practice – Page 3 – Generous Wisdom

The Spaciousness of Love, Revisited

Dear Readers,

I wrote the original version of this essay around 2018, revised it in 2020 and am now revisiting it again (2024). What you’ll find below is a more spacious version oriented toward finding ways to take right action and right rest. Both action and rest are necessary for a flourishing life. In light of tragic events throughout the world, revelations of social divides and injustice, the recent pandemic, climate extremes, and the continuing ripple effects of white supremacist patriarchal practices that have been passed down through the generations, action, rest, peace, and joy are our only way forward.

I hope there is something here that resonates with you, and that it helps you to reach deeply into your own heart; find new ways of loving and embracing yourself, so that you may find new ways of loving and embracing the people in your own community, and so on outward to your village, township, parish, county, city, state, country, continent, and world. My invitation is to start with yourself, and only then move outward, because you are just as worthy of your own love as your neighbor is. The Energy of Life lives in all of us and encompasses all things. The Creative Force of Existence is the hub; we are the spokes; this life is the rim of our ever-turning wheel of space-time. And the closer we get to each other, the closer we get to all the infinite expressions of the Wholeness of Being.

In the midst of every swirling bit of chaos in our world, I am reminded by my teachers that right action will look different for each and every one of us. For some of us, our first right step might be to hold our children, or our young people close and feel what it feels like to be safe. For some of us, getting involved in our community’s social justice groups is the most pressing immediate action. And others of us will be called to speak in loving kindness with family, friends, and neighbors, or write letters of repair, of trust and strength and hope. Still others of us will find ways to connect with our spiritual communities and allow the passion and guidance of our spiritual leaders, partners, and friends to bolster our hearts in gratitude and love.

May we be drenched in Spirit wisdom, and soaked in gratitude, hope, and love.

The Spaciousness of Love

If love is kind,
it is not cruel .
If love is not jealous,
it is content.
If love is not pompous,
it is humble.
If love is not inflated,
it sees rightly.
If love is not rude,
it is enlightened.
If love is not self-seeking,
it is generous.
If love is not quick-tempered,
it is tranquil.
If love does not brood over injury,
it is reparative.
If love does not rejoice over wrongdoing,
it offers compassion.
If love bears all things,
it does not turn away.
If love believes all things,
it does not deny.
If love endures all things,
it does not cede.
If love never fails,
it always triumphs.

There are jewels to be found throughout ancient scripture, and in this exploration, we’ll look to both Western and Eastern wisdom traditions. In the Christian tradition, the New Testament offers one approach to love and to loving. When we look in the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, a scholar of Jewish law asks Christ, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus says to him in reply, ““What is written in the law? How do you read it?” The scholar responds with what we know as The Greatest Commandment: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus replies to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live” (Luke 10:25-8).

From this quick exchange it seems our purpose on earth is simple, our mission, obvious, and the answer to the question of inheriting eternal life, a short one: love. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, as simple as love appears to be, isn’t it simultaneously complex? What, exactly, is love?

In his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul articulates clearly and beautifully what love is and what it is not, what love does and what it does not do. And he acknowledges that our actions can be either devoid of love or infused with it. We can serve in bitterness and resentment or in humility and compassion. Even our most helpful of actions can be empty of love, performed in a negative spirit that crushes our own and that of the recipient. St. Paul even goes so far as to proclaim that love is the greatest of all virtues, greater than faith and greater than hope: “Love will remain even when faith has yielded to sight and hope to possession” (USCCB Commentary).

Thankfully we can look to these guidelines and explanations of love to give us a starting point, a kind of pathway forward, but I know how much I stumble and wander about aimlessly, how often I fall and clamber in the dark of my ignorance, for even though I hear the encouragement, “love one another as you love yourself,” it is as if I do not have ears; I still find myself begging to understand how.

The Greatest Commandment, love one another as you love yourself, assumes that we already know how we are to love ourselves.

