piano and the French horn. I have practiced running. I have practiced patience as a parent, a spouse, a coworker, a friend. I have practiced prayer. The thing about practicing is that there is the underlying understanding that one may get better but will never perfect whatever one is practicing. This will certainly be the case with practicing beloved community. Our hope is to get better at being community, of becoming more and more beloved with and toward one another. The reality is that we will never be perfect or even very good at it. Practicing always keeps us hopeful……and humble.

The last three days I have been practicing awe. It is a noble endeavor made easier by the view from the windows of the inn where we are staying on Whidbey Island. Our windows face Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains. Depending on the typical cloud cover that is the personality of this part of the world, we are treated to an ever shifting glimpse at this gift of Creation and Creator.

On the beach outside the inn sit two wharfs, one old and abandoned and another the entrance and exit point for those who make their living providing fish for the island and beyond. The worn and rickety wharf, no longer in use, seems to be home or resting place for gulls, pigeons, ducks and one enormous heron who sweeps past us with regularity as if to remind the other birds who is king of the hill. His call is unlike anything I have heard before. Deep, guttural, like the smoky song of an aging jazz singer.

As if all this weren’t enough to ground my practice of awe, a lone seal swims back and forth in front of our deck. Moments after we arrived in this beautiful place, I noticed him. His head popped up above the frigid water and seemed to look right at me, welcoming me to stop, look and listen. His gentle, fluid movements through the water provide a cautionary message. “Be still and know.”, he seems to say.

And so while I have, as always, brought books and work along that could occupy my time on these languid days, I have found myself just watching him. At times we seem to be looking one another square in the eyes as he challenges me to practice awe. Awe at the beauty around me. Awe at the fact that I did nothing to create this beauty or sustain or maintain it. Awe at my own ability to perceive the opportunity as the gift it is. Awe at the call to prayer and connection with the Holy this experience offers.

Like my brother Job before me, I am often filled with self importance. I can move through my life with an urgency that makes me believe my work is more grand, more important, than it is. It is then that the Holy speaks to me with the words showered on those who think too highly on their human selves:
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you.
Which of all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
In God’s hand is the life of every creature
and the breath of all humankind.”

These are some words that can guide the way to awe. Today I will continue to practice awe over and over, not with the hope of perfection, but of the assurance of humility. For one more day, I will have the view of mountains, water and seal to guide me.Perhaps the awe practiced here can continue to keep me awake and humble.

May it be so.

I have come to believe there are many levels of prayer. By this I don’t mean that there are different levels of importance to the One who hears and receives our prayer. I mean, instead, that there are different levels of how our prayer has the potential to change us, transform us, make us more responsible to our living. While I still believe that Anne Lamott’s notion that we really only pray two prayers: “Help me! Help me! Help me!” and “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”, I do believe there are prayers we pray that can have an impact on us and the world that are bigger than anything we intend. Many times these efforts to commune with the Holy are formed in words. Other times they are birthed through sighs so deep they seem to come from a place within yet beyond us. Prayers that change us can also come in the form of screams or tears or belly laughs. Prayer always, I believe, comes to us on breath: ours, a friend’s, a partner’s, a child’s, the wings of a bird, the undulating of the Universe.

When prayers find words, words that continue to call us to ourselves and our relationship with the Sacred, we often like to commit them to memory. Prayers like the Lord’s Prayer or the Serenity Prayer come to mind. While stored away on the hard drive of our brain, we may be able to pull up the words and repeat them at the perfect moment. The words may be the same but we kid ourselves if we think we are the same each time we repeat what we have memorized. When praying these long held prayers, is always wise to pay attention to the way certain words or phrases take on a new life, mean different things,nudge us in certain ways, surprise us or feel like a burr under our saddle.

Yesterday at a brunch we attended at Seattle University, we read the words of Jesuit Pedro Arrupe(1907-1991). We read his words as a prayer. They were words that reached out and grabbed me, begging me to pay attention. His words are worthy of committing to memory. “Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love. In a quite absolute, final way, what you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

Reading these words with a room full of people, framing them as a prayer, was a powerful experience. As we finished sharing the breath of these words, something shifted in the room. It was filled with a possibility that had not been there before. Each of us brought our life experience, our age, our various connections to this institution to these words. Certainly those in the room who had chosen the life of religious orders knew the depths of falling in love with God. Parents and guardians in the room knew what it meant to fall in love and stay in love with one another and with those young ones sitting by their side. The young adults who graced the tables, full of possibility for what their life might hold, are only beginning to grasp the gifts and responsibilities of falling in love. Somehow praying these words together united us all in a hope for a falling in love that will continue to affect everything regardless of where we are on life’s path.

And so today I am surrounded by questions. Questions which I also offer. What have I fallen in love with? What have you? What seizes my imagination? What seizes yours? How has this falling in love shaped my life(and yours) in ways that helps heal the world? How has what I am in love with helped me walk in holy paths? And you?

These are all good questions for an autumn Monday. I invite you to them.I invite you to fall in love this day. I can pretty much promise, it will affect everything.

Blessed be.

Last night we were blessed to hear a choral concert by the Seattle University choirs. In town for Family Weekend, it is an opportunity to glimpse the life our youngest son has forged for himself in this rainy city, within this community shaped by the gifts and graces of the Jesuits who founded and have a strong presence in the way life plays itself out here. As parents, we have always been impressed with the ways in which community is at the center of institutional and educational life here. It has been a joy to watch our son be embraced and enfolded into this nurturing circle.

While the music was all lovely, one song in particular caught my attention. The title was ‘I Have Had Singing.’ The lyrics were more word painting than poem, speaking of a life that had been full of tremendous ups and devastating downs, as most lives are. The final analysis was that the person whose story was being told in the lyrics deemed it a life good because it had been filled with music, because there had been singing. It was a wonderful piece of music and very uplifting. What’s more it was clear the students were engaged and moved by the music as well.

I, too, grew up having singing. Growing up as I did in a community whose roots were Welsh, singing was a part of school, church and community. Singing was a badge of local pride. In fact for as long as I can remember there has been a little card on my family’s refrigerator: “To be born Welsh is be born privileged. Not with a silver spoon in your mouth but with a song on your lips and poetry in your soul.” Just writing that makes me smile and connects me again with the sentiment of these shaping words.

To have singing is a wonderful thing. However, it seems to me as if there are fewer and fewer places where people can ‘have’ singing. In some places there are some community choirs but many schools are cutting music programs leaving public school choirs threatened. Churches are another place where people can have the opportunity to have singing. The unfortunate thing is that in many cases even churches have turned over the singing to the professionals, paid singers who have been trained in the fine art of vocal technique. This leads to beautiful choral singing but can often keep all those who sit side by side every week from having the gift of joining their voices in what can be a life-saving act.

Life-saving? I believe it is true. When one person joins their voice with one or more people to create music, it is a reminder that we do not travel this Earth alone. It is a reminder that in all good and beautiful and truthful acts, we are connected by invisible forces that continue to open us to being part of a larger whole. Whether the sound is beautiful or common, it is an affirmation that to breathe together, to give voice together is to celebrate life and all that is possible. What could be grander?

I think of all the cultures over time who have sung together to give voice to their joy, sorrow, fear, pain, anger, hope. Around fires people have gathered to layer one voice upon the other creating a harmony that seemed impossible with mere words. With the fire lighting their faces, they saw their reflections shining back and problems were solved, divisions mended, a way forward became possible. It seems to me the world could use more of just such hopeful action. What do you think?

One need not have what may be described as a beautiful voice to inspire change in the world. Think of Bob Dylan. One may not need a trained voice to gather people around, creating a circle of hope. Think of Pete Seeger. One need only to begin. First a hum. Then a deep breath and a few notes sent out into the universe. Before you know it people may just be attracted to join in. It is worth a try.

Whatever it is that you ‘have’ that lifts you above the pain or obstacle that threatens to overwhelm, may you have it in full supply this day. As for me, I will be blessed to also say “I have had singing.”

