Month: January 2015

Mysticism: Small, Medium, Large

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It is a bright winter day. I meditate with my eyes open because I like to see the sun slanting in the windows, outshining the fire in the woodstove. Both make me happy. I can’t help see that the sunshine reveals a layer of dust on everything. That, too, makes me happy because it is Saturday, and I will think of my mother as I move through the house at her deliberate pace, getting rid of the dust. From early childhood I always helped her with the Saturday cleaning ritual.

Sun, fire, housecleaning. These are part of my treasure trove of mystical experiences. It is why I call myself a practical mystic. Mystical experiences are never far away, always accessible. I just have to be open to them.

What is mysticism, anyhow? A direct experience of the Divine, that’s the simplest definition. My mystical secret is that not all mystical experiences are big, transcendent experiences of Oneness. They come in different sizes. Small, Medium, Large. Today it’s the God of small things that I’m experiencing. Continue reading →

Technology will give me a heart attack

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Last Sunday in church I was in charge of children’s time during the worship service. I wanted to show the kids some photos so I made some prints to show them when they gathered up front, but I also had slides ready to be projected so the whole congregation could see.

That is, I thought I did. When it came time to show the pictures there was a big blank on the screen and a lot of scrambling by the A-V crew. Nothing. One of them was seen on the high balcony catwalk where the projector sits. “What’s he doing up there?” a friend told me she asked her husband. “Praying,” he said. Continue reading →

Natural Woman

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Sometimes I feel like retirement has allowed me to become appallingly lazy. But really, it is just revealing to me what life might have been like all along if I had been able to obey the preferences and rhythms of my human self.

Most people can’t afford to live like natural human beings but, instead, we have to be superhuman. We have to do more than we are built to do, exceed our capacity, and live with the consequent stress. Continue reading →

Memory lapse

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I was proud of myself for getting my year-in-review letter out to friends and family on January 1. My goal in the past has been to send it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I almost never succeed in doing that. So I have cut myself some slack and now just call it a New Year letter. But I try to touch on the highlights of the past year, along with a verbal snapshot of my family’s current state of mind and activity.

Although I love to blog, this kind of letter always feels like a chore because I hate to summarize. I hate to summarize, in turn, because I have a terrible memory, and I mean terrible. Continue reading →