Zen priest and founder of the Center for Transformative Change, Angel Kyodo Williams, describes love as space: “[Love] is developing our own capacity for spaciousness within ourselves to allow others to be as they are — that is love” (OnBeing interview with Krista Tippett).

If love is space, it is not a vacuum; it does not pull all things into itself but expands and allows people to be who they are. Love makes room for the full expression of the human experience. Unfortunately, there have been many times in which I’ve been loveless. I’ve had a habit of pulling all things into myself, making myself the center of the multiverse, sucking the life out of life. I have been selfish, judgmental, prideful, vain, and vacuous, full of disdain, contempt, and self-righteousness, as I suspect most of us have at one time or another. It is a crushing cycle to find oneself in, as it damages others, as well as ourselves, on multiple levels.

I want to choose space.

Choosing space is hard.

It’s helpful to remember that love is not passive; it’s an action, whether or not it looks like action from the outside. To love is an act of the will; it is to choose, and we can’t make choices without awareness. To be aware is to choose to see rightly, to see ourselves as we really are, without quite so many labels, inherited or created, without stories in which we are always the protagonist; but instead, to choose to see ourselves simply as expressions of Divine Being worthy of love, worthy of forgiveness, by our sheer existence. Awareness can help create this space to see, this space in which we can choose dignity, this space to act in love toward ourself and our neighbor.

All this takes practice. When we work on our yoga mat to create space in the body for healing, we do so with awareness. When we work on our meditation cushion to create space in the mind for choice, we do so with awareness. And when the body is able to breathe and the mind is able to choose, we are able to work in our daily lives to create space in the spirit for loving ourselves. The hope is that if for a moment we can focus on the tree trunk, instead of the ever changing leaves, perhaps we will be able to notice, for even an instant, our constant spirit, instead of our changeable thoughts and emotions. And from inside this space, this separation between ourselves and our thought-feelings, we will find compassion for ourselves, for our families, for our friends, and for each person we encounter.

Creating space isn’t easy. It requires openness of mind and heart, and even body. This can be unnerving and can seem irrational. As human beings we strive to protect ourselves from the possibility of physical, mental, and emotional harm and to fulfill our basic needs. This is survival mode, and it causes us to lose touch with others and even with our truest selves. As we frantically search and scan our surroundings, our circumstances, we become absorbed with negativity. When this is our baseline, chronic way of functioning, we run the risk of closing in on ourselves, constricting our body-mind-heart/spirit, forgetting who we are, and who we are in relation to those around us.

We find spaciousness through embodied practices of curiosity & kindness. It really only takes a drop of curiosity, a kind pause, an open waiting, a question: What can I practice letting go of to make space for something else, something different, new, something like welcoming, or embracing?

Making space for ourselves, and making space for one another are true acts of love. Even paying close attention is loving, for where we place our attention, there also will our love be. Bringing our awareness to the present moment, including the people and events within that moment, and allowing space for the moment to be what it is, is living in love.

Our practices of the limbs of yoga – the yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dhyana, dharana – combine with Spirit wisdom, will lead us to the answers. We’ll figure out what needs letting go of through embodied practice, listening to the wisdom held deep in our belly and deep in our heart.

So, we can’t quit. We can rest, but we can’t give up. We can’t deny ourselves the practices even when we are overcome with grief and anger – we take the grief and the anger to the practice with us. Just like we take the joy and the delight to the practice with us. We take everything to the practice. Practice is truly our own best teacher.

Yoga instructor Bryan Kest speaks of a yoga practice on the mat as being like a mini-day, or a mini-life in which we encounter obstacles and challenges, and we practice being with them with equanimity, so that when we go out into the world we function from this baseline of non-reaction, with gentleness and self-compassion as our default mode. Not only do we practice navigating difficulty as yogis, but we also practice nurturing ourselves through deep restorative postures and energy work that have the capacity to restore and bolster our right action in the world. And this is paramount – we must care for ourselves so that we can care for others. Continued, sustained practice creates in us the capacity to grow in wisdom and expand in love. It is when we deny what is present, when we hide from what is happening, when we close in on ourselves and shut everyone else out through fear that our chests tighten, our hearts constrict, and our capacity for love diminishes. Kyodo Williams encourages us when she says, ” for people who are not monastics, the world is our field of practice.”

And so we practice. We get on our mat every day; we let go of reactivity, harsh self-criticisms, vanity and pride, greed and grasping; we start to cultivate space for responding, for healing, for choosing, and for seeing rightly. We fail. We try again.

We welcome wisdom into our heart and out of our heart and begin to understand what it means to be wisely generous and wisely selfish. These wise-heart practices keep us from overextending or overwhelming ourselves, so that we pace, renew, and restore and keep going. We take that spaciousness off our yoga mat, through the doors of our worship spaces, out of the forests and into the moments and circumstances of our lives. We practice; we practice some more, and we practice again and unceasingly, like prayer.

Love is not cruel; it is supportive and humble. Love sees rightly and is enlightened. Love is generous, tranquil, forgiving, repairing compassionate, courageous, honest, eternal, and triumphant. Love is wise.

Love bears all things
because love is spacious. It’s big enough.
It’s always bigger.

Love bears all things because love is spacious. It’s big enough. It’s always bigger. When we understand this and put it into practice by giving ourselves the space to be who we are without judgment, we will be able to give this same non-judgmental, inclusive, curious and kind space to others. From this place we will hear the encouragement, “Love one another as you love yourself,” and we will know – because we live it, because we feel it in our bellies and our bones.

Space is ever-expanding.
So is love.
Love never ends.

Mindful Moments: 3 Chocolate Practices for Ash Wednesday & Beyond

Mindfulness is the practice of noticing what’s happening in the present moment without judgement. It’s being aware of your sensory experience: sight, sound, scent, touch, taste. It’s offering your kind attention to your emotions and thoughts, all without analyzing or criticizing. In my Catholic experience, chocolate has been associated with Lent and Easter for decades, and it’s possible some of you have memories of giving up chocolate for Lent and then eating a basket full on Easter Sunday. Mindfulness is a big part of my yoga practice both on and off the mat. And chocolate is a big part of my life, both during Ordinary Time and during Lent. So, I thought I’d share a few mindful Lenten prayer practices that I have found useful at various times in my life.

1. Give Up Chocolate Mindfully

When I give up chocolate for Lent, it’s a big deal. Seriously. Because I love chocolate, the dark kind. I savor it daily. When a person enjoys chocolate the way I do, it really is a sacrifice to give it up. Non-chocolate-lovers might not have a felt experience of this. If that’s you, think of a special treat or snack you really enjoy and imagine not enjoying it for 40-ish days. It can seem near impossible, excruciating, or completely pointless! However, it’s comforting to remember that the point of not eating chocolate (or any food or beverage of your choice) is not so that we suffer, so that we lose weight, or so that we check the box of “giving something up for Lent.”

2. Don’t Give Up Chocolate Mindfully

We don’t have to give up chocolate. In fact, we can choose to eat chocolate during Lent, and eat it mindfully. Mindful eating is a practice of paying close attention to the experience of eating your meal by noticing the details of your food, how it looks and feels, its aroma and flavor. Mindful eating slows us down and allows time to contemplate all the needed resources for the food to grow, such as healthy soil, the the sun and the rain, as well as the many people who made the food available to you: the farmers, harvesters, packers, shippers, and sales attendants. And finally, mindful eating gives space for your lived experience of enjoying it: noticing the shape and color, then the scent, then the texture, then the taste, and as you swallow, offering thanks. This practice has a way of slowing us down to savor, to acknowledge that we don’t stand alone as individualists, but are an integral piece of the interconnectedness of all life.

“This practice might allow
the act of eating to become
a prayer in itself.“

These moments of mindful eating can create space to grow closer to Christ through an experience of profound gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy. We often begin our meals with prayer, and some of us end our meals with prayer, but this practice might allow the act of eating to become a prayer in itself. Try it out with your favorite piece of chocolate after your next yoga practice, or anytime!

3. Mindfully Explore Your Relationship to Chocolate

What happens when we look closely at our cravings? (Remember, it doesn’t have to be chocolate. It can even be cravings for non-edible things like attention or acknowledgment.) Consider this breath practice for Ash Wednesday:

Identify a specific food, drink, or experience you have everyday. Decide to be curious about your relationship to this item.
When you notice a craving for it, acknowledge it, perhaps by labeling it with a name. Then pause. Take a long, slow, deep breath. And wait. Does the craving pass? Are there any emotions present here?
Take four more breaths, and if you like, link your breath with your favorite prayer or favorite name for God. Then, look again. Is the craving still there? What emotions are present? Where do the emotions manifest in your body? Are there any thoughts moving through your mind?

Remember, in the moment of mindfulness there is no judgment, only awareness of the experience. After your five breaths, decide to satisfy the craving or decide not to, remembering that neither of these actions is necessarily bad or good. Mindfulness is noticing, and this noticing might give you interesting information. Stay curious. Breathe deeply. Pray well.

For me, mindful moments are a pathway to prayer. They offer space and time for me to connect to my self, to my God, and to others. And that’s really what the Lenten journey is about – growing closer to others through prayer, through Christ, through a loving relationship with your own inner being. God has plans for you this Lent. Spend Ash Wednesday being open to possibility, open to connection to yourself and God’s Divine presence within you. And from there, move out from contemplation and into doing. In the words of Richard Rohr, ask God, “What is mine to do?” Listen and look closely for the answers and allow your prayer life to become an access road to action.

I’ll leave you with four prayer quotes for Lent gathered by Sr. Melanie Svoboda on her blog Sunflower Seeds:

“God is hiding in the world. Our task is to let the Divine emerge from our deeds.” Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

“Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.” Pope Francis.

”No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.” St. John Chrysostom.

“Lent’s not what you give up; it’s how you reach out.” Regina Brett.

What do you think? Do any of these practices sound interesting? Do any of these quotes inspire you? Perhaps you’ll start with the practice of exploration on Ash Wednesday, and then decide how (or if) the other two practices will be a part of your Lenten journey this year. You might like to make up one or two chocolate practices that are unique to your own experience. If you do, be sure to share your experience here.

Happy Fat Tuesday, Happy Lent, Happy Practicing!

Waking Up & Lighting Your Own Way: How Creating Space for Advent Allows God to Nurture You

I am sitting by candle light in the early morning hours while I write. This isn’t typical, but I needed to get some words written before the household began stirring, and I needed something to off-set the glow of the computer screen. Now that it’s flickering in the corner of the living room, I realize it puts me in mind of the times I light a candle during my yoga practice and the times I have a candle close by when I sit with God in a formal, disciplined way. Now my writing time feels holy, which is a comfort I didn’t realize I needed. I’ve only just begun to type, and I hear my children whispering excitedly about what St. Nicholas has left them in their shoes. The three youngest ones are never awake this early, but with their shoes lined up at the front door holding chocolate gold coins, I guess it seems obvious that 6:30 is a good time to be awake.

St. Nicholas Day is celebrated on December 6th and this year appears during the first week of Advent. The word advent means both the coming and the arrival of a thing or person of great importance. In Christian tradition, the season of Advent evokes themes of eager anticipation, hope, and joy. It also holds space for patience, perseverance, and preparation. For the vast majority of Christain practice, Advent was as much a somber and penitential time as that of Lent, the time preceding the resurrection of Christ at Easter and includes prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Indeed, these are still mainstays of our Advent tradition, though in modern times, Advent can seem to be nothing but a swirl of festive activities, celebrations, and parties. Because of this, it is extremely challenging to create a sense of balance, intention, and purpose. Scripture can help guide us here. Readings for the first week of Advent speak of awareness and readiness, and both Paul and Jesus exhort us to notice that “now is the hour for you to be awake from sleep,” and “you also must be prepared” (Rom 13:11-14; Mt 24: 37-44).

