Phyllis Edgerly Ring's Blog, page 36
October 4, 2014
Fear’s remedy does not perish
Photo: David Campbell / http://GBCTours.com
Fear can be instructive when I experience it, though I’m not meant to dwell on it, or in it.
If I understand the inner signals of fear, whose purpose is to educate and inform me, I can choose to make the necessary adjustments in belief and behavior that will prevent for me the unhealthy and painful mental state of being consumed by that fear.
Most often, that state seems one of attempting to avoid the fear, rather than meeting it and receiving what it has to reveal.
Photo: David Campbell / http://GBCTours.com
In the physical world, a fear signal is often a potentially life-saving reaction that prompts me to move quickly out the way of harm to my physical self.
In spiritual terms, I can also experience triggers of fear that point to what could pose danger to my own true and most enduring reality. This signal often arises when I cross the line of moderation and form an attachment to some aspect of the material world.
For every worldly attachment I make, I can gain an unhealthy fear, then easily become overwhelmed by such fears. The remedy, detachment, is in refraining from allowing my physical possessions, the things I do, the things I think, feel, believe, to possess me. For these are what perish.
The heart, it seems, is never at rest and never finds real joy and happiness until it attaches itself to the eternal, to what does not perish.
Adapted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past, When We Can Investigate Reality?:
October 1, 2014
Love’s lonely offices
Photo courtesy Eric Olson
My thanks to lover of art and beauty Inger Gregory for reconnecting me with the following gem of poet Robert Hayden’s.
Photo courtesy David Campbell / http://gbctours.com
When I was much younger, those words, “What did I know, what did I know …” stopped me in my tracks; humbled me, the first time I heard them. Today, they become a question to take into each day, and even make present-tense.
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Poem courtesy of http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/th...
September 27, 2014
The eternal circle of the beauty we love
Photo: Kevin Lane
Young friends described the rapid, often overnight changes appearing in the garden they have tended so carefully. Not long ago, there was limitless, burgeoning life in summer’s relentless sun and heat and rainfall.
Then, like a puff of breath on a dandelion gone to seed, it is spent and gone; fading away, or into decay.
In New England especially, these changes arrive as abruptly as the night chill that turns the leaves from green to scarlet and gold.
“Stay at the center of the circle, and let all things take their course,” urges the Tao Te Ching.
Photo: Nelson Ashberger
Out at the sharp edges of the periphery, our very human selves can feel small and overcome, overwhelmed, in the inevitable enormity of change. The mind, confounded, struggles for purchase it can’t find.
It’s then that a way is opened through which feelings, those unexpected guests left waiting so long in a side room, can emerge. Autumn, in particular, with its cycles of death and harvest, seems well-suited for inviting forth the grief and pain that so much effort has tried so long to avoid, or contain.Those seeds of unclaimed treasure found only in a heart broken open.
Photo: Kevin Lane
The center of the circle, that trustworthy core, can hold these, and us, as it holds all, and remind of what Rumi saw with such kind wisdom:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and scared. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.
What is the beauty we love? What are those hundreds of ways?
September 24, 2014
Building the good
“Painted Desert” by Judy Hughey Wright
Dwelling on imperfections, berating myself or others for them, saps time, energy, and attention (those resources over which I have choice). It offers them to what is counterproductive, even destructive — when I have been invited, instead, toward the building of the good.
“Their whole energy is directed towards the building of the good, a good which has such a positive strength that in the face of it the multitude of evils – which are in essence negative – will fade away and be no more.” ~ From a letter from the Universal House of Justice, 1974
The same letter noted, “… demolishing one by one the evils in the world is a vain waste of time and effort.” When asked about evil, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá offered this definition: Evil is imperfection.
“Pueblo” by Judy Hughey Wright
When I choose to participate in the building of the good, I become aware of how much preoccupation with negativity can surround our lives, fill our thoughts, and absorb our personal resources. I can also come to see how this is the debilitating presence of blind imitation of the past, including the kind of thinking that was born in earlier, fearful experiences and has led to attitudes, behaviors, assumptions, and beliefs that have no basis in reality — nor, indeed, anywhere near it.
My encounter with the contrast of imperfection can urge me toward accepting that there is much I don’t know, or can’t change, yet I can always discover the limitless possibilities of love in that more-productive kind of response that I’ve been created and equipped to make.
Rather than exercising my survival-driven instinctual reaction to fight imperfection, or try to escape it, there’s a response better-aligned with the purpose for which I’ve been created. It will contribute toward building what “has such a positive strength that in the face of it the multitude of evils – which are in essence negative – will fade away and be no more”.
I open, today, to the possibilities of that response.
Adapted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past When We Can Investigate Reality?
September 21, 2014
Harvests of the heart
Photo: David Campbell / http://GBCTours.com
Autumn is that time when so many endings seem to arrive at once, as the summer skies in which our dreams have soared in days of endless light grow overcast, like the darker mornings that are pointing us toward winter.
The intensity of contrast can be shocking when it appears. It reminds us of all that we do not yet know, and of the freedom in embracing that.
Every autumn, a part of me feels sad, as well as reminded, and also — like those spiked hulls from which such bright shiny chestnuts emerge — freshly broken open, once again.
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable,” urges poet Mary Oliver.
Theologian Paul Tillich reminds,“The first duty of love is to listen.”
“ … if you are willing to let your heart break completely open, with no internal narrative controlling the opening, you will discover the pure, innocent love that is alive in the core of every emotion, every feeling, everybody,” writes Gangaji. “It remains pure and spacious regardless of change or loss.”