“The long and winding road
That leads to your door
Will never disappear
I’ve seen that road before
It always leads me here
Leads me to your door.”
~Lennon-McCartney

For the last several weeks, people in the Twin Cities have been seeing orange. It seems nearly every stretch of road has some form of construction happening. Large swathes of freeway will be closed for days at a time. Orange cones are arranged in straight lines along lanes or, even worse, seem to form some kind of snake-like effect that tests your eyesight and anxiety level. Even following the posted speed limits in these construction zones, I still have worries for the brilliant yellow and orange clad workers. The whole situation seems fraught with danger. Of course I am thankful that things are being updated and repaired before the snow flies. Goodness knows that once the pavement begins to freeze and thaw there will be potholes to contend with. And I am also thankful for the jobs that have been created by all the work of this construction.

However the last couple of days I have decided to change the course I use to get between the Cities. While commuting with my husband one morning along the East River Road, I realized that there was virtually no orange visible except the beautiful leaves that still cling to the trees or have fallen to the path that perches above the flowing water of the Mississippi. So the last couple of days, instead of creeping inch by bituminous inch along the freeway, I have taken to the more winding and scenic road.

Passing by lovely homes whose windows must provide a year round vision of the changing seasons makes for a very different commute. All along the path I am privileged to see runners, singly and in groups, getting a healthy start to their day. Bicyclists and I share the twists and turns of this lovely path. Their often colorful and stretchy clothing brings yet another surprising addition to my drive. Tuning my radio to different stations allows me to create a sound track for all this movement……runners, walker, bikers, people and dogs. A little jazz. Some Mozart. It is my secret that I have created a movie in which we are all playing a part.

One would assume that this change of course would mean leaving earlier, that it would take more time to reach my destination. Not true. Though I am perhaps not taking the shortest distance between two points, the drive takes almost exactly the same amount of time. Void of orange cones and reflective outerwear, this drive twists and jogs but I continue to keep moving, at a slower pace, but still going forward. Plus I arrive in a much calmer and happier mood.

The whole experience caused me to think of the many times I have continued to push ahead on the same, slogging path, stopping and starting creating only frustration about my hoped for destination. Or the times when the only view open to me was the sight of cold, hard surfaces, like bumpers, obstructing whatever lay ahead. How many of those times I have continued on, over and over and over again, never taking the opportunity to change my course! I have done this individually and in many of the circles in which I travel. Has this ever been your experience?

Changing my course these last few days has reminded me of the importance of shaking things up every now and then. Of going by way of a different road. Of choosing to veer from the accustomed paths. It is important in almost all we do.

If there are too many orange zones in your life these days, I invite you to make a left or right at the next turn. Try a different way to work or home. Try a new path to the same old problem, the continually nagging question. Who knows what might happen? If nothing else, for a few days you will be able to enjoy the new scenery. And that could make all the difference.

“A church is a group or people collapsing into God and collapsing into one another.”
~N. Gordon Cosby

This quote from a sermon given by N. Gordon Cosby was featured on a daily meditation that arrives in my email box in a similar way that Pause arrives in many of yours. When I read it, I laughed and nearly cried at the same moment. Laughed because it is so true at its deepest core message. Nearly cried because we rarely remember that this collapsing is what we are always doing. This is our work.

I have spent my life in the church. I have spent the majority of my professional life working in the church. From the time of my birth I had a place of residence in a wooden pew, nestled by both my mother and father and the rest of the faith community. Even in my college years, when many young adults found other ways to spend Sunday mornings, I was often in church. Over the last 27 odd years of my living, I have worked to create an environment in which people have the opportunity to collapse into God and into one other. Somedays there is an actual full bodied experience of this happening. Other days are messier and less complete.

I have a general belief that people show up at a church for many reasons. Out of duty. Because it is engrained in their bones to do so. Because they are searching for something larger than themselves and a way to connect. Others are looking for friendship or a circle of people whose reason for coming together is different than their work, school or social life. Almost always people are, at some deep level, looking for meaning…..theirs, the world’s, the scripture’s.

It is not new news that most mainline Christian churches are not filled to the brim in the way they were, say, in 1950. Many, most, struggle to make budgets that will support the buildings many faithful built in that flourishing decade or ones earlier. Many, most, try all manner of ways to stand on their heads to invite, coerce,nearly beg people to come into their doors. They, we, try with honest hearts to tell the story of how the Holy has moved through our lives. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail miserably.