In preparation for sharing my experience as a Christian who practices yoga, I spent the last weeks contemplating my relationship to Christianity and my love for the incarnation, the sanctifying act of Emmanuel, God With Us. And I’ve contemplated with equal intensity, my relationship to yoga practice and my gratitude for its impact in my life. Going to bed on St. Nicholas eve, I was absolutely determined to get something written the next day, because weeks (turning into months) is too long to wait for a good blog post to fall out of the sky. And I prayed for the strength to make this happen because, obviously, I wasn’t getting it done on my own. God is always my inspiration, whether through nature, through people, or through practice. I try not to fool myself into thinking I’m the one who comes up with great ideas or clever metaphors. I just try to keep persevering, keep praying, and keep preparing.

I opened my eyes this morning at six o’clock and thought about how great it would be if I got out of bed, took care of our energetic cocker spaniel-shar pei, and started writing. I thought about lighting that candle before I realized I would need it, for physical light but also for spiritual comfort — I don’t believe this was coincidence. I thought about the ways yoga brings me immediately to myself in the present moment, where life is, where God’s presence and action are visible within me, my breath and my heartbeat. In these present-moments I say hello to my body, hello to my awareness, and hello to God. And it was that last thought of the chain reaction, the ripple effect, body, breath, God, that got my feet to the floor. It was that last thought of God coming to me in and through my own body that got me out into the cold December morning with our soft and fuzzy dog by my side. That last realization gave me the energy I needed to leave my cozy bed so I could get here, to this computer, to write this down, to share with you, to not forget why yoga is so important to me: I choose yoga because it is relational; it puts me in relationship with myself and the three-person God I worship, the Trinity, the epitome of relationship.

My formal study of these relationships through yoga practice began in 1996 when I was nineteen. It was a hatha style class, outside in the grass and surrounded by trees, the uneven ground beneath us, the open sky above us. After just a few classes the practice of noticing my body on the yoga mat translated to a habit of noticing my body in other situations, most notably, standing in line. Tadasana (Mountain Pose, or, standing on two feet) was everywhere available to me. Instead of sinking into my hip, shifting my weight back and forth, or folding my arms over my chest, I would center myself over the four corner of my feet, relax my toes, find a neutral curve for my lower back, soften my shoulders and lift the crown of my head. (Are you finding yourself doing seated tadasana right now?) Before I knew it, I was practicing yoga everywhere. I loved how yoga practice got me to notice my body, then my breath, then the moment I was living, as reliably as clockwork. Standing in line became an opportunity for practice and presence rather than a chore or a burden. I was so intrigued I sought out deeper study, craving information and experience, knowledge and understanding. Hinduism and Buddhism became magnifying glasses for me as looked through their lenses and discovered my Christian theology in a more nuanced and detailed way.

I have kept studying and practicing, looking and noticing because there is no end to this journey. Whether it is Advent, Lent, or Ordinary Time, the exhortation to be awake is a constant. The practice of studying sacred texts and our sacred selves is deep, layered, complex, and fascinating, and keeps me staying awake. The practice of posture and prayer while seemingly limited in options is infinite in experience because each day our bodies and circumstances are different. The eight limbs of yoga are the toolkits out of which I learn to live this human life as a child of God, as a light-bearer of Christ, and as the hands and feet of Jesus.