Once this happens, then perhaps we are equipped at last for what these words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s invite:
“Make ready thy soul that thou mayest be like the light which shineth forth from the loftiest heights on the coast, by means of which guidance may be given to the timid ships amid the darkness of fog …”
Including those often-timid ships of our own small selves.
Leaf photos courtesy of photographer Nelson Ashberger.
September 18, 2014
Time for a new story
Gleanings found here and there:
Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com
The Earth and your own soul require you to live magnificently and fiercely; it is time for a new story.
~ Mary Reynolds Thompson, author, Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness
In the morning when you wake up, reflect on the day ahead and aspire to use it to keep a wide-open heart and mind. At the end of the day, before going to sleep, think over what you’ve done. If you fulfilled your aspiration, even once, rejoice in that. If you went against your aspiration, rejoice that you are able to see what you did and are no longer living in ignorance. This way you will be inspired to go forward with increasing clarity, confidence, and compassion. ~ Pema Chödrön
Seneca Grandmother Twylah Nitsch
One of the first things Seneca children learned was that they might create their own world, their own environment, by visualizing actions and desires in prayer. The Senecas believed that everything that made life important came from within. Prayer assisted in developing a guideline toward discipline and self control. ~ Twylah Nitsch, Seneca
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. ~ Thomas Merton
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
September 15, 2014
The ways encouragement “gives heart”
Happy to share some thoughts this week
in a Guest Post at
Women of Spirit and Faith’s The Divine Feminine:
To “encourage” each other, meaning literally “to give heart”, is one of the most timelessly beautiful gifts we can share.
Perhaps the very scarcity of encouragement in daily life is what has so many feeling weary, fearful, and uninspired.
Read the post at:
Sharing the heart-swelling gift of encouragement.
September 14, 2014
Receiving the gifts that await within
Photo: David Campbell / http://gbctours.com
For the first time, the realization of human oneness is within our grasp. And each of us is invited to discover our unique, true identity as a soul, as well as our unique purpose, and our unique way of solving problems.
How does coming to understand who it is we are created to be change the way we see ourselves, each other, and our world?
Perhaps this understanding welcomes in a new way of thinking that evolves out of love and attraction toward the latent spiritual gifts in myself and others that are waiting to be revealed. Do I remember that I can always choose this love and attraction over the kind of near-instinctual reactions that arise from a fear that’s rooted in preoccupation with physical survival?
That crippling fear has kept humanity, human thinking, and our greatest possibilities entrapped for eons. I might have the chance to begin living in an eternal kind of way, however, as I welcome and apply what lasts forever – those gifts waiting within, like gems in a mine.
Only our spiritual nature can look beyond outward appearances, first impressions, and personality flaws to see all the virtues of the world of humanity latent within ourselves and each other, I remind myself. It’s this core part of my self that has the capacity to perceive honor and nobility in every human being, including the one who looks back from the mirror each day.
Adapted from With Thine Own Eyes: Why Imitate the Past, When We Can Investigate Reality?
September 12, 2014
Delivered from a darkened world
Some waftings of inspiration I’m pondering this week, to see how they relate to and inform each other:
Photo: Lara Kearns
“When I speak of health, I refer to spiritual health.
The health of the body is impermanent.
But spiritual health passeth not away;
it is attained when the spirit of man is delivered from
the conditions of the darkened world, and becomes
enveloped and permeated by divine qualities.”
~ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Throne of the Inner Temple, p. 20
What is my personal relationship to and perception of spiritual health?
What are the elements of eternal life (divine attributes) by which I am willing / desire to be enveloped and permeated?
Photo: Lara Kearns
And how does each of these relate to the following concept?
“The world civilization now on humanity’s horizon must achieve a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual requirements of life.”
~ The Universal House of Justice, Ridvan Message 2010
If spiritual well-being is the lasting, permanent reality, how does material life serve it?
September 11, 2014
The remedy still resides in us
Photo: David Campbell / http://GBCTours.com
My thanks to BoomerCafe for including a piece of mine this week:
Thirteen years ago, my father and I were reminiscing about his years in Civil Defense after a 22-year Army career, my mother’s experience during the London Blitz in World War II, and the incredible good that terrible times can uncover in people.
Then, as we were passing through Atlanta on I-75, we spied an electronic highway message board that read: “National Emergency — All Airports Closed.” As the car radio revealed a cascade of events too large to grasp, I experienced a feeling of smallness and vulnerability unlike any I remember as all my illusions of safety came down at once, like those two destroyed skyscrapers.
Four days later, after a Category 3 hurricane had made landfall near my dad’s Florida home and I’d truly begun to wonder whether the world was coming to an end, I took my place in a blocks-long line at Tampa’s International Airport. I was praying this might be the day I’d finally be able to get home to New Hampshire, on one of the very first flights in the country after eerily quiet days of empty skies.
Photo courtesy Jen Verhelle
Every single child I saw that day looked scared. Most of the younger ones clutched their backpacks like stuffed animals, if they didn’t happen to be holding those, too. Their parents looked grim, if not equally frightened.
One boy of about 9, who, with his parents and younger brother was waiting to board the same plane I was, seemed unable to contain his terror. His plaintive sounds were agonizing, perhaps because so many of us also had them muffled way down deep. His parents, exhausted after days of canceled flights — a trip to Disney World that had become a nightmare from which they couldn’t seem to awaken — were doing their best to calm him, with no effect.
Gradually, others stepped forward to try, including airline employees. Obviously a polite child, he would hear them out, but then his sobs and agitation returned. He was convinced that if he got on that airplane, on any airplane, he was going to die.
Read the rest at: http://www.boomercafe.com/2014/09/11/remembering-9-11-importance-family
Adapted from Life at First Sight: Finding the Divine in the Details:
