spirituality cafe.

VOW: "When your heart is open, be it aflame, aflower, or broken ... invoke the divine, present in all things. Ask for help, healing, success, protection. Ask for insight, peace of mind, or mercy. In exchange, make a promise. Declare your intent: to take a journey, to deliver an offering, to be a tool of spirit, to live in gratitude, to remember, always. This is your vow. Now, surrender to mystery and fulfill it. When all is sacred, everything is a devotion." (Kay Leigh Hagan, from Vow: The Way of the Milagro; Council Oak Books, 2001)

QUOTE: "God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us." (Henry David Thoreau, from Walden--one of many "spiritual classics" resources at http://www.SpiritSite.com)

QUESTION: "Is this the question for the next century, that asked by Jesus of Peter: `Who do you say that I am?' I would argue that the question has changed. Unlike the people of the first century, we are no longer in touch with ourselves, with our creatureliness. We have, for the most part, lost contact with our inner selves, which have been psychoanalyzed into a quivering mass of naked psychoses. Who, God, do you say that we are? If only we had the courage to ask this question and, more importantly, were able really to be open to God's answer, our lives and our world would surely be transformed." (Diana Hayes, Spiritual Questions for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Joan D. Chittister, Orbis, 2001)

IN THIS SEASON Kathleen Norris on Mary: "I used to feel the dissonance whenever I head Mary described as both Virgin and Mother; she seemed to set an impossible standard for any woman. But this was narrow-minded on my part. What Mary does is to show me how I indeed can be both virgin and mother. Virgin to the extent that I remain `one-in-myself,' able to come to things with newness of heart; mother to the extent that I forget myself in the nurture and service of others, embracing the ripeness of maturity that this requires. This Mary is a gender-bender; she could do the same for any man." (Meditations on Mary; Viking Studio, 1999)

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

"A flower returns the gifts of sunshine, rain, and labor with pleasing fragrance and color. Weeds yield nothing with consistency and order. If they ante up at all, it is with a fleeting bloom wrapped in scratchy arms. Weeds live in the voids. I hoe and mulch to keep them at bay....

"It's not easy to keep a garden in a city of weeds. I live in an ecosystem aswirl with questionable seeds. They settle in quietly and invade forgotten fissures. Today I triumphed over self-indulgence, tomorrow I'm apt to wake up contentious, bent on gossip. Yesterday I was charitable to an obnoxious neighbor, tomorrow I might see her at the mailbox and pull the blinds." (Tonia Triebwasser, excerpted from The Color of Grace: Thoughts from a Garden in a Dry Land; Revell, 2000)

IN PRACTICE. "Real listening demands openness and readiness to change. In discussion groups we tend to listen only to ourselves, to inflict our views on others, and to repel any contrary opinions. We all suffer from not being listened to, and we damage others by our own unwillingness to listen to them, be it intentional or unintentional. When one member is speaking, the others should listen without interrupting unless they need clarification of something that they don't understand. Contradiction has no place. After someone has spoken, take a few moments of silence before the next person is invited to speak. The silence is a sign of reverence for the speaker, but it also allows what he or she has said to sink into the deeper layers of our own consciousness where our attitudes toward one another can begin to change." (Gerard W. Hughes, excerpted from Seven Weeks for the Soul: A Reflective Journey for Lent or Other Times of Renewal; Loyola Press, 2001)