Of course, given a world in which much of how we structure our lives is centered on an open market of supply and demand, there have been people who have turned the dwindling membership of the church into a business. We have church growth experts and conferences. We have books that can tell us the sure fire way to turn the tides of falling membership around. Many are boxed in slick, bright, eye-catching colors and promises and those of us in the ‘biz often flock to them. Money exchanges hands in hope and desperation. On both sides of the equation, people barter with the best intentions, in good faith.

The more I continue to make my life in the church, the more mysterious it all is to me. I have watched faith-filled people be a balm for one another in beautiful, compassionate ways. I have also been present to some down right hate-filled and painful encounters. In some ways it is a wonder that the church has existed as long as it has. When I watch words and dogma and even scripture be used to divide and exclude, it makes me question why we continue to try in all the ways we do to be what we call the church.

It is usually at just one of those moments,when it seems more sensible to walk away, that I am witness to someone collapsing. Collapsing into the grace of a holy moment, an outstretched hand or a whispered prayer. Collapsing into a hope that seemed unimaginable or a despair that could not be held alone. Collapsing into what someone can call God.

It seems to me that if we can hold onto this image of the vulnerability we all carry as we live our days, we might be able to get past all that keeps us from being church and from becoming the spiritual beings we were created to be. If we can all remember that being church is an on-going collapsing….into God….into one another….we all might worry a little less about growing, whatever that means, and more about holding on for dear life.

It is funny how a person can go on a search for one thing and actually find another. This happened to me this morning as I searched one of the John O’Dononhue books that line my shelves. I was searching for a poem of his to send to a friend whose mother is dying. I was searching for words on comfort and death. But what caught my attention was something completely different.

Instead, what caused me to abandon the morning paper and sit down in a chair, were O’Donohue’s tender, reflective words on beginnings. “When we arrive into the world, we enter this ancient sequence…..Beginnings often frighten us because they seem lonely voyages into the unknown…….Goethe says that once a commitment is made, destiny conspires with us to support and realize it……A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us…..There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning. More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could.”

All these sentences taken from several paragraphs lured me into thinking about the challenge and treasure of beginnings. I thought of all the times in my own life when I have sabotaged beginnings by procrastination, excuses, and even sheer laziness. All these actions are driven to some degree by fear, aren’t they? It is easy to never begin so we never have to fail or we never have to succeed….because who knows what might happen to ‘the way we’ve always done things’ if we actually succeed? Who knows how our living might be changed and then what would people think? How might we be called to move differently in the world? What might we become responsible for or to? So many questions beginnings can stir up!

But the sentence that grabbed me most was his quoting of Goethe. The assumption is that once we make a commitment to a beginning, there are other forces of energy that are attracted to that commitment, forces that actually support us and help us move through toward the ‘what next’ a beginning always signals. It has certainly been my experience that this is true. If I make a commitment to a call for newness in my life, and if I am open to the signs and green lights along the way, I begin to sense that an action that seemed to be begun individually becomes supported collectively. Sometimes this comes in the encouragement of another person or in the more mysterious ways things seem to fall in place along the path.

Destiny? Fate? Coincidence? The movement of the Spirit? You decide. I just know that as I look back on the beginnings I have made there is a clear and certain sense of being surrounded by something larger than myself that opens the doors or closes them. That provides the insight or question. That makes the knot or extends the rope in ways that are unexplainable and sometimes unimaginable. That becomes, again if I am awake and open to it, a companion for the journey.

What to make of being lured into these words on beginnings? What to make of them on this day, at this time, when I was searching for words of comfort about death? Certainly, it is almost always true that for something to begin, something must die or be released. And even in these words about beginnings, I see some comforting wisdom about death.

And so the questions which will surround me this day might be: What is beginning for me? What needs to be released and allowed to fall into the gentle arms of Mystery? What fears do I hold that are keeping me from paying attention?

Beginnings are happening with the rising sun of each day and with each inhalation of our precious breath. These questions of beginning are not just mine. If you feel a beginning rising in you, I offer these questions to you and welcome your own questions about beginning.

May we each be lured in our own way and may we sense that wise companion at our side.