Four Somethings –Late Fall Edition

Four Somethings is the spiritual practice of remembering, reviewing, and savoring life’s lessons and sacred moments in our lives. So occasionally I share bits of wisdom in four categories.

• Something Wise
• Something Wonderful
• Something Whispered
• Something Whimsical

Do you believe we are heading fast to the end of the year? Pausing, beholding, and cherishing our moments is a grounding practice for busy times and gathering these Four Somethings provides a framework for this practice.

Here are my late Autumn “somethings.”

Something Wise

Steve Lawson from the Monk Manual shared this in their newsletter.  I never thought of walking like this before – what a new insight and way to reflecting:

“Walking is just the practice of intentionally falling forward. The mechanics work as follows. Our body weight shifts forward, we move our foot, fall ever so forward, and then catch ourselves. We have done it so many times that we don’t even notice this basic process that is used every day.  Those who progress most in their journey to full(er) living learn to adopt this same mechanic in their life, turning each personal “fall” into a paradoxical step forward. Transcendence enables us to see that not everything is as it seems, and embedded in all of our failings are the seeds for growth, character, and fullness. If we learn to catch ourselves when we fall, instead of truly falling, we find instead momentum. Everything can be the means to growth if we learn to see the opportunity presented.

THIS WEEK: What is an area of your life where you find yourself often failing? How can you reframe and reproach this area so that it becomes a means for personal growth and momentum?”

Something Wonderful

My life has been full of wonder this week with the fall colors and bright sunshine. Ohio tends to get cloudy this time of year, but this month sunshine has ruled many days.  I am grateful.

Also filling my heart with gratitude is the release of my new book, Sacred Surroundings: Finding Grace in Every Place, and the marketing of my Advent devotional, Christmas Crossroads. Both are available at Amazon.

And one last reminder of something wonderful:

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives. 
Such striving may seem admirable, 
but it is the way of foolishness. 
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life. 
Show them the joy of tasting 
tomatoes, apples and pears. 
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die. 
Show them the infinite pleasure 
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them. 
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

William Martin

Something Whispered

I have struggled quite a bit this fall with embracing uncertainty and living in a place of unknowing.  This prayer helped:

A Prayer of Unknowing
Here in the valley of desire
let me not stumble over
my need to understand.
Rather
than settling for what
my mind can achieve and encompass,
let me choose instead
a life of unknowing.
Let me choose you,
who are unknowable
rather than a God of my creation,
a God shrunk to my size.
Let me choose instead
to be fully human,
to be unknowing.

John Kirvan

Something Whimsical

What if God is Joy? 
by Steve Garnaas-Holmes
 
What if God is joy?
What if the Father is bliss and the Son is gratitude
and the Holy Spirit is gleeful wonder?
What if creating is God’s play,
and the big bang was an outburst of happiness
and the galaxies are spun from pure delight?
What if gravity, that holds the universe together,
is simply the pleasure of harmony,
and every created thing’s ecstatic desire for one another?
What if earth is God’s great celebration,
spinning and dancing and making music and beauty
and inviting everyone in to feast and wonder?
What if being itself is such a miracle
that God gets endless enjoyment out of it?
What if God doesn’t own a throne (most uncomfortable)
and has never handled a gavel,
but has a million musical instruments?
What if God goes to hell every weekend
with a load of tissues and listens to everybody
who’s locked themselves up in there
until they’ve cried out all their sorrows,
and they come out laughing and dancing?
What if what it means to come to God
is to enter into God’s joy?
What if the work of justice
is to enable everyone to truly know joy?
(And would that not mean that cruelty and injustice
are most heinously sinful?)
What if even in our grief and our despair
the root of our being is joy,
and resurrection means passing through our sorrow
into God’s delight?
What if salvation means
being rescued from our inability to rejoice?
Why not? Why not? Do you think you can convince me
that God is all somber and serious?
What if even now, as you consider this,
and think it’s kind of silly,
God is laughing… and waiting?

Lots of quotes this month.  Pondering the words of others helps me articulate what I am experiencing, helps me feel like others are on this same path and I am not alone and most importantly helps me hear and experience God when my ego, fatigue, worries, fears, dull my senses to the Sacred all around me.

What has struck your heart lately?