I am sitting on the couch, awake, the dog, curled up by my hip after her meal and quick jaunt outside, is asleep. The candle I didn’t realize I would need still burns near me. In the midst of writing the beginning of this post, I’ve taken the pictures you see here. I’ve toasted waffles, drizzled syrup, poured coffee, tea, and chocolate milk, kissed, hugged, and blessed my family on their way out the door, cleaned the counters, ignored the floor, and settled myself in a different room because my laptop has battery and outlet accessibility issues. I brought candle I didn’t realize I’d need to my new space, and it still burns though the sun is well over the horizon line, the flame’s constant movement reminding me that life is happening now.

The yoga practice I began over twenty years ago, the one I didn’t realize I would need, is a part of me and reminds me that I am living my life right now, not yesterday and not tomorrow. When I find myself here, in the present moment, I whisper, “Good morning, God,” no matter if it is afternoon, evening, or in the middle of the night, no matter if I have just woken up or if it has been hours since I’ve crawled out of bed, no matter if I am walking contemplatively through the woods or if I am in the midst of a challenging and difficult set of circumstances with challenging and difficult people. It is always good morning, because to notice God’s presence and action is to be joyfully awake.

Suggestions for Practice

Noticing the Breath & the Body

My first yoga teacher liked to remind us that we are human beings, not human doings. This is very difficult to remember, especially if you notice that your sense of self-worth is tightly bound to productivity. If you’d like to practice being, which is very much like being awake, you might begin right now: pause in your reading and notice your breath. You could also try to notice your breath for a brief moment throughout the day; how about every time you sit down, whether on the couch, in the car, or at the table?

If watching the breath feels awkward, uncomfortable, or extremely unpleasant, you might begin practicing being by noticing sensations in your body, whether they are pleasant ones or irritating ones, right now: how do your feet feel, cool, warm, tired, neutral? If it’s difficult to tell, wiggling your toes or rolling your ankles can be helpful. You could do this each morning before getting out of bed, or after brushing your teeth. Even still, you could simply place the idea in your mind: today I will notice my feet. Then pay attention to see if it happens randomly throughout your daily activity.

Something I find immensely helpful is to offer a prayer about it. Ask God to help you notice what it’s like to simply be alive. This being alive is miraculous, and sometimes noticing it feels like a miracle, too!

Remembering Your Light

In the Catholic tradition, a candle is kept burning at all times near the tabernacle signaling that the Holy Eucharist is within; in other words, Christ is present here. Perhaps you could light a candle, before you think you need it, to remind yourself of God’s presence within you. Maybe set out several of the flameless kind that keep glowing at all hours. This way when you open your eyes in the morning, the light is there. When you walk into your home after work, the light is there. When your house is a mess, your children melting down, your partner in need, and when you are at a loss, the flame is there. Whether it is winter, spring, summer or autumn, the light will be there as a mirror, reflecting back to you your own flame, your divine spark, your Christ-light, because you, my friend, are a temple of God, a holy tabernacle, a home for Christ Jesus. This Advent your life can become His nativity scene, your home His stable and your Heart his manger.

Prayer & Power

Prayer and power go together. What would happen if you prayed for the ability to wake up and light your own way? How would God surprise you with comfort? How might you be nurtured simply because you took time and effort to do something a little different than your normal routine? Remember, prayer and yoga are practices, so be gentle with yourself, know that you don’t have to perform, just show up.

You might have a consistent time each day or week that you set aside to pray. Maybe you have a scheduled time that you book to practice yoga at home or in the studio or at the church. You might pray and practice yoga simultaneously, and also, you might not. It’s quite possible that your practices are spontaneous, surprising, and serendipitous moments that you scoop up whenever they present themselves; or perhaps you find yourself with a machete, chopping out chunks of time in desperation.

Either way, any time is a good time to be awake, and especially during Advent when we can be on the look-out for incarnation, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the sacredness of the ordinary, the divine spark within each of us. Have fun practicing. Yes, have fun. It is good and joyful to be awake and see what chocolate gold coins God has left us in the darkness, in the night, and in the shadows of our every day.